Here’s what really happened: A Revisionist History of the Spanish Influence in the U.S.

June 22, 2014, 6:26 pm

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First a review of the book, followed by two excerpts

Review of Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States: author, Felipe Fernández-Armesto

By Roberto Haro

Is it possible for a professor to write an intriguing and provocative book on American history that is entertaining and readable? For some, the answer is no. Many academic historical treatises rely on heavy documentation, and are prepared in an antiseptic writing style that may be targeted for the review of other faculty. Seldom do such books appeal to a broad audience. However, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a professor of History at Notre Dame University, has prepared a fascinating book about the Spanish role in the development of the United States. His narrative speaks to the reader in an engaging and focused way.

The book is a stimulating challenge to studies written from an English perspective that often gloss over or ignore Spanish contributions to U.S. history. Too many scholarly treatises on U.S. history explain, with extensive documentation, the significance of British and then U.S. culture and leaders in affecting this nation’s establishment and emergence. Armesto challenges Anglophile historiography by deliberately focusing attention on the overt and subtle ways that Spanish leaders and values affected and influenced American history. His book surfaces relationships between the Spanish colonization in the Americas and lasting additions, sometimes subtle, to U.S. culture. One important example is his discussion on how the Spanish presence in Puerto Rico crossed over to the mainland. He presents intriguing examples of how Spain, its explorers and settlers, affected and changed those areas they colonized, from the Caribbean, Atlantic Seaboard, Southwest, and to the Pacific Coast. 

A few words about terminology are important. Fernández-Armesto prefers the term “Hispanic.” This may not sit well with those who self-identify as Chicanos, Hispanos, Latinos, and Mexican Americans. However, he explains his preference for Hispanic because it’s the term used by the Census Bureau and other federal agencies. He puts aside Latino, the term The Los Angeles Times has tried to standardize and which many people of Mexican, Central American and Latin American origin use to identify themselves. The controversy surrounding terminology to define a heterogeneous ethnic group like Hispanics will continue to draw attention and even heated discussions. So, it’s important for the author to explain why he uses the term Hispanics.

While Fernández-Armesto’s story is revisionist history, his predilection for Spanish influences engages the reader and compels her/him to put aside Anglophile perspectives. His ideological approach is not as radical or unique as many might think. The brilliant Ronald Takaki, now deceased, wrote several seminal books, including his classic study A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown & Co., 2008) about the role minorities played in American history. Takaki used primary documents to capture and present the voices of groups like Hispanics, offering a balanced account of this country’s development. While Takaki championed a wider thematic frame of reference about transcending the hegemony of Anglo-American interpretations than Armesto, the latter’s book is a refreshing, well documented and focused story.

The book is divided into three main sections. Part One starts with the colonial era, and begins the narrative with the early voyages of Columbus, and how they triggered a significant interest and exploration of the Americas. The second section focuses on the nineteenth century that includes the westward expansion of the young republic and that popular interpretive theme, Manifest Destiny, as a motivator and explicator for this expansion. In it is the story of how Anglo Americans subordinated Hispanic populations in the west, and elsewhere. The third part focuses on the twentieth century that includes discussions of the Hispanic resurgence, particularly in the West that spread to major cities like Boston, Chicago, Miami and New York. The author uses extensive documentation, and in many places, anecdotal interpretations, to justify his challenge to the dominant society’s conventional mythologies about this nation’s establishment along the Atlantic Seaboard by northern Europeans, and how they conditioned the national narrative, often excluding the important contributions of Hispanic and other ethnic/racial groups.

In many ways, the book fills an important niche in American history. It is a compelling invitation to explore and imagine the influence of Spain in America from its inception, to the radical civil rights struggles of this ethnic group during the late 1950s, 1960s and most recently their pressure for immigration reform in the early 21st century.

There are some important extras that need to be mentioned to help the reader find additional information resources and do follow-up. The author references the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley as an important source of primary and secondary information about Hispanics in the U.S. However, it is equally important to identify the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the Benson Latin American Collection and the Mexican American Library Programs at the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Florida Latin American Collection, to mention but a few. These, and other resource centers on Hispanics, are extremely valuable for scholars and informed laypersons interested in identifying and exploring materials about the Spanish contributions to U.S. development. Most of these major repositories have digitalized their resources which can be accessed on-line.

The book begins to lose its legs in the third part. Several writers with significant books on the Hispanic experience in the U.S., and strong correlations to their country of origin are absent. The great Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate, Octavio Paz, in his classic book El Laberinto de la Soledad [The Labyrinth of Solitude],(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950) devoted an important section of his book to Pachucos in California. It provides an important literary link between the cultures of Mexico and that of its expatriates in Los Angeles. Rodolfo Acuña’s seminal work, Occupied America (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) needs to be mentioned. Also missing is Victor Villaseñor’s critically acclaimed Rain of Gold (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1991) that presents parallel stories of two Mexican families and their movement into the US. Ilan Stavans’ The Hispanic Condition: Reflections on Culture and Identity in America (Perennial: 1996) is a valuable story that should be included in Armesto’s book.

The border between Mexico and the U.S. continues to be a noteworthy issue for many writers, and a significant theme to depict differences, and more appropriately similarities between the nations. Carlos Fuentes did a masterful job of exploring the similarities along the U.S.-Mexico border in The Crystal Frontier [La Frontera de Cristal], (Harvest Books: 1998). Fuentes was but one of a few Mexican writers who understood and appreciated the transnational cultural exchanges that forged similarities that could easily apply to other Hispanic groups moving to the U.S. from the Caribbean, Central and South America. Among scholars doing research on the border, Leonard Valverde, former director of the Hispanic Border Leadership Institute at Arizona State University, deserves mention. 

In the last part, the author mentions how Hispanics in the U.S. were influenced by socio-political environmental factors. Arturo Madrid’s excellent book, In the Country of Empty Crosses: the Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in New Mexico (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2012) is an excellent account of “the others” in New Mexico. It deserves inclusion to provide a readable narrative with graphic images of being a Protestant in a predominantly Catholic geographical area.

The above omissions reflect this writer’s belief that Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s book would be strengthened by the mentioned additions. Scholars like Armesto tease us with new and challenging stories and wait for feed-back. The best academics find ways to enhance their manuscripts by doing supplementary research, and considering the friendly suggestions of supportive critics.

Another significant factor to be considered is the role literary writings play in depicting the experience of immigrants in a new country. While Hispanics were in what is now the U.S. well before Northern Europeans settled on these shores, the continuing waves of Hispanic immigrants that wash over this nation bring new voices and stories of great value to understand how they’ve coped with a dominant culture that marginalizes them. It is, therefore, critical that mention and attention be devoted to literary works of female/male Hispanic novelists like Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Oscar Higuelos, Arturo Islas, Pat Mora, Cherie Moraga, John Phillip Santos, and Piri Thomas, to name but a few. These writers, in significant ways, provide readers with unique voices on the distinctive experiences of different Hispanic groups in America.

One final comment about this book: its cover jacket. Most potential readers use the internet to search for new books and items of concern. The jacket design is a valuable image that should draw interest by presenting a dramatic representation of what it’s about, or at least attract his/her attention. In this case, the cover is nondescript and pedestrian. A more dramatic cover that draws the reader’s curiosity, especially in a computer search, is very much in order.

The task Felipe Fernández-Armesto has set is an important and difficult one. Anglo-American historians have proffered dominant ideological narratives and discourses on U.S. development, many times to the exclusion of the ethnic/racial groups that populated this nation and contributed to what it is. The evolution of an American narrative that addresses and includes the contributions of Asians, blacks, Native Americans, and especially Hispanics has not been popular until recently. The author has opened an important door and shares with readers new ways to consider how the Spanish influenced U.S. history. His lyrical style, attention to detail, particularly in the first two parts of the book, and thought-provoking ideas augur well for this story. It is a welcome and most worthwhile addition to American history and historiography.

Roberto Haro

Roberto Haro is a retired university professor and senior administrator with career service at several major research universities in California, Maryland and New York. Since retiring, he has written at last count 10 historical novels under the penname Roberto de Haro, including a trilogy that includes three related novels of families that left Mexico to find new lives in the U.S.: The Mexican Chubasco (2007), Camino Doloroso (2008), and Alejandro’s Story (2012). He lives in Marin County, California.

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Extracts from Our America, A Hispanic History of the United States: author, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Introduction

I startedthisbook—inmyhead,whichiswhereIalwaysstartwriting,yearsbeforeIhitakeyboard—inColoradoSprings.IhadgonetheretogivesometalksattheU.S.AirForceacademy.Atthetime,theacademyhadareputationasanevangelical,conservativeenclave.Somestudentshadtheirbiblestohandwhentheyaskedmequestions.Theyclearlywantedtheworldtobealotsimplerthanitreallyis.Generally,however,Ithoughttheacademywasanexemplaryplaceofeducationandthatitwascomfortingtoknowthattheofficersofthearmedforcesoftheworld’ssuperpowerareencouragedincriticalintelligence,ethicalreflection,andbreadthofculture.TheteachersIwasluckyenoughtomeet,mostofwhomwereairforceofficers,withaleaveningoflayscholars,wereliberalinthebestsenseoftheword:unprejudiced,thoughtful,generous.

Ihadalongconversationaboutimmigrationwithoneofthem.Hehad—withonelimitation—whatIwouldcallaproperviewofthesubject.HerealizedthattheUnitedStatesneedsimmigrantlabor,andplentyofit.Hewantedthecountrytobewelcomingtoimmigrantsandappreciatedthatthebestwaytoturnthemquicklyintopatrioticcitizensorcommittedresidentsistomakethemfeelathome.Hehadnotraceofhostilitytoanycolororcreed.HeknewthatthefutureoftheUnitedStateswasinescapablypluralandthatnativeshadtoadaptto change,justas newcomershad to adjust tofitin.

Hisonlyscruplewasthathethoughtthat“peoplewhocomeheremustlearnthenativelanguage.”IdidnotthinkhespokeormeantUteorComanche, soIsaid,“Iquiteagree. everyoneshouldlearnSpanish.”Helookednonplussedforamoment;soIadded,“Whatisthenameofthisstate?”aswewereinColorado,heconcededmypoint.IcouldreciprocatebyagreeingthateveryoneintheUnitedStatesshouldknowEnglish,butnotattheexpenseofforgoingtheirancestors’languages.Ialsoinsistedthatbilingualismisatleasttwiceasgood for anycommunity as self-incarceration in a single language.

Theencountermademerealizethatevenwell-educated,amiable,open-mindedpeopleintheUnitedStatesdonotrealizethattheircountry has a Hispanic past,as wellas a Hispanic future—or,at least,thatifpeopledorealizethisfact,theycommonlyassignitnocontemporaryrelevanceorculturalsignificance.

The2012presidentialelection,inwhichHispanicvotersinunexpectednumbersandinsurprisingsolidarityturnedouttosupportBarackObama,alertedeventhemostmyopic politicianstoHispanics’currentandfuturestrengthinnumbers.AsIcheckoverthetextofthisbookforthelasttime,tweakingtheprose,respondingtothepublisher’ssuggestions,thinkingbetterofsomeassertionsandboostingothers,Iam surrounded bynewspapercolumnsand emanations fromairwavesandblogospherethatareabuzzwiththeimportanceoftheHispanicvote.IntheUnitedStates,a“demographic”becomes“thevote”whenevervotersinaparticularagegrouporethnicityorphratry orotherpsephologicallydefinedtribeevince,incombination,strengthofnumbersandcongruentvotinghabits.Politiciansandpowerbrokers then take notice and court them.

Inthe2012electionthewinner,accordingtopundits’consensus,hadthebackingof71percentofvoterswhoclassthemselvesasHispanic.PresidentObama’smarginofvictoryinmostswingstateswassobigthathewouldhavewonevenifHispanicvotershaddividedmuchmorenearlyequally.ButinFlorida,Nevada,Colorado,andNewMexico,whicharelikelytoremainamongthemostfiercelycontestedstatesinfutureelectionsformanyyears,heneededthesupportofthemajorityofHispanicstowin.Hegotit.InonerespectHispanicvotersdecisivelybuckedatrend:NevadaandColoradoweretheonlywesternmountain-regionstatestosupportMr.Obama.Theimportanceofthephenomenonseemsboundtogrow, partlybecauseHispanicnumbersaregrowingandpartlybecauseRepublicans’appealtoHispanicshasdeclinedyear-on-yearsince2004.RepublicanstrategistsareexpectedtorespondbyplanningHispanic-friendlypolicyturnsandframingHispanic-orientedmessages.“WehaveaLatinoproblemthatjustcostusanationalelection,”wastheresponseofGOPspokesmanMikeMurphyonelectionnight.“We’regoingtohavetohaveaveryadultconversationthatmightturnintoanintra-partyfistfightabouthowwebecomeelectableagain.”Shortlyaftertheelection,theRepublicanscrambleforHispanics’favorbegan,whengovernorofNevadaBrianSandovalannouncedafasttracktostate identity documents for someallegedly illegal immigrants.

Nevertheless,whilepoliticshaveaffectedperceptionsofHispanics’roleinthepresentandfuture,thefactsofelectorallifeseemtohavemadelittledifference,sofar,tothewaymostpeopleperceiveHispanics’placeinUShistory.

IrecallwithpleasureanamusingmomentinTheAndyGriffithShow—perhapsthemost-often-airedserialeverbroadcastintheUnitedStates.WhenIfirststumbledontheshow,flickingchannelsinanattempttoappeaseexhaustionduringaninsomniacnightinanuncomfortablehotel,Ithoughtthedialoguecaptured,withgreaterfidelitythanalmostanyotherdocumentofpopularcultureIthenknew,whatordinarypeoplethinkaboutthecountry.IntheepisodeIhaveinmind,Andyandhisfriends enrollforanadulteducationclassinUShistory.TheybeginbyaskingwhenUShistorybegan.“Assoon,”onecharactersuggests,“asthepilgrimFatherssteppedoffthatship.”Andydemurs,pointingoutthattherewereEnglishcolonistsinVirginiabeforethelandinginMassachusetts.Hisremarkprovokessomeoneto saythat maybethe story begandeep inthe history of England.SomeoneelsementionsColumbus,provokingasuggestionthatmaybepartofthestorybeganinSpain,butthesuggestiondwindlesintheetherandthecoursefollowstheconventionalnarrativeoftheunfoldingof Anglo-Americaacross thecontinent  from  east  towest.Inanotherepisode,theschoolteacherwhobecomesAndy’ssweetheartasksherclasswheretheUnitedStatesbegan.Andy’ssonpipesupwith the instant answer,“Jamestown,ma’am.1607.”

CitizensoftheUnitedStateshavealwayslearnedthehistoryoftheir countryas if it unfolded exclusively fromeast to west.In consequence,mostofthemthinktheirpasthascreatedacommunityessentially—evennecessarily—Anglophone,withacultureheavilyindebtedtotheheritageofradicalProtestantismandEnglishlawsandvalues.Immigrantswithotheridentitieshavehadtocompromiseandconform,sacrificingtheirlanguagesandretainingonlyvestigiallydistinctivesensesoftheirpeculiaritiesas“hyphenated”Americans.Theheirsofslaves have had tosubscribetothesameprocess.Nativeswho preceded the colonistshavehad to surrender and adapt.

Ofcourse,theAndyGriffithversionofUShistoryisnotwrong.Thecountry,likethestripesintheflag,iswoven,inpart,ofahorizontalweft,stretchingacrossthecontinent.Butnofabricexistswithoutastrongwarpcrisscrossingatrightanglesfrombottomtotop.TheHispanicstoryoftheUnitedStatesconstitutesthewarp:anorth-southaxisalongwhichtheUnitedStateswasmade,intersectingwiththeeast-westaxishighlightedinconventionalperspective.MakingtheHispaniccontributionconspicuousisliketiltingthemapsidewaysand seeing the US from an unusual approach.

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Chapter One

The Fountain of Youth

The First Colonies in What Was to be the United States, c. 1505 - 1763

The first Europeans to settle in what is now the territory of the United States of America were pigs and some goats. The year was 1505. The place was Puerto Rico.

WhenIwasteachingatTuftsUniversity,inMassachusetts,notfarfromthelegendaryPlymouthRockwhere, accordingtoalong-standingmisconception,UShistoryiscommonlysupposedtohave“begun,”avacancyoccurredforaprofessorofhistoryinthecolonialperiodofwhatisnowtheUnitedStates.Thebestpostdoctoralspecialistsintheperiodapplied.Wehadthecreamofthecountrytochoosefrom.Iaskedallthecandidatesthesamequestion.Itwasratherasneakyquestion,butnotunfairinthecircumstances:“Where,inwhatisnowUSterritory,wasthefirstenduringEuropeancolony,stilloccupiedtoday,established?”SurelyitwasreasonableforaprospectiveoractualprofessorofthecolonialperiodoftheUnitedStatestoknowtheanswer.NoneoftheyoungpeoplewhopassedhopefullybeforeourpanelcommittedthefollyofpointinginthedirectionofPlymouthRock.“Jamestown,Virginia,”wastheunthinkinganswerofmostcandidates,reflecting theassumptionthatEnglish colonistsforgedwhatbecametheUnitedStates,andbuiltitfromeasttowest.Others,moreawareofthepossibilityofatrap,said,“ItmustbesomewhereinFlorida,ormaybetheSouthwest,”andnominatedSanAgustín,Florida,orSantaFe,NewMexico.Theanswers,thoughnotstrictlycorrect,weresensible.EuropeanshavebeenincontinuousoccupationatSanAgustín sinceSpaniardsfoughtFrenchmenforitin1567.SantaFeandEl PasowereinSpanishhandsfrom1598—adecadebeforethecolonizationofJamestownbegan—thoughSantaFe wasbrieflyevacuatedduringaseventeenth-centuryIndianrevolt.ThecorrectanswertothequestionaboutthelocationofthefirstpermanentEuropeancolonyinwhatisnowUSterritoryis,however,PuertoRico,foundedoverahundredyearsbeforeJamestown.

YetnobodythinksofPuertoRicoastheplacewhereUShistorybegan,partlybecausetheislanddidnotbecomeUSterritoryuntil1902,whentherepublichadbeeninexistenceforfullyacenturyandaquarter,ifonecountsfromtheDeclarationofIndependence,andthecountryalreadyhadacharacterandconstitutiontowhichPuertoRicanshadmadenocontribution.Obviouslythesearevalidscruples.Theyaccountforwhy,inoneofStephenSondheim’sversionsofhislyricsforWestSideStory,hewrotethat“nobody”intheUnitedStatesknowsthatPuertoRicois“inAmerica.”

Butinpart,Americans—includingPuertoRicans,sometimes—ignoreordeliberatelyexcludePuertoRicobecauseofprejudice:prejudicethattheUnitedStatesisacountrymadebywhiteAnglo SaxonProtestants,constructedbyAnglophonecolonists,whereconceptsoflibertyandlawaredefined bytraditionsthatoriginatedinEngland;wheretheEnglish languageisthebasisofwhateverculturalunitycanbecontrivedamongalltheethnicitiesthatmakeupthepopulation;andwhereyoubecome“American”—or,moreaccurately,whereyouqualifytobeacitizenoftheUnitedStates—bysubscribingtoacanonicalversionofthehistoryofthecountrythatbeginsamongEnglish colonistsontheeastcoastofthecontinent.

Noneofthoseprejudicesisunquestionable.Allarefoundedonshakyhistoricalassumptions.Nocountryhasanunchangingessence.Nocommunityhasanunchangingidentity.WhatitmeanstobeEnglish orChineseorSpanishorIndonesianorAmericanchangesallthetime.TherewasneveratimewhenmostAmericans,ormostpeopleinwhatisnowtheUnitedStates,werewhiteEnglish Protestants.Themakingofthecountryhasbeenacollectiveeffort—sometimescollaborative,sometimesconflictive—ofalltheethnicandreligiousminoritieswhoinhabitit.NativeAmerican“Indians”havebeencontributingforlongerthanAnglos.Bytheendofthecolonialperiod,inmuchoftheruralsouth,blackscountedformoreintermsofnumbersandperhapseffortthanwhiteEnglish people.Over40percentofthepopulationofGeorgiaandtheCarolinaswereblackwhentheDeclarationofIndependencewassigned.WithouttheinputofothercommunitiesofEuropeanorigin,theUnitedStatestodaywouldbeunrecognizable.WithoutthemigrantswhohavejoinedfromAsia,especiallyinrecenttimes,thefuturecharacteranddynamicofthehistoryoftheUnitedStateswouldbeverydifferentand,probably,lesssuccessfulinconventionalterms—interms,thatis,ofwealthandpower—thanitwouldotherwisebe.IcanimagineaUShistorytextbookofthenot-too-far-distantfuturebeginningnotwiththearrivalofpuritansinMassachusetts,orwithEnglish adventurersinJamestown,orevenwithFrenchandSpanishcontendersinFlorida,orconquistadoresatElPasoorinNewMexico,butwiththreepigsandsomegoatsinPuertoRico.Whatmightsucharewritingofthecountry’s past look like?

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, born in London of Spanish parents, is William P. Reynolds Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, currently working on research projects in the history of language and of cultural organisms. In 2007, he was awarded the World History Association Book Prize and Tercentenary Medal of the Society of Antiquaries. Recent publications includeConquistadors: a Very Short Introduction (with Matthew Restall), Oxford, and 1492 The Year the World Began, Harper Collins. For copies of Our America, contact the publisher, Norton & Co., New York, or the available retail and online outlets.

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Writing, Culture, and the Vagaries of Life

June 22, 2014, 6:55 pm

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Check out the extracts featured earlier 

Review of Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature Through Essays and Interviews: author, Daniel A. Olivas

  

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

In The Things We Do Not Talk About, an anthology exploring Latino/a literature through essays and interviews, Daniel A. Olivas lays out for readers an interesting dichotomy of perspectives about the things we do not talk about—namely writing—first with a series of personal essays reflecting his evolution from Mexican American lawyer to Mexican American writer; next (second) he mines for intellectual gold with a string of interviews with Latino/a writers, most of them of considerable renown. Olivas is no contender as a writer—he’s already there with seven works including three collections of stories, two anthologies, a novel, a novella, and one children’s picture book. He also “shares blogging duties” on La Bloga, dedicated to Chican@ and Latin@ writing.

In the Introduction to the anthology, Olivas preps the reader that perhaps “from this book” the reader “will get a glimpse into the manner by which [he approaches] writing, culture, and the vagaries of life.” The book indeed fulfills that promise—and more. In a dozen essays, Olivas strides through a gallery of Proustian characters who populated his past. The essays are drawn from deep à la the recherche du temps perdu, drawn with a poignant regard for the sensibilities of life taken for granted.

In the essay “Documenting Hate” Olivas shares with us the anguish of waiting for hours to learn if his 9-year old son Benjamin had been the victim of Buford Furrow’s vicious attack at the North Valley Jewish Community Center on August 10, 1999. Olivas is a Jewish convert. Three children were shot and wounded in that attack. The anguish pierced Olivas like an assegai ripping into his body when he heard that one of the boys who had been shot was named Benjamin—the agony ended only when, eventually, Olivas and his wife were reunited with their son. That incident engendered in Olivas a strong sense of moral responsibility to speak out about hate crimes against Jews. This is the moral responsibility Pastor Niemo-ller abjured about the Nazis.

In another essay, “Moving from Tight Little Machines to the Novel,” Olivas explains why he writes. “Because it gives me joy, not because it’ll put food on the table.” For the longest time he was stuck with those tight little machines called “the short story.” Novels seemed too long, but he finally broke out of the corral with the award-winning novel The Book of Want (University of Arizona Press) in 2011, a novel he “had a damn fun time writing.”

But all is not “hunky dory” beyond the confines of Aztlan. In the American hinterlands beyond Aztlan, Americans know little about Chicanos despite their 162 year history with the United States. In “Still—Foreign Correspondent,” Olivas asks: “How can Chicano characters in fiction be so unfamiliar to some?” Adding, “Are adults who, when exposed to Chicano culture, feel as though they’re watching a National Geographic special on a newly-discovered tribe?” That’s the $64,000 dollar question. And the answer is “Yes.” By and large Americans do see Chicanos as a “newly-discovered tribe.” 

In that same essay, Olivas offers a two-pronged solution to bring the invisible Chicano to the attention of the American public: (1) honest media representation “free of ugly and deceitful stereotypes” and (2) “Chicanos need to start magazines, newspapers, publishing houses, production companies and the like.” Truer words were never spoken. In 1972 Dan Valdes, others and I created La Luz Magazine in Denver, the first national Hispanic public affairs magazine in English which survived until 1990.  Dan was the Publisher and I Was Associate Publisher. La Luz was ahead of the curve. Chicanos definitely need more magazines like La Luz.

And they definitely need more English language newspapers. In 1983 I organized The National Hispanic Reporter in Washington DC, the first national public affairs newspaper in English. I was the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. The newspaper folded in 1992. The country was not ready for these bold Chicano initiatives of Chicanos telling the country who they were instead of the country telling Chicanos who they were.  Both La Luz Magazine and The National Hispanic Reporter represented Chicano culture more honestly and accurate than what was presented in Mainstream American media.

Further along, in “Exploring the Mexican American Experience,” Olivas comments on his decidedly immersive mainstream American education, pointing out that despite the fact that he grew up in a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood that did not prevent him from being immersed in the dominant society. Unlike Richard Rodriguez—the new American scholarship boy (author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez—an Autobiography, Godine, 1982) who—after being immersed in the dominant society—renounces being Mexican American, Olivas’ ethnic identity is reinforced, just as my identity was reinforced studying the same British renaissance literature Rodriguez studied. I emphasized this point in a rebuttal to Richard Rodriguez which was published in The American Scholar (Summer 1981).

In a powerful essay “Exploring the Mexican American Experience,” Olivas cites Nick Vaca’s injunction “Writers write. In other words, do not call yourself a writer if you do not write on a daily basis.” This injunction reinforces the power of the word and its utility as a scalpel in excising stereotypes.

 The most touching Olivas’ essays is “A Pocho in West Hills” with its dichos(proverbs) and poem “Hidden in Abuelita’s Soft Arms” which smell “like perfume and frijoles and coffee and candy.” I say “flowers” for Algernon, the Pocho in West Hills.

 An essay that implores us to “boycott hate” is about Petr the “Czechano” boy artist whose words put a face on the holocaust for Olivas who grew up, fell in love with a Jewish woman, married in a temple, converted to Judaism, and sent his son to a Jewish day school for eight years. Petr’s message: that even in the squalor and deprivation of a concentration camp, creativity can survive.  Nevertheless: Never Again!

The last three essays deal with Olivas’ travails and authenticity of writing in his “other life” as a writer, not as a lawyer. Thanks for the God Blog! The imploration at the end of the section of essays sounds  a bit like the ending of Robert Anderson’s 1953 stage play Tea and Sympathy  about homosexuality and marital infidelity when in the movie version actress Deborah Kerr tells actor John Kerr: Years from now when you speak of this—and you will—be kind.

In the section on Interviews, Olivas does yeoman’s service in getting the words of Chican@/Latin@ writers on writing in print, reminiscent of Juan Bruce-Novoa’s Chicano Autors: Inquiry by Interview of 14 leading Chicano authors(University of Texas Press, 1980). The lineup of Latin@ writers in Olivas’ anthology (28 writers) is impressive and worthy of  an encyclopedia project of interviews on Chican@/Latin@ writers. Inter alia the list includes Urrea, Viramontes, Troncoso, Stavans, and Cisneros.

Here, for me the sentiment may be the sentiment of a passing generation seeing the baton in other hands—extraordinarily capable hands, I must say. The scaffold I built in Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (first study in the field, 1971) has become a fleshed-out edifice rich in the chorus of historic Mexican American and contemporary Latin@ American writers like Daniel Olivas.

Daniel Olivas’ book Things We Do Not Talk About is an important read about “the word” and “identity”— Whorf and Sapir had it right: Language not only shapes our view of the world but also who we are. Unfortunately these are the things we do not talk about—but should!

Felipe Ortego y Gasca

Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Scholar in Residence at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, Nevada, is Professor Emeritus of English, Texas State University System (Retired 1999), Founding Member (2007) and Past Chair, Chicano/a & Hemispheric Studies Department, WNMU, and Founding Director, Chicano Studies Program, UT El Paso, 1970-72, Founding Member, Mexican American Studies, Texas State University-Sul Ross, 1995-99. He served as Editor-in-Chief, of the forthcoming Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Issues Today.

A memoir in poetry, art and emotion

July 15, 2014, 10:29 pm

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Allegory of Sight, Plate 4

Extracts from Letters to the Poet from His Brother

By Maceo Montoya

This book in which California’s overlooked agricultural landscape echoes off the ink is a hybrid memoir woven between essay, painting, drawing, and poem. Maceo Montoya probes his lineage of artists, poets, and cultural activists after the death of his brother, poet Andrés Montoya, and grapples with the cultural legacy of his pioneering Chicano artist father, Malaquias. As he attempts to craft himself into his own image, he questions the ideals of the solitary artist, contemporary Chicano art, the politics of place, and his own memory. Traumatic loss starts him writing, painting. He pens letters to his dead brother full of doubt. Montoya contemplates the embodiment of the Chicano Movement in his father’s aging gestures and afternoon soccer matches in Knights Landing. He writes. He paints images for us to read.

I. Letter to the Poet from his Brother

“i came here looking for you, an image, a ghost        something i could crawl into and imitate.”                                                                                                                       --Andrés Montoya

I first found you, again, in the winter of 2003. It was in Knights Landing, that small town along the Sacramento River where I went to hole up in a room and paint. That’s what I told anyone who cared to listen: I just want to hole up in a room and paint, I said, and I pursued that idea, manic and desperate, painting as if there was nothing else to do, and there wasn’t. You were there with me, in Doña Raquel’s house on Hershey Street that smelled of bleach and the perfume of votive candles. You were there in that lonely room growing more cramped by the week, paintings stacked every which way, until eventually I could only move sideways. You were there at night, in the darkness, repeating over and over, I left my words for you, I left them. You had just one caveat: You must find them all your own, you said. And I woke up the next morning, racked with guilt, unable to accept then the boundless vanity of the artist, he who would exploit his own brother’s death. I knew from the moment you died the gift you’d given me, and I ran from it, disgusted with myself. But you gave no credence to such notions, you just sat there on the edge of the bed, wearing your Dickies and combat boots, arms crossed, breathing heavily, breathing so loud that I had to keep turning up the radio to drown you out, and I could feel your judgment, the scorn I imagined the dead have for the living. I left my words for you, goddamn it! you said. Go and find them! and I’d turn around and you’d be gone from the edge of the bed and you’d be outside pressing your fat broad nose against the window, your hands cupped around your eyes, peering in, a grin on your face, mocking me. You thought it funny, all of it, my heartbreak, my grand declarations, my hypocrisy, my hopes, and more than anything, my seriousness. If only we could laugh about it now, sitting across from one another, a pot of coffee between us.

You turned 31 and died 8 days later. In four weeks I will be older than you. How is that possible? You always seemed a man to me, powerful and intimidating. I like telling people you walked through the house and glassware rattled and picture frames were left crooked. But I realize now you were still just a kid. A kid reared amongst dust-covered grapevines, only a sliver of time removed from afternoons spent swimming in ditches. How scared you must’ve been. I’m glad I didn’t know that, then. I couldn’t imagine you scared of anything, not even death.

It is an illusion hard to let go. In truth, I don’t want to.

Campesino y también fan de los Pumas, Plate 9

III. Letter to the Poet from his Brother

“i want to tell you, the anguished truth of sorrow

                     demands from us courage.”

                                                  --Andrés Montoya

Do you remember what the black shawled comadres said when our father was born with his eyes wide open? Va a ver todo, va a ver todo! they screamed, somewhere in Albuquerque, on the summer solstice in 1938.

You never saw him get old. Never heard the shuffling of his feet across the sidewalk, exhausted after a lifetime of heavy soled work boots. He only wears tennis shoes now. I’ve been walking on these feet for over 70 years, he says. Those years softened him, your death did, then his sickness a few years later, reminding him of mortality. His own, of course. Sons may die but he who could see everything was invincible, until he wasn’t. And I remember the depression that set in, the change happened then, I saw it in the ever deepening lines of his weathered face. I will die one day, his expression said even though he was not yet old, just weary. He emerged stronger, I feel, but different. Softer, like I said. Willing to let go. He was always the Marine with us, the stern disciplinarian, the embodiment of el nuevo hombre chicano. Even though I bet there wasn’t a damn Chicano out there who leapt up from bed at five in the morning ready to outpace the sun. He was an artist after all. It was as if he forgot that, as if he kept expecting his mother to rustle him from sleep with steaming tacos wrapped in cloth. It was as if he never ceased hearing his father’s piercing whistle or the impatient rumble of the transport trucks on the edge of camp. He still wakes up early, but at least he goes to bed early too, always by 10, falling asleep on the couch with disgruntled snores.

He lost his memory a few months ago. For an hour he couldn’t remember anything. Mom found him like that, in the studio, an open book in his hands, a blank expression on his face, lost in a maze of unformed thoughts. They rushed to the hospital but just as they stepped out the door he saw a package on the front porch. He picked it up and said, Oh, my Levis! It’s funny to me, this detail. A package on the porch, the trigger. His memory started to come back. Soon it returned completely and the tests revealed nothing, just a fluke, the doctors said, the wires get crossed. But it was enough to remind him that he wasn’t going to live forever, that all the years he had left would be like this, a slow deterioration to the end, and there was nothing to change that fact. The following days were hard. I could see on his face that same expression from years ago, the hopelessness and sadness, I saw him staring into an abyss. The following weekend was Father’s Day. We were out in the backyard. It was windy and hot like it gets in Elmira and I remember we sat in silence for a long time and the wind just blew the heat and dust in our face and I felt a lump in my throat and Dad said, I’ve always hated the wind on hot days like this, and he said it in a way that made me think that he was talking about death. Why did I think this? Because that’s all I can see sometimes. It’s all I can hear. Death in an old man’s sigh. Because the wind in winter is just part of the season, like the rain and the biting cold, and the wind in spring has its purpose, too, a cool breeze carrying seed. But the hot winds of summer serve only to remind us that everything passes, this way and that, but passes all the same.

I’m telling you this for a reason, Andrés, because I wish for just one moment you had lived to see Dad get old. Because you would have forgiven him everything. You would’ve wished to take him into your arms and pretend that it was possible to shield him from what must come. Maybe he would scoff at this idea, he would resist, say something like, Damn, mijo, I’m still here! I hope he would say this. But there are days when I wish you were right, that God did indeed exist, and if you had to die then I could accept it as I’ve had to these many years, but I would ask God to at least give me your massive chest that spread like the endless valley, and to give me your gigantic arms that could just as easily strangle as protect, and I would like to ask for your powerful hands, too, your rough hewn palms that covered my entire face and your thick fingers that burrowed into my skull until I screamed, laughing, for mercy. I would ask God to make me a giant in the mold of my brother, a mean snarling giant who found salvation in a poet’s delicate labor. Only then would I say, without complaint, Okay, I can face all this, alone.

 

Maceo Montoya

Maceo Montoya, an internationally exhibited artist, is the author of The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Press, 2010), cited as the “Best First Book” in the 2011 International Latino Book Award competition andof the just published, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza(University of New Mexico Press, 2014). In 2013, Latino Stories named him one of its “Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch.” For copies of the book, including 10 extra prints—two of them reprinted here—go to: www.copilotpress.com. 

Proceeds from sale of the first 300 books will go to the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize Initiative, in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame Press.

In Memory of Tomás Atencio : October 1, 1932 – July 16, 2014

July 18, 2014, 10:59 pm

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Tomás Atencio Photo courtesy of Rick Bela

Editor’s Note: Tomás Atencio was a pioneer in advancing the recognition and evolution of Chicano literature, His contribution since the early 1970s in creating the genre we now call Chicano literature and then inspiring generations of Chicanos and Chicanas to write is inestimable.  We here publish a memoir written earlier this year by a friend and colleague of Dr. Atencio and a statement by the president of the National Council of La Raza.

This tribute is still open for more comments.

 

A Tribute to Dr. Tomás Atencio and La Resolona

By Alejandro López

Upon visiting close friend and colleague, Dr. Tomás Atencio, who currently is battling a neurological disease similar to Alzheimer’s, I am moved to pay tribute to one of New Mexico’s most outstanding Chicano cultural figures of this and the last century. Long the champion of resolana, or dialogue in the plazas, villages and other New Mexican spaces, Atencio has now transitioned into a state in which his abilities to speak and move are almost nonexistent.

Dr. Atencio’s insistence on engendering genuine communication and dialogue between groups and individuals in society is his most profound legacy. In his writings, speeches and intense enthusiasm for every form of cultural expression, and especially for vibrant and highly interactive community, that legacy still inspires many to affirm, cultivate and document knowledge and wisdom borne out of grassroots community living, especially in the diverse Latino communities of the United States.

He taught us that the process of spinning the stories and drawing out the lessons embedded in the daily lives of individuals and societies is an immensely important activity. This is so, not because such an activity might represent a vestige of the past, but because by taking the time to be reflective of our thoughts and actions, we can begin to conceive of a world of greater possibilities, meaning, purpose and plentitude.

For the better part of the second half of the 20th century, Tomás, as most everyone lovingly knows him, was the foremost cultural philosopher, sociologist and even the unofficial historian of the lndo-Hispano people of northern New Mexico and beyond. He was also an inspired musician, an ambitious builder in adobe, a sculptor and a compelling conversationalist, constantly switching between his two highly polished languages of Spanish and English. Not surprisingly, this published writer has also been a devoted family man.

Most importantly to his admirers, he was the founder ofLa Academia de la Nueva Raza(The Academy for a New Humanity), a grassroots popular-education movement deeply rooted in New Mexican soil since the 1970s. Its reverberations have been felt across the Southwest and throughout the nation, with members of each successive generation finding meaning and nurturance in his highly progressive, original thoughts and ideas, which always call for community revitalization and personal realization.

Brought up in the village of Dixon under the tutelage of his “old-school” Presbyterian minister father, but trained in academia and specifically in theology in southern California, Tomás gave voice to the concerns of the common man of the earth who sought participation and validation in an alien urban society but also dignity and justice. Tomás dedicated himself to the exploration of humanity’s most persistent questions: “Who are we?” “Where do we come from and where are we going?” together with the concerns specific to our time: “What is the nature of human consciousness?” “What is the role of the dialectical process in society?” And, “What are the promises for widespread communications in the digital and global age?”

Certainly, Tomás will always be remembered for bringing to light the age-old practice ofresolanaor the informal gathering of lndo-Hispano villagers along the sunny side of adobe walls during the winter or cool early mornings of spring and fall to exchange news, dialogue or simply to reflect on life’s comings and goings. He used resolanaas the central metaphor for the process of dialogue much like Socrates had done in the Athenian marketplace more than 2,000 years before.

For Atencio, as well as for celebrated Brazilian writer and community educator Paolo Freire (his friend), dialogue was the essential element needed to conduct the critical processes required in a democracy (thought, reflection, analysis and consensus building), which enabled a citizenry to consciously shape the social forces and institutions that themselves shape human collective life and interaction.

Tomás began his career working for the Colorado Migrant Council in the 1960s, where he advocated on behalf of the rights of migrant workers and helped provide for their mental health needs. He later moved to Santa Fe where he worked with COPAS, a community mental-health organization. There, he grew more intimate with the social and mental-health problems that plagued many of the native Indo-Hispano people living in the city’s barrios, as well as with their vast treasure trove of life experiences and local knowledge, which he termedel oro del barrio, or the “gold” of the neighborhood.

Tomás came to believe in the need for the creation of a body of knowledge centered on the vital cultural, historical and even personal experiences of this long-lived (and out of necessity), highly adaptive community. He appreciated the values held by this community that arose from an intimate relationship with a rugged epic landscape composed of forested mountains, canyons, deserts, plains, farmlands, woods, rivers and even manmadeacequias.

Tomás affirmed the local ways of communicating through “cuentos(stories),mentiras(tall tales), chistes(jokes), images, symbols, ceremonies and rituals; integral parts of a community’s foundational knowledge. This body of knowledge, he argued, would serve to validate the experience of a struggling community in transition, engender a shared understanding of its unparalleled historical processes under various governments, as well as enable it to map out its own future.

To satisfy this need, in the mid-1970s, with a grant from the national Presbyterian Church, he launchedLa Academia de la Nueva Raza, an association of community leaders and scholars who pooled their collective knowledge, wisdom, experience and sweat equity to give life to a vital, multifaceted process ofconcientización, or consciousness-raising in northern New Mexico. Working out of his home and later out of an old adobe in Dixon’s historic center, theacademiados(La Academia’smembers) organized art shows, community fiestas, gardens, service learning projects, forums, gatherings and publications for more than a decade.

One ofLa Academia’smost important initiatives was an oral history project through which many of the oldest residents from northern New Mexico’s Spanish-speaking villages were interviewed and their stories and insights carefully recorded and preserved. Tomás believed that it was not enough to gather this information from the community but argued that it should be returned to the community and serve as a catalyst for further dialogue, discussion and purposeful action.

The dynamic cycle of “thought and action,” he believed, ought to be directed at nurturing and enhancing what he termed “una vida buena y sana y alegre” (a good, healthy and happy life for the people). Between 1975 and 1977 the asociados, among them, Juan Estévan Arellano, a writer, editor and photographer, produced several issues of El Cuademo de Vez en Cuando (The Occasional Notebook), a scholarly publication exploring the politics of self-determination and consciousness-raising among the Mexicano/Chicano people of New Mexico and the Southwest, and Entre Verde y Seco(Green with Life bordering on Tinder Dry), a compilation of community-derived stories and folk wisdom. Both publications, together with La Madrugada (The Dawn), a pithy community newsletter, were distributed in northern New Mexican communities, where they prompted both dialogue and action among local residents.

In his later years, Tomás taught in the sociology department of the University of New Mexico, doggedly advocating on behalf of the self-determination of the Sawmill working-class neighborhood of Albuquerque, stood up to the heroin trade in Dixon and helped launch the Learning While Serving AmeriCorps program, which had 120 members in northern New Mexico’s Indo-Hispano and Pueblo Indian communities. That project, administered bySiete del Norte of Embudo, was designed to reaffirm traditional agriculture and inspire a new generation of academically and agriculturally proficient young people.

Through the Río Grande Institute, a reincarnation of La Academia, Tomás and his intellectual equal and wife, Consuelo Pacheco, created a forum for dialogue between Native American and Indo-Hispano people that, among other things, resulted in the publication of a joint book of poetry, essays, photos and other artwork titledCeremony of Brotherhood. Five years ago, just before the onset of his illness, Tomás coauthored with Miguel Montiel and E.A. (Tony) Mares, a long-awaited book titled Resolana, Emerging Chicano Dialogues and Globalization (University of Arizona Press).

In it, as well as in the prestigious Ernesto Galarza Lecture that he delivered at Stanford University years before, Tomás developed the kernels of his ideas for individual and community engagement into wonderfully articulated full-fledged treatises that focused on the community that he knew best—the Chicano community. Lucky for us, he took the time to pen this legacy; more importantly, he showed us how to live what he thought and believed, which is yet an even bigger legacy.

Gracias, Tomás.

Alejandro López, a photographer and writer in English and Spanish, was one of the originalasociadosofLa Academia de La Nueva Razaand specialized in the gathering of oral history among the elderly of northern New Mexico. He also served as a director of the Learning While Serving AmeriCorps program. First published in the Green Fire Times, January 31, 2014.

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In Memory of  Tomás Atencio

By Janet Murguía, President and CEO, National Council of La Raza

Posted on July 18, 2014, NCLR Blog

The Hispanic community, and the nation, lost a hero on July 16, when Tomás Atencio, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, passed away at his home in Albuquerque after a long illness.

The son of a Presbyterian minister whose family traced its history in New Mexico to the 1700s, Atencio was a Marine “wireman” in the Korean War, whose job was to check and maintain communications lines running through the rice patties and frozen mountains, often under sniper fire. He had degrees in philosophy, social work, and theology, and he authored or coauthored numerous works, including Albuquerque: Portrait of a Western City (Clear Light Publishing, 2006) and, most recently, Resolana: Emerging Chicano Dialogues on Community and Globalization (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009). Tomás is perhaps best known for founding community-based academies dedicated to resolanas, or grassroots dialogues. A core concept of the resolana is that all participants are equal and discussions take place in the open, where, according to Papago Indian tradition, the sun is shining and everyone can see and hear what everyone else says, all at the same time.

Atencio’s ties to the National Council of La Raza ran deep. His brother Amos was the long-time CEO of Siete del Norte, one of our oldest Affiliates, and served on the NCLR Board of Directors. Tomás himself worked with two other NCLR Affiliates, the Mexican American Unity Council and the Colorado Migrant Council, as well as Siete del Norte, where among other things he pioneered culturally competent mental health care innovations, battled against heroin traffickers, inspired and catalyzed the development of small family farms, and in the process mentored the next generation of Latino community leaders. He also played a key role in convincing my predecessor, Raul Yzaguirre, to take the job as NCLR’s CEO in 1974, and all of us who have followed in his footsteps are grateful for that profoundly important act. For these and other achievements too numerous to list, Tomás Atencio earned NCLR’s Maclovio Barraza Award for Leadership in 1997.

But what his family, friends, and admirers will remember most about Tomás Atencio was his unique combination of fierce passion, sharp intellect, and gentle spirit. He dedicated his life to striving to help us all find, in his own words, a “new humanity that tears down all class and racial barriers.” May he rest in peace. May his ideas live on forever.

La Maldición de Zapata

July 22, 2014, 2:40 pm

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Un quiosco de música en la plaza, Oxnard, California

Por Álvaro Ramírez

Después de trabajar treinta años en la empresa del Southern Pacific Railroad, Eligio González se jubiló el 15 de marzo de 1995; para el 27 de noviembre del mismo año lo enterraron en Oxnard, California. Eligio era natural de Monte Sereno, Michoacán, donde nació y vivió hasta a mediados de los años cincuenta cuando iniciara lo que él llamaba, “mi aventura gringa.” Con motivo de celebrar su jubilación, los hijos organizaron una fiesta que se llevó a cabo en el jardín detrás de la casa de su padre. Allí, Eligio repitió una vez más la historia de esa aventura tantas veces contada por él.

De veras que a mí el norte no me atraía para nada. No tenía necesidad ni deseo alguno de venirme a trabajar de este lado. Mi papá, que en paz descanse, sembraba en la parte buena del ejido. Ahí donde se da tupido el maíz y la lenteja. Teníamos también nuestros animalitos: unas veinte reses. Con eso nos daba para vivir bien. Pero luego Miguel Alemán decretó que nos mataran el ganado por aquello de la fiebre aftosa, que yo digo que fue un invento de los gringos para joder a los campesinos y dejarnos pobres, y así no nos quedara otra más que hacer fila para venirnos de braceros a los Estados Unidos. Porque en esos años este país ocupaba mucha mano de obra para el campo que sólo México podía abastecer. Por eso decía la gente que Manuel Ávila Camacho le vendió mexicanos a los Estados Unidos y que Miguel Alemán mató el ganado del país para beneficio de los gringos. Y con eso nos dio en la torre a muchos campesinos, pues.  

Yo tendría veintiún años cuando me vine con Melcho Piña y Evaristo Suárez. Así nomás, nos lanzamos a la pura aventura. Pero corrimos con buena suerte. En cuanto llegamos a la frontera, allí en Empalme, Sonora, nos contrataron para trabajar en el Valle Imperial. Los dólares me gustaron y se me hizo costumbre regresar año tras año. Por ese entonces, pasé varias temporadas en Watsonville en la fresa y también pisqué uva en Delano y montones de nueces en Paso Robles. Luego, en el sesenta y cinco fui uno de los primeros braceros de Monte Sereno que recibimos nuestra mica de residente. Fue en esa ocasión que caí aquí en Oxnard porque era muy mentado entre los paisanos. Pero el Oxnard de entonces era otro, nada como el de hoy. En ese tiempo era una ciudad pequeña y tranquila, rodeada de files de fresa, lechuga, apio; también huertas de aguacate y limón. Un clima agradable todo el año y la playa de Hueneme bien bonita. Yo venía con planes de trabajar en la fresa con Cándido Juárez y Trino Rivera, pero cuando llegué me salió el trabajito en el traque. Me gustó ese jale y me quedé porque pagaba muy bien, con beneficios y todo. Para el setenta, ya tenía aquí a mi mujer y mis muchachitos.

Eligio hizo una pausa mientras Remigio, su hijo mayor, repartía otra tanda de cervezas heladas entre los hombres que escuchaban atentos la historia del ex-bracero bajo el sol tibio de Oxnard, cerca del aroma seductor de un naranjo y un limón llenos de botoncillos de azahares. A lo largo de una barda de madera, una hilera de plantas repletas de flores de colores vivos y una mata de yerbabuena fragante también alegraban la fiesta. Al lado opuesto, arrinconado en una esquina del jardín, habría sus brazos espinosos un nopal con sus retoños verdes. En ese ambiente benigno donde acababan de disfrutar de unas carnitas jugosas tan buenas como las que venden en Quiroga, Michoacán, la mayoría de los hombres presentes casi se olvidaban de los estragos que los surcos helados del fil dejaban en su cuerpo y alma. Los más jóvenes, como siempre, se empezaban a alegrar con la ayuda de las chelas y esperaban el resto del relato rumiando vagos recuerdos de aquellos años cuando de niños habían visto a Don Ligio regresar del norte con los otros braceros que pasaban largas temporadas en California. Aquellos años cuando sólo un puñado de hombres del pueblo gozaba de ese privilegio. Antes de que la gente de Monte Sereno empezara a desgranarse como una mazorca de maíz y el pueblo quedara hecho un molonco.

Después ya no se le vio mucho por Michoacán, Don Ligio. Fue hasta que nosotros nos emigramos que nos volvimos a ver otra vez con su familia. En Monte Sereno yo estuve en la escuela primaria con sus muchachos, pero cuando me vine de alambre me metieron en la fresa y deje de ir a la escuela. Pero nunca perdimos la amistad con Remigio y Gadiel, aunque a ellos nunca les tocó pizcar en el fil, como a toda su camada de amigos.  

Yo no tuve que andar yendo y viniendo a México como lo hizo la raza por tantos años. Tuve suerte. Encontré un trabajo de planta que me ayudó a traer mi familia a vivir aquí. Tampoco quise que ninguno de mis hijos entrara a jalar en el fil. Prefería que estudiaran. Y ahí están hoy, gracias a Dios, todos tienen sus buenos trabajos. Se criaron más de este lado que del otro, pero no se han olvidado de su terruño. Siempre convivieron con ustedes, sus amigos. Remi y Gadiel sudaron la camiseta del Deportivo. Y buenos jugadores que salieron. Eso no me lo van a negar. Mis muchachas se casaron con mexicanos, aunque no de Monte Sereno, pero mexicanos. Yo también he mantenido mis amistades, aquí les pongo de testigos a mis compadres, Lupe y Ramón, con quienes hemos sido amigos desde niños cuando estudiábamos con el maestro Plaza. Todos ustedes me conocen bien, jamás he dejado de ser lo que soy, un campesino de Monte Sereno.

¿Cuánto hará que no pisa nuestra tierra, Don Ligio? Porque si recuerdo bien sus muchachos ya nunca regresaron. Se establecieron en Oxnard y aquí se quedaron.

Después de mudar mi familia al norte, regresé al pueblo dos veces: para el entierro de mi papá y, dos años más tarde, para el de mi mamá, que en paz descansen los dos. Yo sé que muchos me recriminan no haber regresado ni una sola vez en veinte años. No crean ustedes que es algo que uno se propone. Al principio tenía muchos deseos de volver, como el cosquilleo de un gusanillo que no me dejaba en paz. Pero el trabajo era de planta y pagaba bien, tenía a mi esposa aquí, los niños en la escuela. Todo eso justificaba que me quedara en Oxnard. Después de que mis padres murieron, se me fueron  apagando las ganas de volver. Sentí que mi familia echaba raíces de este lado de la frontera y llegó el momento en que me pareció que ya no tenía caso regresar. Y más cuando la miseria desterró para este lado la mitad de la gente de Monte Sereno. Fueron llegando aquí a la Colonia, uno tras otro, como si huyeran de una peste. Tengo muy presente esos días. Primero llegaron unas cuantas personas como ovejitas perdidas, entre ellos algunos parientes y amigos de la infancia, pero luego familias enteras empezaron a llegar. Y era tanta la gente que se vino, que nos preguntábamos si alguien se quedaría en Monte Sereno a cuidar las casas que se iban quedando abandonadas. Por años la gente se la pasó como las golondrinas porque llegaban a California en abril y regresaban a México en noviembre. Con el tiempo ese trajín se acabó con la amnistía que dio el presidente Reagan, y todos quedaron trasplantados aquí igualitos que mi familia. La Colonia se convirtió en un pequeño Michoacán. Pero tampoco no vayan a creer que uno se olvida de su tierra así nomás. No, yo la llevo aquí en el corazón y los recuerdos siempre están vivos. Y ahora que estoy pensionado voy a tener más tiempo y como se lo he dicho a varias personas, tengo planes de regresar.

Veinte años no pasan en balde, Don Ligio. Va a encontrar un pueblo muy cambiado. A lo mejor ya ni lo conoce. Ya hasta carretera tenemos.

El tiempo cambia las cosas pero no tanto como para que uno no se reconozca en algo de lo que sobra. Además yo voy a lo mío. Ahora que tengo más tiempo, quiero regresar a trabajar las tierras que me pertenecen. Mi hermano las ha estado sembrando desde que falleció mi jefe, pero ya es tiempo de que yo vaya a recoger lo mío, por decirlo así. Recuerden que mi papá luchó en La Revolución y fue de los principales que se la rifaron contra los Noriega, dueños de la hacienda, para que nos dieran el ejido. La tierra, decía mi papá, esa es la herencia de mi general Zapata. Él nos la heredó a mi hermano y a mí. Yo se la voy a heredar a mis hijos, y ellos a los suyos. Sí señor. Para eso se hizo la Revolución.

  Para que vas a menearle a ese asunto, Eligio. Lo único que nos quedó de la Revolución es la fiesta que hace el pueblo en noviembre. A la que ya casi ninguno de nosotros va. ¿Qué no recuerdas por qué nos venimos de braceros? ¿Cómo estábamos de jodidos cuando llegamos aquí? A ti te ha ido muy bien de este lado. Aquí está tu vida. Deja el mundo rodar en Michoacán. ¿Qué nos importa eso del ejido a nosotros? Créeme, allá sólo vas a encontrar problemas.

Muchas veces, les he contado a mis hijos cómo los campesinos lucharon para que nos dieran la tierra. Es la historia que el maestro Plaza nos enseño cuando éramos niños. Él nos decía: “Mucha gente murió para que tuviéramos algo que fuera nuestro. Grandes hombres como Villa, Zapata, Carranza y Madero. Todos ellos lucharon para que los mexicanos vivieran con dignidad.” Hablaba bonito ese maestro Plaza. ¿Verdad, compadre? Mi papá también anduvo en la bola con Hilario Bernal y Fermín Rivera. De eso casi tengo memoria porque de niño recuerdo haber visto muchas veces los montones de piedras que marcaban los lugares donde los soldados de la hacienda asesinaron a esos héroes de Monte Sereno. Sería una pena que ahora nos olvidáramos de lo que ellos hicieron por nosotros, que olvidáramos esas muertes que nos heredaron el ejido. Ahora que mirándolo bien, yo sólo voy a buscar lo que es mío. Eso es todo.  Mi herencia de la Revolución.”

Eligio Gónzalez regresó a Monte Sereno a mediados de noviembre. Era el tiempo de las secas, pero una tormenta tardía amenazaba en el horizonte cuando el taxi en que abordaba serpenteó por la carretera negra que faldeaba el Cerro de la Piedra del Brinco del Diablo. A su derecha, el ejido se desplegaba como un abanico dorado flotando sobre la luz gris que descendía sobre el valle rodeado de un círculo de lomas y montañas trepándose una sobre otra. A la entrada del pueblo, unas gotas grandes de lluvia tamborearon en el parabrisas del taxi sin pasar a más, dejando manchas en el vidrio como huellas de pequeñas explosiones. El carro se deslizó por la calle principal  mientras Eligio contemplaba en silencio cómo el mundo se reducía a un espacio mínimo donde tres o cuatro calles se entrecruzaban, allí donde el tiempo desarticulaba la realidad y la transformaba en nostalgia pura, de tal modo que las caras de la gente caminando por las calles estrechas parecían surgir de un pasado remoto y lejano. Eligio sintió una felicidad agradable. Estaba de regreso. El campesino volvía a su casa. Alzó su mano para saludar a sus camaradas, pero todo fue en vano: el carro corría más rápido de lo normal en la calle recién pavimentada.

A mi hermano no lo había visto desde el entierro de mi madre. Yo ya tenía noticias de sus intenciones. De eso se encargaron las malas lenguas. Era dos años mayor que yo, de carácter recio y bien aguzado. El día que llegó todo fue muy normal. Nos saludamos y nos dimos un abrazo fraternal, dos hermanos contentos de verse después de muchos años de separación. No le miento cuando le digo que yo sentí una felicidad de verdad porque quería mucho a mi hermano; cómo no lo iba a querer si nos criamos juntos hasta que se fue con la bola para el norte, donde le iba muy bien, según me contaban todos los que venían de allá. Qué bueno, les decía yo. Me daba orgullo ser su hermano. Mi esposa también lo recibió muy bien y jamás le hizo mala cara. Ella le tenía preparado un cuarto para dormir y dispuesta para hacerle grata su visita. Como le digo, ese día cenamos juntos y platicamos hasta muy entrada la noche como queriendo llenar con palabras el vacío que habían dejado los veinte años de ausencia.

Fue al día siguiente cuando principió la cuestión. Estábamos en el corral detrás de mi casa, apartando los becerritos de las vacas lecheras, cuando me soltó a quemarropa la pregunta: ¿Y de las tierras qué hay? Y yo le dije: Pues hay están hermano. Esas no se mudan de país como los ejidatarios. No crea usted que se lo dije con mala intención, pero noté que los ojos se le hincharon de rencor a Ligio. Me dijo: Pues ya ves que uno no se aleja para siempre. Aquí me tienes otra vez. Regresé para arreglar lo de la herencia de mi padre. Tú sabes, Constantino, que como hijo mayor tengo derecho a parte de las tierras que él dejó. Le dije: Hombre hermano cuando nuestro padre y madre murieron estuviste aquí para su entierro, pero jamás mostraste interés en las milpas. Recuerdo que ni siquiera te quedaste al novenario de mi jefa. Parecía que se te estaban quemando las habas allá en el norte. Luego ni más se te vio por aquí. Y ahora sales con que tienes derecho. Tú tienes derecho a lo tuyo allá en el norte. Eso no te lo quita nadie. Te lo ganaste con el sudor de tu frente. Pero lo que está aquí, estas tierras que dejó mi papá, yo también me las gané con el sudor de la mía. Las labré año tras año, aguanté las cosechas buenas y las cosechas malas. Tampoco creas que cuando las parcelas dan, dejan mucho. Si fuera así, mis hijos estarían aquí trabajando a mi lado en vez de andar vagando de ilegales en el norte. Allá están, como tantos otros muchachos del pueblo, unos andan en Chicago y otros en Atlanta. Se fueron porque dizque no tenían futuro aquí. Sólo yo le he sido fiel a la tierra. Como si me hubiera casado con ella, la cuido y la mantengo y me contento con lo que me da porque eso es lo mío. Tú conténtate con lo que Dios te dio en el norte. Mi hermano Ligio nomás dijo, Pues mal que te guste, vine por lo mío. Y como dé lugar, me lo vas a dar.

Un encanto de artesanía en una plaza, Michoacán

Se fue echando lumbre por los ojos. Después se llevó sus tiliches y dizque se fue a quedar a la casa de su suegro y supe que anduvo consultando un abogado y que quería convocar una junta de ejidatarios. Le dio vueltas al pueblo echando pestes de mí, tratando de convencer a la gente de que se voltearan en mi contra.

Yo maté a mi hermano, pero no fue como la gente lo cuenta. Esa mañana, acababa de ordeñar el par de vacas lecheras que tenía en el corral cuando lo vi entrar por el zaguán de la casa. Venía con la cara dura, ensañada por el odio que se le notaba a flor de piel. De manera que esta vez nos saltamos los saludos y entramos a la cuestión de volada. Eligio me preguntó: ¿Qué pues? ¿Ya pensaste en lo que te dije el otro día? Qué le voy a pensar, le contesté, yo estoy en mi derecho según la ley. Cual pinche ley, dijo Eligio, ya sabes que aquí la ley no vale nada, sólo le sirve al que tiene más lana. Así que si quieres entrarle a las demandas, pues ya vas. Todavía quise convencerlo por la buena. Le dije: Por el amor que le tuviste a nuestros padres, Eligio, piénsalo bien, hombre. ¿De qué te sirve quitarme estos pocos surcos que son mi único sustento, a ti que tienes tantos bienes allá en el norte? Mírame, hermano, mira a este viejo de piel curtida y agrietada que es la única ganancia que le saqué a esta tierra después de toda una vida de labor en la milpa. Mira la ropa vieja descosida que llevo. Mira la casa que no he podido terminar de construir después de treinta años. Compara todo esto con lo que tú tienes en Oxnard y dime si es justo lo que quieres hacer. Eligio escuchó todo con una mirada distante y nomás dijo con mucha sorna, Pues, lo de la casa no me importa. Aunque me toca la mitad de todo lo que fue de mi padre, eso te lo puedes quedar. Pero en cuanto a lo de las milpas, eso sí nos va a tocar mitad y mitad, mal que te guste. Y te lo digo desde ahora, me vas a dar mi herencia fuere lo que fuere, por las buenas o por las malas. Así que allá tú. Sin decir más se salió por el zaguán y se fue a ver el desfile que los niños de la escuela iban a hacer ese día. Yo entré a la casa y dejé la leche en la cocina. Fui a mi recamara. En la oscuridad del cuarto saqué de un baúl un arma vieja que mi padre usó en los años de la bola. La banda de guerra del desfile resonaba en la lejanía cuando la empecé a limpiar.

Dos semanas después de que su padre viajara a Monte Sereno, Remigio y Gadiel González regresaron a su tierra natal por primera vez en veinte y cinco años. El viaje inesperado los arrojó de golpe en un pueblo que poco correspondía a los recuerdos pulidos por el tiempo que llevaban incrustados como joyas en su corazón, recuerdos idealizados por la plaga que azotaba a los mexicanos en Oxnard, la nostalgia; una enfermedad que transformaba las reminiscencias del pueblo exiliado en cuadros folclóricos mentales. De modo que Remigio y Gadiel buscaron en vano la aldea soñolienta de casas de adobe con techos de teja, paredes encaladas con la tradicional franja roja al pie, zaguanes con sus puertas enormes de madera y diminutas ventanas abiertas en señal de amistad. Ante ellos se manifestaba la cruda realidad del paso del tiempo. Un pueblo hecho de masivas casas de tabique de uno o dos pisos, pintadas de color pastel y decoradas con ominosas puertas y ventanas negras de hierro forjado: una arquitectura que aspiraba a la elegancia urbana mezclada con un aire frío y hostil. Look, Mexican dream homes, dijo Gadiel. Aunque no todas alcanzaban la categoría de ensueño porque muchas se habían quedado y se quedarían, como tantas cosas más en el país, en obra negra. Luego Remigio y Gadiel fueron en busca de su niñez por las calles empedradas y espacios por los que solían correr y jugar, y sólo toparon con una capa de cemento gris ondulando entre banquetas desniveladas. Con una mezcla de asombro y desconsuelo observaron cómo la franja de concreto también se había apoderado de los patios traseros de las casas, semejante a la lava blancuzca de un volcán, donde quedaron borrados para siempre los rosales, la hierbabuena, los limones, los naranjos, las moras, los mezquites, los fresnos, los pirúes, los zapotes, los nopales y los magueyes. Monte Sereno semejaba una mancha de cemento, tabique y hierro forjado en medio de la ciénaga antigua drenada a principio del siglo veinte por los gachupines, donde éstos habían fundado la Hacienda de Monte Sereno; hoy devenido en un pueblo de alma pavimentada, sin fragancia de flores y sin fruta de sus propios árboles.   

Gadiel y yo, nunca vamos a poder entender de donde surgió la mala sangre entre mi papá y mi tío Constantino. Mi papá nunca dijo una palabra mala en contra de mi tío; siempre hablaba de él con respeto y cariño y, según mis parientes, mi tío tampoco daba muestras de tenerle algún rencor a mi papá. Sí, es cierto que no se veían desde hace veinte años y que la gente puede cambiar, pero tanto como para que mi tío matara a mi papá a sangre fría, no lo puedo creer. Pero hay algo en Monte Sereno, algo que no puedo explicarme muy bien, quizá porque no crecí en él, porque no seguí respirando su aire y bebiendo de su agua. Porque da la casualidad de que este caso no es el único que se ha visto en el pueblo. Ha habido muchos más. Allí se vive la discordia: hermano se enemista contra hermano y hermana contra hermano; se respiran en el aire las demandas y las amenazas entre parientes que alguna vez fueran familias unidas. Todo, digo yo, por esas malditas tierras del ejido, los lotes del pueblo, las casas; la herencia de nuestros abuelos, pues. De eso me di cuenta cuando estuve en Monte Sereno. Así que a mí no me hablen de la pinche revolución, ni de su Zapata, ni de su Villa, ni de su Carranza. Lo único que reina en Monte Sereno es un odio que se respira y se bebe, se traga en abundancia amarga. Eso es lo que dejó su pinche revolución. Un pueblo donde nadie se tienta el corazón y donde parece ser que todos son capaces de matar, sin conciencia alguna, por un puñado de tierra que a final de cuentas apenas sirve para darle de comer a esa pobre gente, pero sí para mantener a los campesinos en la miseria eterna. 

Fue el día del 20 de noviembre, poco antes de medio día. Toda la gente del pueblo se había reunido en la plaza, enfrente del edificio de La Tenencia, para ver el programa preparado por los maestros y los niños. Yo estaba ahí con su papá. También Juan el Panadero y Vicente Plasencia lo acompañaron el día de su desgracia. Pero ninguno de nosotros vio cuando Constantino llegó a la plaza, porque todos estábamos atentos, escuchando los poemas que los estudiantes declamaban a los héroes de la Revolución. Pero dicen que Constantino se metió entre la bola, tranquilo y sin novedad, esperando su turno. Cuando acabaron de echar vivas al final de la ceremonia y los estudiantes empezaron a desbaratar filas y regresarse a sus casas, fue cuando yo lo vi que se abría paso entre la gente. Constantino se le arrimó a su papá y le dijo, Aquí te traigo lo que andas buscando. Sacó la pistola y le dio tres tiros en el pecho. Así nomás, a pura sangre fría. Luego, se dio a la fuga; unos dicen que se peló para San José de los Naranjos y otros que para Santiago Azajo, donde tiene amistades. ¿La ley? Ya saben ustedes como se arreglan las cosas en estos casos, muchachos. Ahora que si quieren ir más allá, eso es cosa de ustedes. Nadie se los va a recriminar. Como sea, a su tío Constantino ya no se le ha visto por estos rumbos.    

Remigio González terminó su aventura gringa reposando en un cementerio de Oxnard, California. Un año más tarde Constantino falleció dizque, decía la gente, que por castigo de Dios. Lo  enterraron en el campo santo de Monte Sereno. Los hijos de los hermanos finados quedaron desparramados por varios estados de la Unión Americana, lejos de su tierra natal y de su herencia maldita. Ninguno de ellos jamás demostró interés por labrar las parcelas del ejido que poco a poco se van plagando de yerba mala, como un páramo de tierras envenenadas.

Álvaro Ramirez

Álvaro Ramírez, Ph.D., a Michoacán native of Purépecha ancestry, as a member since 1993 of the Department of Modern Languages at Saint Mary’s College of California, has taught Spanish Golden Age and 20th Century Latin American Literature as well as Mexican and Latino Cultural Studies. Already an author of essays on Don Quixote, Mexican culture and film, and Chicano studies in academic journals, he is now preparing to publish a collection of his short stories, including this and others already published in this magazine. We should all look forward to it.

Poems with a Knockout Punch

July 22, 2014, 3:10 pm

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Extracts from Red Leather Gloves

By B. V. Olguín

RED LEATHER GLOVES

After fighting to shake off red leather gloves

into another boy’s face, the pain comes back again

because your hands are wrapped too tight, so tight

it hurts to stay still. This is why you hit so hard.

There is nothing more to do but wait,

arms at your side silent, head down, determined

to decipher the mathematical formula

that keeps shoelaces from coming undone.  

Your father unties each glove, one hole at a time.

Laces are getting too expensive to cut off

like they do on TV. And another boy

needs them for the next fight. So you wait,

just wait, trying to unlock the logic of laces,

why they take so long to undo, why

gloves hurt so much except when you hit

something, someone, anyone.

Your eyes mapping miniature rivers

flowing down forearms. New veins

of dried up tears sprout everywhere and

sweat beads crawl across the mountain range

of goose bumps that rise after every fight

because the AC is always too high

and these gypsy arenas never have more

than a hole in the wall to vent

smoke from other fathers waiting

to noose red leather gloves onto sons, tight,

so tight their arms will flail like a stabbed fish

trying to break loose.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

DOUBLE RIGHT CROSS

The double right cross

is designed  to scramble brains

by sneaking in and out

like a silent thief who knows

he’s doing something wrong.

This isn’t just any punch.

You save it for last

like a too sweet dessert

that’ll make a boy break out in hives

as soon as cherry red leather gloves

touch his lips.

But you’ve gotta set him up.

The double right cross takes time

if its gonna work

without setting you up

for a counterpunch combo

that’ll paint your face

all the silly colors of a clown.

It can take a whole night

of close dancing and fondling

his face with left fist slaps

before he gets distracted enough

to slip step into range

and drop his left guard to paw

away the nuisance

that’ll leave him open.

The worst thing you can do

is open up too soon and miss

so the wind whispers a warning

the killer is loose. This

will make him close up too tight

for you to stick it in.

It can take a whole night

before he lowers his left

long enough for you to double up.

And it won’t work if you don’t double up;

the physics of fists all backwards:

force comes from energy

used to pull the right fist back

in place with a snap so fast

you punch yourself in the face.

You double a right cross

to land just one punch.

It’s the first blow that counts.

That’s the secret. You double up

so the first shot flings

back so fast the fist floats

like the tail tip of a leather whip,

weightless for a split second

before flipping up at the end of its sling

to become a wrecking ball.

The second punch won’t hit anything

if the first is flung out fast and far

as if you were disowning part of yourself

long enough for it to commit the crime

but too quick for anyone to notice

until the body is found

lying on the padded canvas ground.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

STRANGE FRUIT

For Ronnie Shields

Southern trees bear a strange fruit:

blood on the leaves and blood on the root;

black bodies swinging in the southern breeze;

strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

—“ Strange Fruit,” by Abel Meeropol (1937),

sung by Billie Holiday

Blood blossoms in the ring

as you fondle his face with leathered hands

like a farmer fists dirt searching

for the right time to plant the right seed

in exactly the right place: left jab slap,

snap and slap, right cross

left hook, uppercut swoosh,

then left snapslap and another

until his face is a cornucopia of colors:

lips plump and purple as plums

filled with so much fluid

they split down the middle

at your touch; cheeks bruised

brown like overripe peaches

that refused to fall

when they were supposed to;

his eyelids are spring figs flashing

purple, red, yellow and green.

His head a waterlogged cantaloupe

that almost looks human; strange fruit.

Someone should have stopped this already.

Cheers turning to jeers for the ref

to hold your hands from plowing

‘cause the poor bastard can’t see;

his eyeballs burrowed deep

like pits of grapefruits,

lids sutured shut by eyelashes:

The towel! someone shouts.

Where’s the towel!

But you can’t stop. You won’t.

He’s the blond boy

who made you notice a rainbow

has no black; he looks

like the stranger on the bus

who called your father that word,

that word, right in front of you.

You beat this man’s face

into the flag of too many countries

because you still can’t forget the loss

to Sugar Ray Leonard at the Olympic trials.

And you can’t stop because

of why you started fighting:

that slow scratchy song about poplar trees

your mama played when you were too young

to ball fists big enough

so gloves wouldn’t slip off

as you swung.

You do this for black bodies swinging

in faded grey photos, bulging eyes

and twisted mouths, fists fastened

behind so they couldn’t fight back.

Tonight your farmer’s fists furrow

sucker punch memories, determined

to forge your own rainbow, your flag

and glimmering gold medal

out of this man’s fertile face.

B. V. Olguín, born in the Houston, Texas, barrio known as Magnolia,  was an undefeated amateur boxer (14-0, 2 KO). Today, he is an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Texas at San Antonio. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, he is also the author of a collection of poetry, At the Risk of Seeming Ridiculous, and currently working on a third, Pericardial Tamponade. Red Leather Gloves is published by Hansen Publishing Group; one outlet for it is Amazon at http://ow.ly/ygd7O.

The World War I Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz

July 25, 2014, 10:31 am

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Saenz commissioned Humberto Cavazos to do this painting in 1932 from sketches he had made on the battlefield

By Emilio Zamora

Editor's Note: Great stories always seem to start in the most unexpected places and times. And so it was with the life of José de la Luz Sáenz, who was born into an almost destitute Mexican American family in the rural community of Realitos, Texas, in 1888 and came to achieve the great distinction of authoring and publishing a WWI diary, the only work of its kind written by a Mexican American and one of the very few personal accounts published by a U.S. serviceman in all the major wars.

We now have available a taste of the life of Sáenz, thanks to Emilio Zamora, History professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has edited and co-translated the diary that now appears as The World War I Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz, as a 2014 Texas A&M University Press imprint.

Note from the author: Emilio Zamora

Although some of your readers already know of my recent publication, The WWI Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz, I thought that I should offer a short announcement with some observations on the book’s importance. Sáenz, known by a good number of historians for his role in helping found the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1929, is less known for his authorship of the diary. His account of the war includes daily entries, letters to his loved ones, articles that he wrote for the San Antonio daily La Prensa, photographs of fellow soldiers, and a list of persons who made advance payments for the book and thus made the publication possible.

His biographical notes on his Mexican buddies and their experiences in the military, as well as his accounts of the horrific war front experiences are enough to make the book a valuable historical document in the history of Mexicans in the United States. Sáenz, however, also comments on the meaning of the war throughout the diary. He is especially profound when noting that Mexicans are making the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefields so that successive generations of Mexicans use it to claim equal rights at home.

Sáenz elaborates on this central theme by analogizing the cause for equal rights at home as the moral equivalent of the fight for democracy and justice in Europe. He also inverts the relationship between the civil rights activists and the segregationists to claim that the former are the true Americans because they advance the principles of democracy and justice in our foundational documents, while the latter disregard these same values or reserve them for Whites.

U.S. Army Photograph, 1918, José de la Luz Sáenz Papers, Mexican American Library Project, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin

After a hardscrabble life in Realitos, the family moved to Alice so that Sáenz and his siblings could attend the better schools of Alice. Saenz attended the local high school as well as two private Mexican schools, after which he began to teach children during the day and adults in the evening in a nearby settlement of railroad workers’ families, named El Palo del Oso.

This is how Sáenz began a teaching career of over 40 years in schools from Central and South Texas. According to family lore, he moved frequently between schools because he continuously critiqued the segregation of Mexican children and drew the ire of officials, especially in Central Texas where the problem was most severe. When he died in 1953, he had taught all grades in thirty public schools and served as a principal in elementary schools and high schools in the Texas communities of La Joya, Benavides, Oilton, and McAllen.

Sáenz was teaching in San Agustín, a town outside Pleasanton, when the United States entered the war and President Woodrow Wilson announced the registration of able-bodied men for military service. Although he was exempted from service because of his age (29) and his status as the head of a household with children, Sáenz volunteered and served in the 360th Infantry Regiment of the 90th (Texas-Oklahoma) Division.

While at the front, Sáenz recorded thoughts and observations in whatever kind of paper that he could get his hands on. He also collected letters to his loved ones and articles that he authored for the popular San Antonio daily, La Prensa. All the while, he would record what one usually finds in war diaries, the horrible fighting and appalling deaths, the fear among huddled soldiers trying to avoid the deadly cannonade, the longing for peace, the unforgettable bonds that the doughboys established among themselves, the conversations of home, and so forth. Sáenz did this for 16 months and only missed four daily entries between 1918 and 1919.

His diary was also significant because of the striking observations that he made regarding the significance of the war as an experience that would allow Mexican Americans to advance the fight for equal rights. Over and over again, he would point out that it was necessary for Mexican soldiers to make the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefields so that future generations could claim equal rights.

He would also say that the fight against totalitarian rule in Europe was like the cause against undemocratic practices in the United States and that this gave Mexican civil rights leaders the moral right to challenge segregation and discrimination at home. Finally, he proclaimed that the true Americans were the civil rights activists who promoted and embraced the defining democratic principles in the foundational US documents like the Constitution. He implemented these ideas as a co-founder (1929) and major figure in the history of the League of United Latin American Citizens between the 1930s and the 1950s.

The well-known San Antonio publishing house, Artes Gráficas, published the 298-page diary in 1933 as Los México-Americanos en la Gran Guerra y Su Contingente en Pro de la Democracia, La Humanidad, y La Justicia. Most of the copies of the book remained in Mexican homes—public and university libraries apparently took little interest in purchasing it. Now available for wider distribution, the diary will no doubt establish José de la Luz Sáenz as a leading and prescient luminary emerging out of the Mexican American community of the 20th century.

Sáenz with school children from Moore, Texas, around 1910, José de la Luz Sáenz Papers, Mexican American Library Project, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin

After the war, Sáenz busied himself in building LULAC, while also assembling the diary materials, including his entries on loose leafs of paper, the back of post cards that he had sent his loved ones, and in the margins of photographs and other forms of memorabilia that he brought from France. The book appears in 1933, as a handsome 298-page, cloth-bound book, and an imprint of the well-known publisher from San Antonio, Artes Gráficas. Written in “formal” and “colloquial” Spanish, the book was intended to be a historical record of history and a call for political action for the Spanish-speaking. Sáenz, however, was equally proficient in English and tried to publish a translation but was unable to convince English-language publishers to give the book a chance.

I came to the book years ago, after an undergraduate class on Mexican American history during which I had spoken about the emergence of an ethnic form of politics that historians usually associate with LULAC and an upwardly mobile group of Mexican workers, businessmen, and professionals. After the class, a young woman thanked me for noting the role that Sáenz, her grand-uncle, had played in the history of LULAC and the civil rights cause that the organization headed.

Somehow we came to the subject of the diary, at which point she announced that her family had a copy. Since I had not yet read it—few copies had been printed (perhaps as little as 1,000) and university libraries had mostly failed to secure their own copies—she graciously shared the book with me. I copied the book and over the years used it in my Mexican American and Texas history classes.

I had not planned to translate the book until some years had passed and I saw that no one had taken on the task. I decided to assume the responsibility primarily because I believe that Sáenz had important things to say. This made translating the diary a serious undertaking.  The length of the diary posed a serious challenge; more demanding, however, was doing justice to Sáenz’s work. I have felt especially responsible in translating the affective side of his wartime trauma into the rational meaning that he gives battlefield sacrifice for the cause for equal rights at home.

I hope that readers can appreciate that his political arguments were grounded on his own sacrifice of palpable feelings of pain, fear, and despair. Above all, I have tried to convey his values, ideas, feelings, and spiritual awareness—his sense of self—in the best way that I know how. I sincerely hope that my preface, translations, and editing conveys the deep respect and admiration that I have for Sáenz as one of the most important figures of the twentieth century in Mexican American, Texas, and intellectual history.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Excerpted translations from the diary follow:

Editor's Note: Professor Zamora provided us with four pages from the original publication by Saenz: the cover page, a passage on page 73 in which he contemplates "how just the call is of one's country in peril," a "final letter" to his wife, and closing paragraphs. Here are his commentaries on the English translations:

The following excerpts from the diary reflect Sáenz’ view of the war as an opportunity to demonstrate dignity and to argue for equal rights.  In the first one,  Sáenz tells us why he joined the military as he and his fellow soldiers are travelling by rail past a town where he had taught: pp. 117-118, The World War I Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz.

“At sundown, we passed by Dittlinger, a quarry worked by many men of my raza[by raza, he means Mexicans]. This is where I taught or was in charge of their children’s school for a year. That combination of work camp and community is another battlefield. I waged battles until I got the county to pay the teacher who taught our children. Those were the kinds of victories I sought in civilian life, opening the school doors for the workers’ children. Now that I wear the warrior’s uniform I hope to win other battles and bring justice to our people as we join an afflicted humanity that is calling for the sacrifice of conscious and freethinking men. This is exactly where the idea to pick up my rifle occurred to me. I was moved by the bad treatment many members of my raza face in these places where the Teutonic or German people predominates. Ingrates, they deny us equality and forget the thousand and one guarantees given to their ancestors when they settled these lands. Who brought them and what were the advantages and privileges extended to those colonists? The history is there; it does not lie. I believe that those of us who have offered to fight the Germans for being unjust and arrogant could start by setting an example of the many Iscariots, the bad citizens that we often face in these parts.”

The second excerpt comes from a letter that he wrote in France to his wife as the troops were moving to the front and officers had the soldiers write their last letters in the event that they did not make it back alive from the fighting: p. 179, The World War I Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz.

“My dear wife: This is my last letter to you. The moment had to arrive sooner or later. It is here. Cry for me, I can understand this since we know how much you care for me and are recalling the difficult and happy times in our lives. You are also concerned about my children growing up as orphans. While you wait for the calm that is to come, know that my sacrifice was necessary and more than necessary, it was honorable. It was a thousand times honorable to have fallen for the inalienable rights of humankind and the future well-being of our children. You may think that they had everything with me there, but that is not the case. As long as the horrible and long-standing prejudice continues in Texas against our raza, our happiness will never be complete. I would not have been a man had I fled the draft to avoid the scorn where I was born and expected to die. The fight for the rights of the oppressed gives us the opportunity to claim justice for the humiliations and difficulties that we often face because we carry the indelible features of our raza. Our purpose is to demonstrate our dignity as a people before the whole world. It is necessary to fall where the best have died, and you can be sure that I will have fallen as a man of worth.”

In the last passage, Sáenz has been discharged and he ponders on the meaning of the war: p. 467, The World War I Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz.

“Have we saved democracy, civilization, the nation, humanity?  I do not know.  What I do know is that the Mexican American has distinguished and asserted himself.  The glorious stars and stripes we have defended with our lives in European battlefields will no doubt serve as our children’s banner for years to come.  They are the kind of sacrifices that forge a nation and honor a flag.  It is only right that when the last glorious chapter of our National American history is written, we do not forget that Mexican Americans have made a contribution with their blood.

Fini la Guerre!”

Emilio Zamora

Emilio Zamora is a Professor in the Department of History and Fellow, Barbara White Centennial Professorship in Texas History, at the University of Texas at Austin. He and Andrés Tijerina, Professor of History at Austin Community College, are co-directing a one-year project to increase the number of entries on Tejano history in the Handbook of Texas Online. For details, contact Emilio at e.zamora@austin.utexas.edu, or 

512-739-0168. The WWI Diary of Jose de la Luz Saenz is available from Texas A&M University Press, College Station, Texas, http://utpress.utexas.edu/

Destiny? Curse? Mutation? What a Bonjour man must do

July 28, 2014, 9:54 pm

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Tying the Knot : Extract from The Bonjour Gene: A Novel

By Julio Marzán

    Face up on Anthony’s bed, Michael Bonjour listened to the mandolin trio tuning up amid the engagement party bustle in the many rooms of the Carmelo house. A sick stomach had given him a good excuse to stay upstairs in his future brother-in-law’s bedroom and not have to greet the arriving guests, mainly from Cindy’s family. Except for Anthony, who studied law at Stanford and couldn’t make the party but sent a gift, the entire Carmelo clan would soon invade the house and vast backyard to toast to Cindy’s happiness. From his side, there would only be his mother and his brother Vincent, partly the reason why Michael was feeling sick.

    For days he had been dreading the arrival of Vinnie and that predictable fraction-of-a-second when the Carmelos all register his younger brother’s darker skin. Michael’s anxiety over that, as well as over countless more things spinning in his head at that moment, had kept him from eating anything for breakfast or lunch, so the two vodkas on the rocks downed by noon had been heaved up well before the first guests buzzed at the door. The petite Mama Sylvia Carmelo fed him some chicken broth before sending him up to rest in Anthony’s room to recover in time for the party. When he got up from the kitchen table, Cindy’s dad took the opportunity to quip that “Michael had turned white as a New England Yankee,” and diagnosed the stomach problem as a fear of tying the knot.

Mama Sylvia’s broth did pacify his stomach, but after lying down for almost an hour he was still unable to relax, and he could hear the extended Carmelos chiming at the door and filling the house. They had come to publicly celebrate this engagement even though they privately whispered disapprovals that could be felt through the walls.

    The engagement’s public announcement at the highest decibels in the Providence Sunday paper, with a 3´´ x 5´´ portrait of Cindy, was kept from him as a surprise. He took the clipping out of his shirt pocket:

Ms. Cynthia Carmelo, of Providence, is betrothed to Michael Bonjour, of Riverdale, New York City. Ms. Carmelo, a graduate of Providence College, is the daughter of Louis and Sylvia Carmelo. Mr. Bonjour is a graduate of Manhattan College, son of Jean McCartin and the late Edgar Bonjour, from the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York City. Ms. Carmelo is a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University. Mr. Bonjour is an executive trainee with Westminster Bank. Mr. Carmelo is founder and president of Pope Costume Jewels in Warwick. Mrs. Bonjour is a graduate of New York University and is presently office manager of the Manhattan law firm Dunkin, Hayes.

High-heeled steps passed by the bedroom door. Knocking on the door to Cindy’s bedroom, her middle-aged cousin Nancy asked when the bride-to-be would make her appearance. The door opened, and Nancy expressed exuberant admiration at how gorgeous her cousin looked. Nancy’s daughter Rebecca, the hairdresser, pointed out to her mother the special touches she had given to Cindy’s hairdo. Nancy reiterated how simply great Cindy looked.

Nancy’s voice lacked the sarcasm she customarily leveled at Michael. For the past three years, at some point when she spoke to him she would inevitably reiterate the first thing she said when they were introduced: that his light brown hair and fair complexion weren’t anything at all what she expected when she’d been told that Cindy was seeing “a Puerto Rican guy.” From Nancy’s reaction, Michael deduced that the only detail about him that made a deep impression with the Carmelos was that he was “a Puerto Rican,” when he was really also half Irish.

    Nancy was the constant reminder of the odorless yet noxious fumes emitted by the entire Carmelo family, murky signs that he had denied to himself for three years but that as the date of this formal engagement approached increasingly became clear as vodka. There were the afternoon drives with Cindy along the coast, taking in the fishing boats, the dunes, the overcast New England skies, on the way to their dropping something off for her father at the jewelry factory. As those stops were always short, Michael never minded waiting in the car. Only recently did it strike him that Cindy never thought of inviting him up to show off the family business. The full implication of his sitting in the car only flashed into his mind that morning.

    He stared at the clipping that announced to all Providence Cindy’s engagement to someone she never got up the courage to introduce to her father’s employees. This didn’t so much pain him as leave him pissed off both at the pretension of these Yankee wannabees and his own blind arrogance not to have realized that despite his being an attractive young man, embarked on an M.B.A., an executive trainee, and basically a middle-class person, the Carmelos dropped their chips with the common American herd of goofball mythology, seeing him as a “racial” embarrassment.

    This crashing consciousness of the family’s pathetic vision of him made the idea of marrying Cindy revolting, a suicide drowning in the wide bay of the Carmelos’ hypocrisy, which Lou lorded over him under the guise of Yankee moral superiority. Moral superiority, sure, like intentions to have the wedding officiated by Lou’s brother, Cindy’s uncle Vittorio. Now there was a great example of a Carmelo contradiction. After dinner last week with the family, this priest, who couldn’t control his eyes from grabbing Michael’s butt wherever it wandered, also couldn’t restrain his impulse to comment on how today’s young men wore such tight pants that revealed “their cute behinds.” That the Carmelos found him so colorful—“tolerate him; he’s my uncle,” as Cindy played lawyer—especially grated against Michael, who had to endure Lou’s lectures on the immorality that, presumably influenced by “Others,” the younger generation was raining down on his beloved country.

    Vittorio, at least, was no hypocrite and flaunted his gayness with panache, unlike his brother Lou, for whom any allusion to sexuality, even in jest, was sinfully intolerable as if he had taken a New England vow of chastity. The pinnacle expression of Lou’s wacko morality engraved itself in Michael’s memory on the night that the big huomo invited Michael and Cindy to see the Broadway production of Cabaret. Horrified at the choreography that depicted Third Reich decadence, throughout the entire first act Lou mumbled and writhed in shameful disgust until Joel Grey’s act-ending dance, peppered with gestures of grabbing women’s crotches, became the last straw. As the curtain came down, Lou shot up and ordered that they all abandon their choice center seats in the second orchestra row and walk out. The hypocrisy of this trainee WASP, this Italian American Cotton Mather, whose first lakeside New England home was torched by some pureblood Puritan who didn’t want any Saccos or Vanzettis for neighbors, galled the hell out of Michael.

    Their phony acceptance of him, Michael realized just then, was what unconsciously provoked him to present himself as someone considerably more politically radical than he was in fact. Intuiting that Lou’s invectives against Fidel Castro were really a mode of venting his dislike of Latins, including the one in his living room, Michael found himself defending Cuba and justifying Latin American revolutions against Yankee imperialism, a posture that prompted Lou’s blurting out feelings previously kept in check by his Florentine better nature.

But Michael’s darkest offense was committed inadvertently. He once mentioned to Cindy that if he had the financial opportunity he wouldn’t mind settling in Puerto Rico. He meant if they were ever rich and could afford a seaside home, as he didn’t know much else about the place and saw it as just a big beautiful beach. But Cindy, still in her rebellious phase against her parents, flaunted that possibility. Well, the thought of “foreigner” grandchildren mortally wounded Lou and set off a chain reaction. His anti-Communism and xenophobia melted in the cauldron of his general prejudices against those “who come here to mooch off America” and his specific dislike of his future son-in-law. After Cindy’s ill-advised celebration of possibly living somewhere else, any family conversation that even just grazed against some topic of international news would provoke Lou’s erupting in a paean on democracy directed, of course, at Michael.

The June night that the Carmelos met his mother should have served to foreshadow this nauseous moment of truth in Providence. His mother had the clarity to decipher the codes in the Carmelos’ words and tone, but he was too rebellious and steeped in denial to admit to himself that his mom was right. The meeting took place in Manhattan. Lou invited Michael and his family for dinner at the Waldorf, where the Carmelos arrived with Cindy, who had just finished her masters in education and moved back home. Having not seen her in almost two weeks (although they talked on the phone daily), Michael expected to feel more attraction than he did, but he didn’t give the matter a second thought just then. At the oval table, he sat between Cindy and his mother, facing Lou and Mama Sylvia beside the empty chair that would have been for Vincent, who insisted he had to study, something far more important than being gawked at by jerks less engrossed in his being about to graduate from Columbia and deciding on a law school than his being the darker of the two brothers. Understanding his feelings, their mother didn’t pressure him.

    During the appetizers there truly appeared to exist some hope for this union, but by the main course the malocchio was operating full strength. Mama Sylvia sustained her character of the warm, understanding embodiment of equanimity. She even did a splendid job at showing no reaction that Mrs. Bonjour, although nearly her same age, looked twenty years younger than she did, even though that fact was obvious to any human with a working set of eyes, among whom figured Lou. Michael was proud of his mother’s looks, her jet-black hair and green eyes and youthfully kept figure. Also in contrast with the laconic Mama Sylvia, his Irish mother talked a blue streak and kept Lou in stitches with her mildly risqué jokes. If the Carmelos had expected Jean McCartin to be daunted, they were wrong; she did what she pleased, as when she married his father.

    Edgar Bonjour’s name was never mentioned, and any mention of it would have made Michael want to slide under the table and crawl unseen out of the Waldorf. But his father’s ghost haunted every second of the evening. If the Carmelos should mention his name, how was anyone going to explain his father’s getting involved in drug dealing and being murdered in a motel? Temporary insanity was how the family publicly interpreted the tragedy. In telling Cindy, grasping at a scenario that made sense, Michael embellished that his father had accumulated debts and simply went nuts in trying to get out of the hole. This spin, Michael figured, provided a financial, logical explanation that cleansed the story of its Latin irrationality, turning his father’s downfall into a materialistically rational Anglo-American tragedy, one that would sit well with Cindy’s parents. But did the Carmelos really buy his explanation, and were they now about to deal that “other” card?

    His mother circumvented invoking her husband’s name in her rendering of the decent upbringing that a generalized parental “we” had given both her sons. But at one point that “we” provided a window through which Mama Sylvia could satisfy, in her benign, unthreatening manner, her curiosity to know how a young, intelligent, vibrant woman ever made a choice of husband so mined with social liabilities, although the question was varnished more innocently, “How did you and your husband meet?”

    To answer that question, his mother first detoured the Carmelos through her Bronx upbringing and her years on Soundview Avenue where, as the population shifted and her mother remained widowed and too poor to move, in time she befriended Puerto Rican girls. From them she learned how to cook, walk and especially dance.

    Of her Latin dancing and playing music in the house, Michael shared his father’s embarrassment, but deep inside they were both secretly proud of her. Now her flaunting it as part of her shrewd response to Mama Sylvia made him doubly proud. Her brief autobiography had laid a base of self-confidence for when she got around to describing how she had met Edgar at New York University, in an English class, and that, being attracted to him, she found herself showing off how Latin she could be. Then, letting the Carmelos know that she knew the true nature of Mama Sylvia’s ostensibly innocent question, she proceeded to zing them by appending that after she discovered the quality of person he was, Edgar surprised her by letting her know that her acquired Latin mannerisms were superfluous because he wanted her for herself and felt—just like herself, she underscored—that as an American he had outgrown paying any mind to the social stigma other people made of his ethnic background.

    “His ancestry was actually French,” she surprised them. Lou, curious, said nothing but wrinkled his eyebrows. She told them that a woman from a corporate branch in Chicago once called her, having seen her name in a company newsletter. The Chicago woman was a French Canadian whose parents had emigrated from France, and the name Bonjour had attracted her attention because her parents had always said that only one French family bore that name. To this his mother explained that Bonjour was actually her married name and that her husband’s family was from Puerto Rico, but that he had told her in their family it was always said that only one family bore the name Bonjour. Not waiting for a reaction, his mother also made a point of noting the loveliness of Mama Sylvia’s earrings, which Lou had gotten for her from a wholesaler from Florence.

    As his mother spoke, from the corner of his eye Michael noticed that Mama Sylvia took glances at him. He fancied that maybe Mama Sylvia was trying to extrapolate what percentage of his active ingredients came from this interesting woman, his mother. He thought this because his mother seemed to be making everybody feel good about this engagement, going as far as underscoring how happy and relieved she was that Michael had chosen to marry a girl so charming, generous and intelligent as Cindy—an enthusiasm that took Michael by surprise. His mother had never expressed such favor toward Cindy, who blushed and pressed his hand.

    Later, on the drive home, however, his mother revealed that although she did, in fact, like Cindy, her effusive praise of the girl was meant to test how compelled the Carmelos felt to respond in kind toward Michael. That they didn’t offer more than smiles and nods told everything she needed to know, which was that if she had any control over the situation, Michael wouldn’t go through with this marriage, which did not measure up to the high caliber he deserved. “You’re lucky that I didn’t leave on their laps the reassuring legend about Bonjour men that your abuela Martina so thoughtfully laid on me. For your sake I held back many things I could have said about your father, but what matters now is that you think this out a little better, Michael.”

    But his seeing her wisdom at that moment was obstructed by a determination to finally resist her admiral’s control of him, to carve out his own identity, make this major decision on his own, an independence that came at the cost of reacting normally to so many obvious danger signs. Like Cousin Nancy’s incessant innuendos and Uncle Joseph’s fish-eye looks. Denying their antagonism, his gut reaction had hibernated until now, the engagement party, when he admitted to himself that although the Carmelos did serve him some honey, it was only vaguely sweet and more often whatever else he drank was acidic. His mother had been right all along, and had he only listened to her he wouldn’t be suffering a cosmic bellyache.

    Cindy had been walking on the beach of the Dorado Beach Hotel. As a birthday present to Lou, Mama Sylvia had convinced the two feuding Carmelo children—Cindy the atheist hippie liberal and Anthony the neo-fascist Catholic conservative—to convene in truce and take part in a two-week family vacation. While Lou and Mama Sylvia and Anthony played golf, Cindy, who had graduated that month from Boston University, spent bored hours alone, usually swimming or strolling along the shore or reading on a beach chair. On the sunny afternoon starting the second week, Michael, enjoying his mother’s graduation present of a week at the hotel, positioned his beach chair near an empty one. When Cindy returned from the water, with her brown hair flowing, her sunburned skin wet and glistening in a two-piece, he fully appreciated her buxomness and earthy, wide hips. He introduced himself and immediately loved her smile. Her smart and warm personality further contributed to her exciting him thoroughly. At the end of the week, she invited him to have dinner with her family. Everyone behaved genuinely charming, clearly pleased that Cindy had found a vacation companion. In that family context, among such obviously bedrock stable people, Michael felt comfortable, more than comfortable, seduced.

But back in New York he discovered that Cindy’s participation in that American Dream family life had been a performance. Her real life was that of a flower child who slummed in one of the few remaining old walk-ups on Manhattan’s upscaling Upper East Side. As that person, she couldn’t stand being with her parents, especially that bundle of contradictions, her father. “While always harping on being an American,” she complained, “he tries to control me totally like every Wop father.” On the other hand, the ultra–Yankee Puritan, he also expected her to be WASPily dainty and ladylike and never looking “like a real Italian,” meaning made-up or sexy. So whether out of conviction or to get even, she vehemently opposed her daddy’s politics, “his imperialist support of our raping Vietnam.” He embodied, she would repeat, why this country was becoming a drag for her to live in, why she was willing to live anywhere else if she had the chance.

    Michael gradually persuaded her to lower her guard, not be unfair to her parents, who were from another generation and who continued to finance her lifestyle and graduate studies despite having to wait months for a weekend visit. What debt she thought her father owed her Michael didn’t care to compute, but he didn’t see it as insurmountable. As his defense of her parents’ best intentions sank in, Cindy began to cast off her constant dirty jeans and boots and began wearing dresses, using makeup in moderation, and shaving her armpits, changes that gradually brought her closer to the family hearth. In retrospect, the new Cougar parked in front of the house for her birthday signaled a renewed beginning of family bonding, and Lou’s move to end their relationship.

    But Michael didn’t make that connection back then, partly because he had been concentrating on making this relationship a serious one and not taking it to where his Bonjour drives had always led him. The temptation to cheat while Cindy was away was ever present during those days of “sexual revolution,” but he resisted them, although the greatest threat came from her parents’ home, where Cindy’s lonely cousin Rebecca visited often. She and her husband had been separated almost a year. Nobody paid Rebecca much attention in part because she wasn’t one to keep up with or discuss the latest news and so stayed on the margins of family conversations. But she was also different because she made it her purpose to look sexy, like a “real Italian.” He remembered the cold New England winter afternoons when she visited the Carmelos. As Cindy chatted with her mother somewhere else in that big house, Rebecca would make coffee for herself and offer him a cup, then sit and talk about simple things, movies, funny experiences at the mall. It took fortitude to refuse her pretty attention, but his mind was focused on not doing exactly what a Bonjour man was destined to do and ruin everything. Maybe it was his distraction with that legacy that kept him from decoding the first message of underlying separation, when Michael fantasized yet again about moving to Puerto Rico: “Will I be happy in a place where I can’t speak the language, Mikey?” He was surprised but didn’t see at that time the real significance of Cindy’s shedding her internationalist pretensions and reclaiming her New England Italo-American roots. He didn’t want to see what he was finally seeing now, that when they met she had cast him in her personal psychodrama of rebellion that had performed its final act months ago, that he was now an actor without a role.

    Someone tapped lightly on the bedroom door. “Michael, Cindy’s ready, so you should be coming down.” It was Rebecca. When he didn’t answer, she asked if he was all right. Cindy, she explained, wanted him to come down and help her receive the guests. He answered that he would be down in a few minutes, then listened to her high-heeled steps fade away from the door.

He forced himself up from the bed and, on his feet, recalled Lou’s answer to his formally asking for Cindy’s hand: “I had always expected her to marry a real American. You should have figured that out by now, and although I’m sure you’ll succeed in your career, I want you to know that if you marry Cindy I’m going to make legal arrangements so that she will keep whatever money belongs to her, and if she isn’t happy she can go on her own.”

    In the bathroom, he rubbed soap over his face, then rinsed it off, pausing to stare at his wet reflection in the mirror. Countless threads of emotions converged and interwove to form a tight, irreversible decision in his eyes. The noose around the neck of this marriage was now tied, and there would be no untying it. He took the newspaper engagement announcement out of his shirt pocket, rolled it into a tiny ball and threw it into a wicker basket on the bathroom floor. His decision should mend Lou’s broken heart and, Michael imagined, return the joy in the saddened soul of every Carmelo. But the actual break should come less dramatically, weeks later when he could feign a confession that he had been behaving like a true Bonjour, maybe with “a real Italian.” For now, he would go downstairs, head to the bar, and drink into a politic giddiness.

    He put on his suit jacket and was about to open the door when Rebecca knocked again. “Cindy had sent me because she can’t get away. Everybody is asking about you. Your mother and brother have just arrived.” He opened the door. The dolled-up Rebecca was a woman he had not seen before. Her black hair cascaded in curls. Her dress revealed her legs to above her knees. She wore high heels and sheer hose that decorated the sides of her calves with a black, serpentine, long-stemmed rose of lace.

    In taking note of all those details, his eyes communicated more than he had intended, and Rebecca gulped nervously. She cleared her throat before asking jokingly if what everybody was saying was true about his being afraid to tie the knot. His sincere answer yes caught her off guard, and she proceeded as if he had spoken in jest, warning him to stop playing the prima donna, because his mother was asking for him. With that, she abruptly swiveled and started to walk toward the stairs. From the door, he observed her walk, and as she took her first step on the stairs, out of his mouth leaped a request that she wait. She stopped and paused, then finally turned. But as he really didn’t know why he had stopped her, he just waved off the request and went back into the bedroom, where he sat on the edge of the bed.

    After staring at the floor for a few seconds, head in his hands, he looked up and saw Rebecca leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, her presence like an embrace. He asked her to come in for a minute. Arms still crossed, she lowered her look and tapped one foot. After a few seconds, she sighed deeply, then offered her eyes as she requested that, as a special gift to her, he go downstairs and behave, at least in that house, at least on that day.

Julio A. Marzán is a poet, fiction writer, and author of the landmark book, The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams. A former poet laureate of Queens, New York, he has published two other books, Translations without Originals and Puerto de Tierra as well as poems in, among others, Parnassus, Ploughshares, Tin House, and Harper’s Magazine. From The Bonjour Gene: A Novel by J.A. Marzan. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 20005 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved. For copies, contact the UW Press website: http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3840.htm

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Somos en escrito Interviews Boxer/Poet/Professor B. V. Olguín

July 29, 2014, 5:46 pm

≫ Next: All of us, growing up dusty

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Q&A about his book of poems: Red Leather Gloves

S.e.e.: Why did you write this book and what are the boxing poems really about?

I wrote this book as a purging of sorts. I was an amateur boxer in Houston when I was a teenager in the 1980s and the experience had an indelible impact on me later in life. I come from a boxing family, so the boys are expected to be fighters, and I was one even before I began boxing for Championship Boxing of Galena Park. Boxing refined my street fighting sensibility into something that was both constructive and very destructive. First, I learned the discipline and value of sacrifice that I did not have before. This has enabled me to survive very difficult situations in life, and also to thrive in various pursuits.

But I also learned how to inflict severe damage with my fists in very calculated, scientific ways. Worse still is that the training—rounds and rounds of sparring with bigger fighters and even professionals—made the skills into rote. And the beatings made me angry and taught me a twisted model of manhood that segued with the general socialization of working class Chicano youth in my barrio.

As I grew older, however, the experience started to resonate as a trauma and haunted my everyday encounters. I kept getting into fights even into my 30s! The book came about as I started meditating on some of the lessons of Chicana feminism, which has explicated piece meal the causes and effects of male privilege and masculinist performances of power.

As I pursued my BA and later my MA and PhD, I really did want to be on the right side of our struggle to retain our humanity and our liberation as a people and a species, and this necessarily involved confronting how I had been taught to be the bad guy, as it were. The poems, then, really are about boxing as a science of violence, and a social science of masculinity; yet the overall book also is a chronicle of the socialization of a young boy into a terrible model of manhood all the while he refuses to completely surrender his capacity to care, his empathy, and his enduring belief in humanity.

S.e.e.: So is the book is autobiographical?

Yes, Red Leather Gloves is highly autobiographical. It oftentimes is a mistake to invest too much autobiographical resonance in a poet’s work, but in this case, it is true. This is a slice of my life. In fact, there is a narrative quality to these free verse poems, and the entire collection is arranged more or less chronologically and thematically. It begins with the initiations, and progresses through the training and fighting towards the middle-aged man trying to make sense of it all.

That is, it begins with the 15-year-old “Kid from Magnolia,” and ends with the 40-year-old professor who is trying to make peace with the violence inflicted upon him by refusing to continue participating in male privilege, or at least trying to arrest it and keep learning how to love.

S.e.e.: What is Chicano about this book?

Well, there are many things that are uniquely Chicano, but it is important to note that Chicana and Chicano mean so many different things for many different Raza. For me, the book is based in the racially charged context of south Texas, particularly Houston, Texas, and more precisely, my barrio Magnolia. We are the smallest barrio in Houston, and are geographically contained by a bayou, the ship channel, and rail yards, so we are quite isolated and insular. That is to say that the book takes place in the segregated bigoted context of Texas, which is compounded by barrio rivalries that are frequently violent and sometimes lethal. This barrio warfare played out in the ring in tournaments in Houston.

The poems also explore various types of bigotries through the use of various vernacular idioms, including Caló and various types of code switching and bilingualisms. The cultural references also are grounded in the poetic persona, who sees, experiences, and understands everything in terms of race and Raza culture. There aren’t too many poets nowadays who write about fideo and manteca, and in these poems, these food items and other cultural references gain a unique resonance. For instance, I note how my training required that I eschew Mexican food such a rice, beans, fideo, and tortillas de harina, which back in the day were made by hand with lots of lard, or manteca. All these foods included starches, carbohydrates, and fat that put on weight. They were thus verboten as my coaches were determined to keep me as thin and light as possible to keep me in the lightest weight classes, which maximized my natural strength as I fought fighters who usually did not have much muscle mass (I fought at 106 lbs., 112 lbs., and 128 lbs.).

S.e.e.: What makes this book different from other boxing books?

This book differs from almost all books on boxing because I am not celebrating boxing, nor am I providing a romanticized nostalgic view of it. Boxing involves the refinement of violence through scientific methods designed to destroy another human body and, to be honest, the entire human being. To do this effectively, you need to get your natural empathy weaned out of you, and you need to either already have a killer instinct, or develop it, and none of this is good.

I remember coming home every night from training with my head pounding as if it were going to explode. I was emaciated, always hungry but afraid to eat too much for fear of moving up to a more dangerous weight class, and I was angry, really angry for all the beatings. My coaches were bigots; the tournaments were chaotic free for alls with fights breaking out in the bleechers and coaches betting on their own fighters, and even coaches got into fights with each other at times, once with a knife!

Worse, boys get broken, literally broken in ways that likely followed them throughout their lives in the way that my guilt at breaking boys has followed me, though I imagine it was worse for them. I was undefeated with 14 fights, two knockouts, but in truth, to be undefeated, I needed to get beaten to the point of defeat repeatedly so I could fight my way out, and the cost was my humanity.

You do not get this reality in other boxing books because most of them are written by people who were never fighters or by fighters writing a self-promotion memoir that, usually, is ghost written. One notable exception is Anissa Zamarron’s Boxing Shadows, which explores the underside of boxing in an honest painful expose of abuse that is not only rare in the genre of boxing literature, but completely non-existent, especially by male fighters. I seek to offer a similar exposé.

My poems expose all of the hidden horrors of boxing while at the same time trying to offer some insights into the why and the how of it all, that is, the metaphysical dimensions, pursuant to meditations on where we need to go from here. Most books on boxing feature the fight game as a metaphor for resilience or political struggle, or they romanticize the pageantry and athleticism, some explore the homoerotic dimensions through erotica, and all of this is part of boxing.

But the realities behind this—the boxer shitting his pants in the ring after a gut punch, the panic some fighters experience, the brutal taunts, the utter viciousness that emerges from the fight or flight instinct—is the real story of boxing. It is primal, and ugly, and involves the unleashing of our animal nature. I wanted to expose this because it is directly linked to the larger interpersonal and geopolitical forms of violence that define human society at present.

S.e.e.: As a final question, how do you make sense of the contradictory nature of this book, which uses art to talk about violence?

This is one of the enduring paradoxes in all of human culture: the depiction of violence through art. But it also makes lots of sense. Culture is our way of making sense of the world, and art is perfectly suited to deal with complexities, contradictions, and ambiguities. These poems about violence seek to present aesthetically elaborated works of art that enable the reader to experience the range of emotions that a fighter experiences as they are faced with an opponent who is trying to destroy every aspect of their being while a crowd of bystanders goads them on.

Art is the only way I found to convey the terror and explore the scientific athleticism, while simultaneously illuminating the tragedy and ethics of it all. In the end, Red Leather Glovesgives us a range of different types of violence, which ultimately enable the reader to gain a more complex understanding of the micro and macro dimensions of how it all works, and why it works the way it does: to teach us how to dominate or be dominated. The multiple strands all come together in the last poem, “Ode to Ali,” which pays homage to a fighter pacifist without effacing the trauma and tragedy of it all.

In the end, like Ali, I do have hope for humanity, but I also believe that we need to know how far we can descend, and how far we have descended, before we can achieve a real and lasting utopia. This is what Red Leather Gloves is all about.

B.V. Olguín is featured in this interview which follows up three extracts that ran here last week from his poetry book, Red Leather Gloves, published by Hansen Publishing Group and available at Amazon, http://ow.ly/ygd7O. 

All of us, growing up dusty

July 31, 2014, 10:49 pm

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Extracts from Rising, Falling, All of Us

An Interview from The Latino Book Club follows

By Thelma T. Reyna

Poet With Braids

Like docile snakes, your braids lie thick,

blackness glossy and knotted to your waist. Your

tendril beard and sideburns shock

when you raise your face

and show the world that you’re a man:

poet man, brown poet from maya-land, glorified

in rhyme stilted with accents raw, words

that stumble on furling tongue, that catch

sometimes to tell the world you came from

jungles misted in centuries of mystery and loss.

Brown poet with braids, caramel fingers

slender on pencil songs, soul enwrapped in

other times, pyramid stones, and blood

curling its way down massive steps

where giants worshipped sun and death.

Brown poet man, gentle snakes on back,

face intent in this new land, dreams binding

distant lores and newfound shores, eyes seeing

things unseen by fathers buried deep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Growing Up Dusty in a Small Texas Town

Our ankles were always gray, caliche

dust swirling like guardian angels around twiggy brown

legs leaping potholes, tripping on dirt clods. Nine

children oblivious to what it meant to be growing up dusty.

In winter, rivers of mud separated us from Licha, Juan,

Susie. Dripping mesquite trees beckoned. Black puddles

dotted our ‘hoodscape far as child eyes could see, little

lakes navigated house to house as we grew up dusty.

When morning light tickled our bedfaces, dervishes danced

through cracks and chinks in sills and walls and floors and doors.

Grandma’s rag couldn’t stem the tide of constant coats

of dust as we grew up in our small Texas town.

On the other end were asphalt roads, mown lawns and

children with patent leather shoes that stayed black.

At school, only chalkboard dust bound them and us as

we grew up dusty in our small Texas town.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Undivorced

Alfred J. Prufrock spoke of measuring

life out in coffee spoons. We ration

ours in thimbles and don’t seem to mind.

How can passion flatten into slippers

old, worn thin and colorless, shushing along

our wooden floors, squashed silent?

But we plod on, sitting abreast in

church pews, sharing hymnals and

prayers and holy charades.

You go your way and I mine. You

fade into your office walls, and cable shows,

blogs, ebay, and coffee shops.

I lose myself in backyard bowers, take

garden tours with women twice my

age, recalling bouquets you used to give.

We used to dance on the rooftop of

the Bluezz Club, and sleep on a mattress

dragged outdoors in summer months.

You used to transport me with

touch, with songs crooned into my

ears till our eyes closed in bliss.

We used to lie entangled, legs caressing,

whispering in darkness about our day,

but who remembers all that now?

Most often, we are proverbial ships.

My nights are your days, and for years I’ve

slipped like stone, alone, into my side of bed.

Thelma T. Reyna, an editor and writing consultant with her own company, The Writing Pros, based in Pasadena, California, was named Poet Laureate of the Altadena Library District this past April for a two-year term. She also is author of a short story collection, The Heavens Weep for Us and Other

Stories (2009), which won four national awards, and two poetry chapbooks—Breath & Bone (2011) and Hearts in Common (2013). This latest work, Rising, Falling, All of Us, is available at amazon.com; from Golden Foothills Press (www.goldenfoothillspress.com); or local bookstores. She may be reached at www.ThelmaReyna.com.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

INTERVIEW WITH POET LAUREATE THELMA T. REYNA

 

The Latina Book Club, which promotes Latino authors and literacy by urging we read at least one Latino book a month, made this interview available to us. The Club website is latinabookclub@aol.com.

 

Q: Congratulations on being selected Poet Laureate. Tell us about this honor and how it has changed your life.

 

Thank you, Maria. I don’t know how long the Altadena Library District has had a Poet Laureate, but this year I decided to answer a call for applications. Once chosen, I was surprised to learn that 12 poets had applied! It was pretty competitive, with a detailed application form. We also had to submit five poems, a bibliography of our publications or a resume, and a description of how we’re active in the community regarding poetry and literary events. A select committee reviewed all the applications and made their choice. In retrospect, especially knowing who other candidates were, I’m especially humbled and pleased to have been selected.

I was chosen about three months ago. My appointment is from 2014-2016, so I’m not in full swing yet. It has changed my life so far in that it is providing me with a stronger platform on which to interact with my fellow poets, and to talk about my own work. I’m confident that, as time passes, being a Poet Laureate will have more of an impact on my work and activities. I also look forward to having a positive impact, no matter how small, on fellow poets.

 

Q: We understand one of your new duties as Poet Laureate is to promote other regional poets. Can you tell us more about these poets and how you are promoting them? What other duties are required for this new "job"?

 

It’s an honorary position, not a paid one, so this provides great flexibility in how I do this work. Right off the bat, one of my major responsibilities is to lead/edit the annualPoetry & Cookiesanthology, now in its 14thyear, since the person who had been in charge has retired. So next week I’m meeting with seven active local poets whom I’ve invited to serve on an editorial board with me. We’ll issue the new anthology in Spring 2015.

I’m fortunate to personally know numerous poets in the region, almost all of them published writers and a very diverse group: folks of different ethnicities, men and women, young, Baby Boomers, etc. Several of these poets are prominent nationally and have won literary awards. I plan to stage events with different themes and invite specific poets to read, serve on panel discussions, visit classrooms, etc. I’m also interested in partnering with other Poet Laureates in California and having joint events with their constituencies and mine. I’ve done readings in art galleries, libraries, bookstores, coffee shops, literary conferences, classrooms, book clubs, senior centers, and so on; so I like using diverse venues for presenting poetry. So the opportunity for these poets’ visibility and, hopefully, book sales, is enhanced.

 

Q: You also have a new poetry book out. Tell us about the theme of this new collection and the message you are striving to convey to your many readers.

 

My fourth book, published last month, is my first full-length poetry work. It’s titledRising, Falling, All of Us, and includes most of the poems from my two chapbooks—Breath & Bone(2011) andHearts in Common (2013). It also contains poems published elsewhere—anthologies, textbooks, literary journals—as well as some brand-new ones.

The book is divided into three parts: “Rising,” “Falling,” and “All of Us.” Almost every poem is a “persona poem,” or poem focused on a person, with the person “speaking” to us in his or her distinct “voice.” So the book is mostly a gallery of characters: famous, infamous, real, fictional, mythical. It includes Pope Francis, celebrities, soldiers, killers, mothers, lovers, poets, crazy people, artists, immigrants, etc. The “glue” holding all of them together in my book is my belief that we all rise and fall together in life. People who rise in glory will someday fall, for whatever reason. When people fall, we all fall to some degree. Such is life. The issues faced in my book are those we all deal with regularly, such as love, death, loss, victory, war, ethics, poverty, loyalty. Ultimately, despite our individual differences, we are all alike. That’s the message behind my title.

 

Q: As an author of both poetry and fiction, tell us your favorite genre. Which medium do you find the most passionate? The most powerful?

 

I love short fiction and poetry equally, though short fiction is more challenging to write. My first book—The Heavens Weep for Us and Other Stories(2009)—won four national awards. It was a welcome jolt to my writing career, and I’m fond of that book.

I’m inspired by my daily surroundings and interactions, and each new inspiration almost tells me what form it requires: a poem, a story…or an essay. (I have also published nonfiction in my career, though not as a single book.) The passion or the power of writing doesn’t depend upon its genre but upon how it’s written. So regardless of what genre I write, it’s up to me, in how I shape it, to infuse it with passion or power…hopefully both.

 

Q: We heard you had a poetry reading in Lake Como, Italy. That is a long way to go to give a reading. How did that come about? And tell us about the Pulitzer Prize winners in your audience.

 

It was actually a week-long international writers’ event called “Abroad Writers Conference,” or AWC (http://abroadwritersconference.com/). [On this link, scroll down to “Lake Como, Italy” to see photos and learn more.] I was invited to participate by one of my publishers, Finishing Line Press, a co-sponsor of the Lake Como event. There were about 50 of us published authors from all over the United States, Australia, and Italy. Each one of us enrolled in either one, or two, intensive 15-hour workshops on different topics taught by Pulitzer Prize winning authors and other top national award winning writers from America. I was in a Poetry Workshop with Pulitzer winner Rae Armantrout; and in a Fiction Workshop with Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Jane Smiley. I believe I was the only Latino/a in the entire conference.

Our workshop groups were small (seven authors in each of mine), so we received a lot of personalized attention and advice from our author-teachers. We received great critiques, not just from the “faculty,” as these famous authors were called, but by our workshop colleagues. The level of skills and professionalism of all the attendees was quite high, so their critiques and discussions of each other’s work were outstanding. We all came away, I believe, as stronger writers. Plus, Lake Como and the 18thcentury Villa Galliata we stayed in and workshopped in are both gorgeous. It was an experience of a lifetime.

In the evenings, after champagne and socializing, but before dinner, there were formal readings of our published work. Each night, there were about four authors in the spotlight: three participant authors, and at least one Pulitzer Prize winning author. So some of us got to share the stage with the top authors in America, and with everyone in the audience. This was a huge treat for us. I read for about 20-25 minutes from my new book (discussed above), which was actually my first reading from this book. So, I was able to “debut” my new book in Italy—a first for me! [For more information on this conference, see Thelma’s guest blog onLa Blogacoming out soon atwww.labloga.blogspot.com]

 

Q: How can your fans learn more about your books, and learn more about the poets you are promoting? Please list your websites and addresses on social media sites.

 

My author website iswww.ThelmaReyna.com. Please visit. I also have two literary blogs, www.Latinowriterstoday.blogspot.comand www.TheLiterarySelf.blogspot.com. I’ll be announcing information about the poets I’ll be featuring in one or more of these places. Also, I’ll use email blasts for spreading the word as these poets and the events are booked. Finally, fans can email me atThelma.reyna@ymail.comfor further information.

Editor's Note: My thanks to The Latina Book Club.

Vital Poems

August 9, 2014, 10:28 pm

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Photographs by Thomas McGovern

A review by author Rosa Martha Villarreal 

of Vital Signs follows.

Three extracts from Vital Signs: author, Juan Delgado

The Singer, Amparo

  

Draws in faces, children running

after her touring van’s back window.

They drift off, heads lowered, hands

on their knees, catching their breath,

seeing her face framed behind

the speeding van’s scratched glass.

¿Quien tiene la voz?

The velvet curtains of her ex-lover’s

windows were yanked from their clips

and sewn into a dress she carries,

floating through the street, a growing

parade of faces behind her flag.

On a stage she sings barefoot,

offering up her half-naked voice.

In the barrio, pans of grease stop hissing

when one of her songs walks by.

A girl clutches her cure, dry leaves,

from the Botanica Santa Barbara;

she passes a swaying clothesline,

the wet corners of a bedsheet

snap to “Vamos Junto.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Wood Stilts

For Marco

  

In the city park, I roamed among the families

enjoying their all-day picnics. They started

their barbeque fires, fanning them with paper plates.

The charcoals turned gray by night.

And junk stores were my playgrounds.

I met kids who could waste whole afternoons.

I would make my way to the bicycles

the clerk had hung by their handlebars and spin

their wheels to hear their spokes whistle.

I would try on the discarded eyeglasses,

picking them out from a large wicker basket.

The heavy frames that distorted the light

coming through the windows were my favorite.

I got dizzy.  I rubbed my eyes among the racks

of blue jeans, suit coats, and dress shirts.

Children would dart across the aisles.

Often I stopped to stare at the jewelry.

Back then, I was no thief.  I knew Sunday

afternoons were for lying on a mowed lawn.

Once I imagined I strung together two tin cans

and talked with the father I had lost. 

He kept his promise and made me some stilts

out of two-by-fours, so I could walk around,

shouting: “Look what my father made me.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  

Crates

  

In early May, we had one last winter storm—

the snow fell in clusters from the oak branches,

drooping, sun-heavy, dripping like rain gutters.

The bear-bark cedars believed, like me,

the drought would soon be over.  Eagerly,  

I shoveled my driveway, new to berms.

A Saturday morning I was caught up

watching the ladybugs with their spotted

shells punctuating the air; they floated over

the creek’s coolness. I, too, drifted through

my yard, picking up my recently bought rake.

With enough good soil for my irises to take,

I dug, wondering about the ash pile

I came upon.  Where did the ashes come from?

A fireplace?  Did the previous owner dump

and spread them among my pines and newly

framed-in flower bed?  I was so far away

from the sidewalks and lots covered by darkened

bubble gum spots, the overturned grocery carts,

and the flaking ads of sun-burnt billboards.

  

In June, monarch butterflies fed on daisies,

showy milkweed, and black-eyed Susans,

preferring their fragrances.  They glided through,

erratic, bouncing in their air trails and seemingly

stitching my mountain range to the valley below.

That first summer, I planted more irises,

kicking up the dust of another owner’s fires,

studying the bark beetles’ droppings embedded

in the sap, the glittering mouth-shaped wound

of my sugar pine.  I touched the sap with my finger,

smelling the sweet scent that was quickly covered

over by ash when I patted the soil down.

On a late morning in October, I saw

from our canyon road the smoke appearing

distant at first, but quickly the ash covered

my car’s windshield.   I asked myself,

“Which road will close first? Who will free

my neighbor’s restless cats?  What good are hoses

when the flames funnel up the ridges of canyons

and leap across highways?”  To think more deeply

would terrify me, and though my house was

not in imminent danger, I drove back home,

rushing to my front door, jamming the key in,

unable to turn the lock.  “Which neighbor is home?”

I considered what I should pack, trying to assure

myself I had received more than I owned.

I stacked boxes of photos on my kitchen counter,

spotting the screen door of my childhood home,

drab, not yet boarded up by plywood planks.

When was the last time I thought of that girl?

I glanced at my pine-lined walls, my floors,

everything was made of wood, and I felt

like running again.   I was back in Rialto,

making my way through the market’s alley

where the trash bins bred fruit flies that hovered

among the tossed-away produce boxes.

I saw the owner’s son smashing tomato crates.

His boots stomped the wire-bound slats,

snapping them like ribs.  He turned, saying,

“Hey! What the fuck are you looking at?”

I ran down the alley without looking back,

running toward another man who wore

an oversized, dirty sweatshirt, its collar

ringed with sweat stains.  “Puro Indio,”

my mother would have uttered.  He pushed

a wooden crate, the ones used to ship oranges,

lemons, and grapefruit on the beds of semi trucks.

He had mounted wheels on his large crate,

the kind of wheels found on grocery carts.

“How clever,” I thought back then.   The wheels

squeaked over the asphalt cracks. Back-bent,

looking beyond me, he steered, veering to avoid

potholes.   I pressed my back against a wall,

letting him pass. That’s when I saw her. 

There inside the crate, a girl my age slept.

A loaf of bread trembled beside her, and a jar

of water glistened by her bare feet.  She wore

a blue blouse like the girl at Irene’s Market.

I heard the shrill of a wheel stuck in a rut;

the loaf jumped and butted against her.

I felt like reaching into the crate and waking her.

Why hadn’t she opened her eyes? 

I ran again,

my feet taking me back to the wishing well,

one of our town’s landmarks, its bricks not yet

chipped and whitewashed, its mouth not yet

cemented in.  As kids, we peered in, tip-toed,

watching the water distort and magnify the faces

of coins, all out of reach behind a rebar grid. 

Later, I rehearsed what I would tell my parents.

Why was I in the alley? What was I meant do?

Have I been running away from her ever since?

Juan Delgado, born in GuadalajaraMexico, first crossed the border into the U.S. with his father as a child.. Having earned an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where he was a Regents Fellow, in 1985, he is now a professor of creative writing, Chicano literature, and poetry at the California State University, San Bernardino. His works include Green Web (1994), selected by poet Dara Weir for the Contemporary Poetry Prize at the University of Georgia; El Campo (1998); and A Rush of Hands (2003). Vital Signs, which is about the place he calls home, San Bernardino, is available from the publisher, Heyday, and online outlets.

Photo by Steve Beswick

Juan Delgado, right, author, and Tom McGovern, photographer, left, in front of quinceañera boutique. 

Thomas McGovern, a photographer, writer, and educator, is the author of Bearing Witness (to AIDS), Amazing Grace, and Hard Boys + Bad Girls. His photographs are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Baltimore Museum of Art; The Museum of the City of New York; and the New York Historical Society, among others. He is a professor of art at California State University, San Bernardino.

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Review of Vital Signs

Actuality in the Time of Dispossession

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

In his essay, “The Metaphysical Poets,” T.S. Eliot coined the term “dissociation of sensibility” to describe how language (in this case the English language) suffered a disconnect from the totality of experience. This dissociation which, according to Eliot began in the 17th century and was cemented by Milton and Dryden, has been subsequently aggravated by advances in technology, which continue to move us further and further away from the natural connection of experience and language.

Language, thus, becomes stale, clichéd, and meaningless. When people say “awesome,” for example, they are removed from the concept of awe, wonder, the surprise that electrifies and stimulates us to our very tissue and blood. As Eliot stated, while language may have become more refined, “the feeling became more crude” (Eliot, T.S. Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1950, 247).

The task of the poet, thus, is to reunite experiential cognition to words, to organize the “ordinary man’s experience…[which] is chaotic, irregular and fragmentary” (247). Says, Eliot, “The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning” (248).

Poet Juan Delgado and photographer Thomas McGovern’s Vital Signs portray the wonder and the possibility of miracle, the nexus between the ordinary and the wondrous as seen through the eyes of the dispossessed, those who live on the margins of modernity’s promises. The vital signs of this miraculous world are everywhere: in the murals in the peripheries of great cities and in the proclamations of outcasts and mad men.

Both Delgado and McGovern achieve the synthesis of sensibility and meaning through visual allusion and dislocation of language.

In “Manuela” Delgado describes one of his protagonists:

Without official papers in a new country,

she briskly walks, and obscenely slow,

a foreign tongue slithers by; its scales are

the words she has not yet learned to trust.

The baby girl hiding in her belly’s nest

will learn Quechua first, runa. the people

Though it is tempting to consign this book as merely political criticism of modern society’s social apathy, the power of Delgado’s dislocation of language and reintegration with experience goes beyond the obvious. The crucial poem in this thesis, I think, is “The Evidence is Everywhere.” Like the visionary Regina in my novel, Chronicles of Air and Dreams (Archer Books) who searches for the rebirth of the Indian world in the fragments of discarded letters and broken glass, the narrator in “The Evidence is Everywhere” can interpret the messages in the winds and silences.

From the sides of the mountains, waterfalls

of dust form, and during my pilgrimage,

the fate of lip-stained Styrofoam cups

will not unnerve me. Not worried

about compasses, I’ll go by fences guarding

abandoned lots, through desperate patches of grass,

yellowing, past one-legged billboards of paper

and glue. Resting under the shades of bus stops,

I’ll recite old tales to ward off the haunted

and the debris of family floods piling up.

When the voices on an updraft emphatically

circle like red-tail hawks, I’ll recall

the tails of comets urging you to wrap

yourself in its flames and dissolve.

Entranced by a burning equal to yours,

I’ll walk eighty miles, traveling by the routes

of my childhood candy wrappers.

[. . .]

When I predicted earthquakes in China,

Peru and Cucamonga, California,

I baffled my psychiatric ward.

After a nurse removed my handout

of The Seasons: Winter, wildlife appeared on the hospital grounds. A mule’s deer’s

antlers surfaced on the parking lot,

weaving among the staff’s cars.

A coyote leaped into the patients’ garden

and howled under a security light

as if to say: “I am here Where are you?

A roadrunner scooted across the lot, losing its long tail feathers.

All this had the staff checking again

if their office windows were latched.

Through the juxtaposition of imagery, the ordinary becomes a door to what Samuel Taylor Coleridge termed “the invisible universes”: the greater pattern of enigma of our identity vis-à-vis nature and perhaps God. Once again, the animals become messengers of the secret world lost in the noise of cyberspace and vanity.

Delgado describes these prophets, our humble neighbors in these vast metropolises, as the “viejitas of our calle/ [who] guard our niños and barrio/ like the santos that line/ their window sills at night,” and who “Unlike us, they are not/ scared of living aquí” (“Vecinos").

Juan Delgado continues to make his reputation as an intellectual poet, whose poetry poses philosophic rhetorical questions about the nature of our being and the possibility of miracles, the emergence of life in what appears to be inert. Mr. McGovern’s photographs, likewise, force us to contemplate the ordinary for these vital signs of our inner identity.

Rosa Martha Villarreal, an English Professor at the Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento, California, is a native Texan and a direct descendant of several founding families of Texas, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. She has dedicated her life to

Rosa Martha Villarreal

researching and teaching the history of her family and the cultural heritage of her people. Her novels include Doctor Magdalena, The Stillness of Love and Exile, Chronicles of Air and Dreams, and The Adventures of Wiglaf the Wyrm.

In Poetry – a Force for Change

August 26, 2014, 12:08 am

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Review of For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey: author, Richard Blanco

ByThelma T. Reyna

WhenRichard Blancostepped to the podium on January 21, 2013, at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I rose from my sofa in the living room and stood enthralled as I watched the TV screen. Along with hundreds of thousands of people in the Washington, D.C., mall that day and millions watching this special event around the world, I witnessed history in the making—and this history was made by a poet!

Richard Blanco became the fifth Inaugural Poet in our nation's long history, joining the ranks of such literary greats asRobert FrostandMaya Angelou, two prior Inaugural Poets. But Blanco was more historic than even these venerable giants. He was: But Blanco is more historic than even these venerable giants. He is:

•   America's first-ever Latino Inaugural Poet.

•   The first immigrant.

•   The first openly gay poet.

•   The youngest ever, at the age of 45.

His memoir,For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey(Beacon Press, 2013), gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the impact that being brought out of relative literary obscurity (nothing new for poets anywhere in America!) has on an author and how bestowal of a high honor can change a life in the proverbial blink of an eye. But Blanco’s memoir does more than this: it shows us the character and passion of an American rising star against the backdrop of inauspicious beginnings.

Reflection and Introspection

Blanco's memoir captures in a mere 112 pages the roller-coaster ride of being selected by the President to address the nation and the world as a poet, and of his preparation for this momentous honor. We learn of Blanco’s disbelief and joy when he receives a phone call on December 12, 2013, from the Presidential Inaugural Committee notifying him of his selection. To this day, Blanco does not know how or why. The important thing he recalls from that life-changing call is that he has three weeks in which to write and submit three new poems to the Committee, one of which will be chosen by the President to be read at the inauguration.

In the memoir, Blanco details the doubts and false starts he has as he creates his poems. Part of this stems from his lifelong struggle concerning his place in America and what it truly means to “be an American.” He refers to it in his memoir as “sorting out my cultural contradictions and yearnings” (p. 25). Conceived in Cuba, his parents' homeland, Blanco was born in Spain as an immigrant. He emigrated to the U.S. as an infant and grew up in Florida. He now lives in Bethel, Maine. Blanco's love of country was never in doubt, but what exactly America represents to the huge diversity of people calling it home is a conundrum he's often dissected, and now he is forced to dig even more deeply within himself to find answers.

“Do I truly love America?” he asks (p. 31). “It was a question I had to answer honestly if I was going to write an honest poem. I began thinking of my relationship with America and how it had evolved through different phases, just as my consciousness of love had evolved....I saw parallels between a loving human relationship and the love we hold for our country.”

Blanco's Story of his Cultural Roots

In the memoir, Blanco cycles back and forth between his feelings and reflections in writing the three inaugural poems; and memories of his family life: his childhood, his parents' sacrifices for him and his brother, his experiences growing up in two cultures. Blanco describes how his personal life story sometimes parallels that of President Obama: navigating two worlds on a daily basis as a person of color, and overcoming tremendous odds to be successful. He believes these similarities may have resonated with the President and affected his selection of Blanco.

Blanco’s immigrant parents left their loved ones in Cuba to start a new life with no resources other than their determination and hard work. They purchased a modest home in Florida in a Cuban-American neighborhood after years of labor and thrift. Though Blanco never lived in Cuba, he was surrounded most of his life by neighbors and friends who had, and who blended their new life in America with memories, rituals, foods, and festivities rooted in their native land.

Blanco's image of what it means to be American came from re-runs of popular television shows from his childhood—sitcoms like “Leave It to Beaver,” “My Three Sons,” “The Brady Bunch”—and the standard history lessons in school about Pilgrims, Washington's cherry tree, and patriotic songs: all packaged, glossy representations. It is not until Blanco is selected as Inaugural Poet that his soul-searching enables him to authentically articulate what America—the only country he has ever known and loved—means to him and to the world.

As the days pass, Blanco decides to weave his personal story only briefly in his new poems because he feels that an autobiographical poem, or a political one, is not appropriate for the occasion. He states: “I came to understand my role—the historical role of the inaugural poet—as visionary, and the poem as a vision of what could be..., reaching for our highest aspirations as a country and a people” (p. 27). The thrust of his message to the world needed to be: “What do I love about America?” (p. 60). “My initial answer was simply the spirit of its people.”

Speaking to America about Love of Country

For three weeks, Blanco reads favorite poets, meditates, writes and rewrites, working long into the night. He carefully reads the Inaugural Poems of his predecessors. He seeks feedback on his three poems from poets he knows personally, including his professor and mentor at Florida International University, Campbell McGrath; Sandra Cisneros; Julia Alvarez; Nikki Moustaki. As he states in his book: “Most writers I know rely on someone they can trust with their work, which essentially implies someone we can also trust with our lives” (p. 57). This, says Blanco, is also how his career as a poet has been: not as an “all artists work alone” (p. 57) phenomenon, but as “teamwork, ...a reflection of unity and togetherness” (p. 58).

It is this spirit of collaboration and unity that expresses itself robustly in the poem ultimately selected by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and by the President, as Blanco’s Inaugural Poem:One Today(pp. 87-91). This poem, says Blanco, was born of his personal life experiences watching people helping one another, in good times and bad, always focused on community. Blanco’s love of country, it turns out, is one that “demands effort, asks us to give and take and forgive and constantly examine promises spoken and unspoken” (p. 32).One Todayacknowledges this. Blanco’s two other poems submitted for consideration wereWhat We Know of CountryandMother Country. These are both included in his memoir.

Standing at the podium on that chilly day in January 2013, facing an endless sea of humanity silent and waiting, and with the most powerful leaders of America seated onstage behind him, Richard Blanco feels that what he is about to read is his “ gift to America.” The purpose of his Inaugural Poem, he states, is to “transcend politics and envision a new relationship between all Americans....I wanted America to embrace itself and...feel how we are all an essential part of one whole.”

He succeeds, as thousands of letters show him in the days and months to come, and people's reactions at his subsequent readings, signings, interviews, and travels demonstrate. His message inOne Todayresonated across the land.

A New Mission: Poetry as a Force in Society

Blanco realizes after the inauguration that his life will never be the same again. “The days ahead proved to be abruptly life changing,” he writes (p. 75), “filled with unexpected experiences and realizations that were...unique parts of my journey as inaugural poet.”  Always concerned that poetry in America is not “part of our cultural lives and conversations; part of our popular folklore as with film, music, and novels” (p. 101), Blanco fondly recalls children's elation at his poetic readings throughout years of sharing his poetry with them. He must build on this.

Touched deeply by people’s reaction toOne Today, Blanco relishes the publicity and nationwide exposure that envelops him, sensing a mandate from the people. He states: “The messages from my country speak clearly to me of the great potential and hope for poetry in America... to keep connecting America with poetry and reshape how we think about it....to explore how I can empower educators to teach contemporary poetry and foster a new generation of poetry readers” (p. 102).

On Blanco’s return trip home, he felt “a responsibility to dare and dream up a new chapter that will rekindle poetry into a continuing American folklore—a folklore that would include the stories of gay America, Latino America, and immigrant America—everyone's America” (p. 108). He envisions a resurgence of poetry as a magnificent vehicle “to continue writing together until we are not just one today, but one every day” (p. 108).

If anyone can do this, Richard Blanco can. With his keen intelligence, egalitarian heart, boundless love for his fellow human beings, and a disciplined, devoted poetic soul—all of which gently suffuse his memoir—Blanco shows us that he has the gifts to do this. It's not immodesty on his part that has convinced us, but rather his modesty and commitment to digging for truth and authenticity. Let us hope his journey promoting poetry for the sake of enriching our lives is long and successful.

Thelma T. Reyna, an editor and writing consultant with her own company, The Writing Pros, is author of a short story collection,The Heavens Weep for Us and Other Stories (2009), and two poetry chapbooks, Breath & Bone (2011) andHearts in Common

 (2013). Her latest work,Rising, Falling, All of Us, is available at amazon.com; from Golden Foothills Press (www.goldenfoothillspress.com); or local bookstores. She may be reached at www.ThelmaReyna.com. Get a peek at her poems a few "pages" back in this magazine.

A place where only the ball was white…

August 26, 2014, 9:32 pm

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Baseball’s Travelin’ Men

After Martín Espada’s “Alabanza”

In Praise of the Latin and Negro Leagues

By Gustavo Adolfo Aybar

       

Alabanza.Praise the ballplayers with their call and response

and scars on their bodies that said Oye,

black athletes with ties to the Negro Leagues,

the sole option for play decades ago.

Praise the talent in the Negro Leagues: men

black as the bottom of the sea, to a honey gold.

Alabanza. Praise the Kansas City-Paseo YMCA

where Rube Foster and others birthed the teams,

plucked dirt from the gutter, refined it to cleanliness.

Alabanza. Shall we praise Gus Greenle, his numbers racket and Pittsburgh,

for providing a place where only the ball was white,

so that every action meant a hurling, a casting out,

a slamming away and dismantling the institution, sanctifying

blackness. Praise the blackness.

Alabanza. Praise Quisqueya’s shine from across the Atlantic ocean,

like gold glimpsed through the eyes of ancient conquistadors.

Praise the conquistadors, the island’s Tainos, its fruit, its soil.

Alabanza. Praise the brutality of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (Chapitas)

taking Greenle’s ballclub and putting it in Santo Domingo.

Praise the breaking of contracts, luggage filled with cash, Satchel Paige

and Cool Papa, Josh Gibson and Sammy Bankhead, Cy Perkins and the others arriving on biplanes landing on the Rio Higuamo,

right in front of the main church.

Alabanza. Praise Trujillo’s friends, enforcers of the national image

and their leader’s prestige: murdering civilians

who opposed him—inserting politics into a sport developing its purity.

Alabanza. Praise the scout under Trujillo’s orders who conspired to defraud the Crawfords of Satchel Paige and got arrested twice during his pursuit.

 Alabanza. After the applause wilder than applause,

after Satchel and the team understood

that anything bearing Trujillo’s name will not lose,

after unveiling the secrets of a thousand pitches: the trouble ball,

the triple curve, the whipsy-dipsy-do, a swing, a miss,

after military forces clobbered those against Ciudad Trujillo,

after the near loss of three games to none,

and the winning of the pennant by Ciudad Trujillo,

for a time the Latin and Negro Leagues shined

with the greatest players to ever play,

like the conquistadors’ gold. Gold I say, even if the fans cannot tell us

about the gray in Trujillo’s mustache, shaved at the edges,

except the three to five centimeter above the centre of the lip.

Because he had no lips.

Gold I say, to name the fastballs flung in revolutions

across the mound of this stadium and stadiums to come.

Alabanza I say, even if Trujillo had no lips.    

Alabanza. When the leagues began, from America, Latin America,

México and the Caribbean Basin,

revolutions of fastballs rose and drifted towards each other,

lightning-crowned, and one said with a Spanish tongue:

Let me play. We have no field here.

And the other said with an African tongue:

I will let you play. Baseball is all we have.

Gustavo Adolfo Aybar is a Cave Canem and Artist Inc. I/II Fellow, plus the vice-president of the Latino Writer's Collective. He has published in the Collective’s anthology, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, and several other periodicals. Aybar is translating the works of Mexican author/playwright Glafira Rocha from Spanish to English and working on a book about his homeland, the Dominican Republic, the Trujillo dictatorship, and the Negro League Baseball legend Leroy "Satchel" Paige.

Los Norteños: ¿que sea peor; la ausencia o el regreso?

August 29, 2014, 10:15 pm

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Mexicans, immigrants and citizens alike, were repatriated to Mexico. Ironically, this Chamber of Commerce had money to buy billboard space. Photo courtesy of the author

A little known but potent force in Mexican and U.S. History

By Juan Mora Torres

The uprising of community-based self-defense groups against the cartel of Los Caballeros Templarios captured the attention of the international and Mexican media. It was pointed out that recent immigrants who had returned to Michoacán composed a good part of the leadership and membership of the self-defense groups. Other than pointing out the participation of former immigrants in this uprising, not much was reported on the social make-up of these individuals who came together with the aim of ending the domain of a powerful drug cartel. In the past, these individuals were known as norteños and not much is known about their history. Numbering in the millions, the norteños , as a social group, have been missing from the pages of Mexican history. This brief article aims at acknowledging them as a social group in Mexican history and to encourage others to research their role as historical actors.

“No se sabe que sea peor; la ausencia o el regreso (it is hard to say which is worse, their absence or their return).” With these words a village priest initiated a long and heated conversation with a norteños in Agustin Yañez’ novel, Al filo del agua (The Edge of the Storm, 1947). The priest was referring to whether or not the village was better off without migrant workers. These migrants, also known as norteños because they had labored in the U.S., returned home as different people for they had seen other horizons in a faraway land. They constituted a small but growing group of people distinct from the majority of Mexicans who rarely travelled beyond their village surroundings.

This discussion was part and parcel of a much larger discussion on the social cost of migration: is immigration good or bad for Mexico? What are its cost and benefits? These are unresolved questions that have been raised frequently over the past century.

Disguising the “absence or return” statement as an open-ended question, the priest had already indicted norteños, even though he did not outright declare that their return was “worse.” He made the case that their experience in the U.S. had transformed them into worse human beings.

All they did when they returned home was “stand around, air their opinions, and criticize everything…They’re a bad example, making fun of religion, the country, the customs...They’re the ones who spread ideas of masonry, socialism, and spiritism.” Stated in another way, norteños returned as social malcontents, agitators who intentionally undermined the order of things in this tranquil Jalisco village.

“No padre,” the norteños responded, “I’m sorry to say so, but when we come back, we realize what the people here have to put up with; the injustices and living conditions. Why should a man have to sweat all day to earn a few centavos?” The norteños listed the reasons why he and others like him could no longer approve of the society in which they were living. They wanted life in this sluggish village to “be a little better” so that the villagers could “live like human beings.” In this novel, which takes place during the last months leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Yañez insinuates that norteños were going to participate in this forthcoming event.

The historical role of norteños in modern Mexican history has not been written. In fact they are absent as historical subjects from Mexico’s larger narrative. Albeit by means of literature, Yañez acknowledged their existence as a social group and their role as agents of change in the patrias chicas, the many small Mexicos that make-up Mexico. To acknowledge them as a social group in Mexico requires that we first define them. Until we know more about them, we can temporarily define norteños as a collection of individuals who shared the experience of migrating and living in the U.S. for a period of time, which should also include U.S.-born children and spouses who accompanied them on their return to Mexico.

As a social group, most norteños travelled back-and-forth between Mexico and the U.S. before 1930. After spending significant time abroad, they either voluntarily returned to Mexico or were forcefully evicted from the United States. Once they return to Mexico they are norteños. Having seen “another world” outside of their communities of birth, their trials and tribulations in the U.S. provided them with a new lens for understanding Mexico, especially their home localities.

Mexican immigrants who had travelled throughout “el norte” experienced different employer-employee relations, came into contact with all kinds of people from different nationalities and cultures, and organizations, from labor unions to Protestants. They had also suffered many hardships, from earning “Mexican wages,” the lowest wages in the U.S., to outright institutional racism (“No dogs, no negros, no Mexicans” signs in Texas, for instance).

As a group of people who had “seen another world,” norteños recognized each other by the way they dressed, talked, and their mannerisms. They had been fellow travelers throughout the many “adventures” and “wanderings” throughout “el norte.” They had a basis for comparing conditions of life in both countries, and most were not going back to their old ways of living, the only style of life they knew of before migrating. Little is known about their reintegration into Mexican society.

Norteño history is long, beginning in 1836 with the removal of dozens of Mexico-Tejano families from Texas and continuing to the present-day mass evictions of millions that have taken place under the Bush and Obama administrations. Their numbers have not been calculated, but they are in the millions. Up to the present, we don’t have a single book that examines norteños as either historical or contemporary subjects. Although they have been invisible to historians and other social scientists, their actions in Mexico have been significant in key moments of Mexican history.

In spite of the fact that they do not appear in the pages of history books and are not subjects in current affairs analysis, norteños have left plenty of traces for scholars to pursue. Yañez, the novelist, provided quite a few. When it comes to historians, they have been negligent detectives for not pursuing these leads. A more contemporary example involves the rise of the self-defense groups in Tierra Caliente, Michoacán.

Four of the five most recognizable figures in the uprising against Los Caballeros Templarios cartel—Dr. Manuel Mireles, “El Americano,” “Papá Pitufo,” and “la Comandante Bonita”—had lived for extended periods of time in the U.S. Former immigrants, many of them recent deportees, made up a significant portion of the membership of these self-defense groups. It is highly possible that the same may be said about the members of Los Caballeros Templarios. Despite the obvious connections between the norteños and the rise of self-defense groups, political analysts have failed to acknowledge the increasing role of norteños as subjects in contemporary Mexican society. In the wake of the present mass expulsion of Mexicans from the U.S., the number of norteños will only keep growing.

The history of norteños begins in the aftermath of the so-called Texas Revolution of 1836 when triumphant “Texians” violently removed Mexico-Tejano families from their homes in east and central Texas. Driven out of their homeland and losing all their properties, they settled on the Mexican side of the Texas-Mexican boundary. It continued after the war of U.S. aggression against Mexico that ended in 1848. Hundreds of Mexican families who did not want to live under the U.S. flag left their homes in New Mexico and Texas. They created new communities on the Mexican side of the boundary, including military colonies whose main duty was to defend the sparsely populated Mexican borderlands as Jose Angel Hernandez highlights in his book, Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century.

Their numbers increased by leaps and bounds after railroads connected Mexico and U.S. geographically and economically. As the emerging main “reserve army of labor” for the U.S. economy, Dr. Manuel Gamio, the distinguished anthropologist, stated that from 1910 to 1928, “one million Mexicans have been mobilizing periodically from Mexico to the U.S. and vice versa, that is, during this time they have been altering their residence in both countries.” Today there are 12 million people living in the U.S who were born in Mexico.

Norteños, as a social group in Mexico, are made up of two sets of people. The first set consists of migrants who, after a period living in the U.S., voluntarily returned to Mexico either permanently or temporarily. More often than not, they returned with money in their pockets and their “success” motivated others to head to “el norte.”

The second group is made-up of people evicted from the U.S. by either force or under the stress of coercion, beginning with the Tejano families who were violently expelled from their lands in 1836, followed by the thousands of Sonorenses who were forced out of the California gold fields in 1850-51. Many of the evictions were bunched in time intervals such as 1907–1908, 1921–1922, 1929–1939, 1953–1954 (over 1.3 million deportations) and so on until our current post-9/11 era. More often than not, the evictees arrived penniless and suffered many hardships in starting new lives in Mexico.

Mexico’s post-revolutionary era of 1920 to 1940 provides us with plenty of examples that nurture the “absence or return” discussion that the priest and norteños initiated in Yañez’ novel. This era shares two features with our present era (1994–2014), the age of NAFTA and the 9/11 security state. One, the first decade involved mass migration to the U.S. For instance, over 9 million Mexicans, US-born and immigrants, were added to the U.S. population between 1990 and 2000. Two, the second decade initiated mass deportations of people. Obama’s eviction of two million people highlights this point. According to the most authoritative work on this subject, A Decade of Betrayal, somewhere around a million people were expelled from the U.S. during the great Mexican eviction of 1929–1939, mainly during the first four years.

Repatriation by plane on a no-frills airline Photo courtesy of the author

The Mexican consul in Chicago estimated that 60 percent of the Midwest’s Mexican population returned to Mexico under conditions of duress. Children made up around 60 percent of all “repatriados,” most of them born in the U.S. Additionally, taking into account the great number of U.S. citizens that were evicted, overwhelmingly children, the label of “repatriado” should be questioned.

Up to this point, this was the largest expulsion of people in U.S. history. As companions in this shared journey, those who were evicted during the Great Depression “returned home“ destitute and without many prospects for land and employment in view of Mexico’s profound economic and political crisis. Before this massive “return home,” norteños had been transforming Mexico in various ways. They should be regarded as agents of “modernity” in how they incorporated themselves into Mexican society. As noted in Yañez’ novel, their presence and actions created social tensions in rural Mexican towns and villages, especially in those areas where norteños were quite numerous.

How was the “absence or return” question discussed in post-revolutionary Mexico (1920–1940)? The answer to this question depends on the respondent. Take the case of the Mexican Catholic Church which ardently opposed emigration on grounds that immigrants lost their faith and came to worship the dollar and materialism over God. Accordingly, immigrants either lost their faith by becoming Protestants, freethinkers, and atheists, or remained distant Catholics disconnected from the Church by irregularly attending religious services and being critical of the clergy.

Besides losing the fear of God, other sins included abandoning their families in Mexico and becoming U.S. citizens. The U.S. was Eve tempting Adam, the immigrant, to betray his faith and nation. Having left Mexico as “innocent” people for the paradise of “el norte,” many returned home as “sinners” who forged an unholy alliance with the anti-clerical Mexican government to eradicate Catholicism in Mexico. In essence, the Church viewed the “return” of norteños as worse than their “absence.” For that reason, it opposed immigration because the social cost of their return was far greater than the benefits.

A sizeable chunk of the Mexican inteligencia, such a Manuel Gamio, were of the opinion that the migration of Mexicans was good because, in spite of the great discrimination and exploitation migrants encountered in the U.S., their contact with “modernity” created progressive subjects that could serve as a column for the foundation of Mexico into a modern country. In the case of the Mexican government the “return or absence” had a two-sided answer.

On the one hand, the departure of hundreds of thousands served as a safety valve for the many economic and social troubles that had been caused by the violence of the Mexican Revolution. Moreover, they sent millions of pesos of remittances to Mexico. On the other, the return of hundreds of thousands, such as what happened during the Great Depression, increased social tensions in Mexico. Overall, it viewed norteños as allies in its quest to modernize Mexico and create a powerful state, two tasks that required weakening the Church, hacendados, and disobedient political bosses.

What these opposing views had in common was that emigration provided migrants with an overall experience of a world that was different from their familiar world. This experience transformed individuals into “modern” subjects. Let us look at a few cases of this transformation and how norteños’ integration into Mexican society disturbed the order of things.

The spread of Pentecostalism in Mexico came by way of the norteños .Originating in Los Angeles’ Azusa Street in 1906, Pentecostalism gained many Mexican adherents, especially among farmworkers who set up store-front temples wherever their work took them. The evictions of hundreds of aleluyas, as Catholics called them, during the Depression (or as they called it “la voluntad de Dios”) expanded Pentecostalism throughout Mexico, ending the monopoly of the Catholic Church and created tensions wherever their presence was to be found.

Two corridos (ballads) from the 1920s highlight the cultural contradictions that returning norteños provoked in small towns and villages where the norm for the lower classes was “callese, obedezca, y no replique (be quiet, obey, and don’t complain).” One deals with a norteños returning to his village. He encourages other villagers to follow him to “el norte,” promising that they are going to “eat well, earn good wages, and dress better”; he asks them, “que dicen gorras de maíz/no quieres usar tejana” and tells them that they would return home with money and “portando muy buen abrigo.” The other corrido mocks norteños for being “nacos (low-cultured Indians)” who left speaking “Tarascan (Purepecha)” and returned speaking English. They are fanfarrones(braggards) who are under the impression that they are catrines (dandies) just because they wear pants and try to make those who wear “calzones” lesser than them.

Although it has not been acknowledged by historians, their most important contribution was their role in Mexico’s post-revolutionary agrarian reform movement. The quest for land was the burning issue in Mexico from 1910 to 1940, the cause that led many peasants into the revolutionary armies during the Revolution. After the Revolution of 1910–1920, agrarismo gained a second wind in the 1920s. Manuel Gamio speculated that the agrarismo of the 1920s “probably was imported from the United States to Mexico by the repatriated immigrants,” which he wrote that in the late 1920s, a few years before the massive agrarian movements that arose during the Cardenista era (1934–1940).

For sure, the return of one million norteños during the 1930s changed the balance of forces in rural Mexico as many of them became agraristas, especially in the Bajio region. In all likelihood the Cardenista agrarian reform could not have been successful without the support of the norteños who became Cardenistas and agraristas. (Not all, however. In some parts of Mexico, their remittances went to purchase plots of land, generating the growth of the rancheros group who came to worship private property and opposed the agraristas).

The Alteños of Jalisco claimed that, while they were working in the U.S., they were aware of the agrarian reform movements of the 1920s and were interested to “see if it was true.” These norteños had worked in railroads and farms throughout the Midwest and the western part of the U.S. Upon returning to Mexico in the 1930s, they mentioned that they had “seen another life” and “they did not come back to live the [typical life of the region].”

A communist organizer in Los Altos of Jalisco understood that the first step for building an agrarian movement required seeking out norteños who had recently returned because he could count on them in the forthcoming struggles. Most norteños returned penniless and were not going to return to the lifestyle that they had run away from when they migrated north. Moreover, they were willing to struggle for land, a battle that involved challenging priests, local political bosses, and hacendados. A norteños agrarista noted,

“The campesinos began to organize, not the ones in the haciendas, nor on the ranchos; no-how were those people going to organize if they were afraid of the owner’s shadow, and of the white guard? So, I took advantage [of the opportunity], and campesinos who had been in the U.S. and who were returning with me...all of them. They weren’t going to return to the hacienda to earn 15 cents that was paid to them. They had seen another life, had learned about other wages, so they returned to their homes…but already with the idea of not returning to the hacienda to work for the patrón…

The best example of a norteño agrarista that we know of is Primo Tapia. He left his village of Naranja, Michoacán in 1907 for the U.S. He along with other Naranjeños had travelled throughout the western half of the U.S. They joined the Partido Liberal Mexicano (the Magonistas) and Tapia became an organizer for the International Workers of the World (IWW). He and his fellow Naranjeños returned to Naranja in 1920 where they founded the Liga de Comunidades Agrarias, the most important peasant organization in Michoacán of the 1920s.

They battled landlords, Church and local caciques in their quest for land reform and social justice. Tapia, a radical anarcho-syndicalist, spoke English, Russian, Spanish, and Purepecha. This norteños upset the order of things in the villages of Michoacán in many ways. For instance, women in his Liga de Comunidades Agrarias not only fought for land but also formed the Liga Femenil in their struggle for gender equality. According to Tapia, women were the slaves of slaves.

In part the absence of norteños from history books has to do with the fact that immigration, as a theme, does not play a central part in the overall historical narrative of Mexico as a nation. In contrast, immigration is central to the historical narrative of the U.S. As the “country of immigrants,” there are hundreds of books dealing with the immigrant experience in this country. In contrast, Mexico is the country of emigration. Today there are over eleven million people who were born in Mexico living in the U.S., making Mexico the world’s leading country of emigration.

For the past century, Mexico has been the Ireland of the Americas. Although this is not the case, Irish history would be incomplete if its mass emigration to many parts of the world is excluded. The history of modern Mexico is incomplete for the simple reason that it fails to take into account an experience that has involved millions of Mexicans for nearly 180 years. This collective experience includes the millions of norteños who have returned to Mexico.

Juan Mora-Torres, born in Tlalpujahua, Michoacan, Mexico, and raised in San Jose, California, is an Associate Professor of Latin American History at DePaul University in Chicago. A former Teamster, Juan is one of the editors of El BeiSMan(www.elbeisman.com), a digital magazine based in Chicago and a Series Editor for the University of Illinois Press’ “Latinos in Chicago and the Midwest.” His research and writings focus on the history of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands, Mexican migration, popular culture, working class formations, and Mexicans in Chicago. The author of The Making of the Mexican Border (University of Texas Press, 2001), he is working on “Me voy pa’l norte (I’ m Going North)”: The First Great Mexican Migration, 1890-1940. This essay was first published in El BeiSManApril 2, 2014.

What is truth?

September 6, 2014, 12:10 am

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Extract from The Nature of Truth; author, Sergio Troncoso

                            Illustration by Jorge Enciso

Chapter One

Helmut Sanchez yanked the steel ring of the creaky wooden door and stepped blindly into the dark castle that was Yale's Sterling Library. He pushed open the inner foyer door. A puff of steam hissed from a radiator in the shadows. The air inside was cold and damp. In front of him, two lines of students waited to check out books at the circulation desk under the watchful eyes of the mosaic of the Goddess of Knowledge. Another line surrounded the copy machines, which flashed and droned like baby dragons trapped in boxes. Without stopping, Helmut displayed his ID to the bored security guard and veered into the first floor stacks, toward Mr. Atwater's office. Jonathan Atwater was the assistant librarian responsible for interlibrary loan requests.

"Hello?" Helmut said with a studied meekness, knocking twice on the oak frame next to the opaque glass, like a gumshoe's door. A genteel older gentleman, about forty-five, hunched over Gabriel GarcíaMárquez's Cien Años de Soledad, his spectacles on the bridge of his pink nose. Puffy light brown eyebrows and a head of thin gray hair distinguished Mr. Atwater's patrician face. He wore a candy-apple red bow tie and a perfectly starched blue oxford shirt. A dozen books, in German and Spanish, were fastidiously arranged on his desk in front of him like a mini-fortress. Helmut noticed a small red leather edition of Goethe's poems atop a stack of white papers and manila folders.

"Helmut. Please, come in," Mr. Atwater said, warbling just a note higher than normal. "Sit down. Here. Take a look while I bring you a cup of coffee. Bought it on Saturday at an old bookstore in Meriden. Only thirty dollars for that edition!"

"But I was on my way–" Helmut protested weakly, but Mr. Atwater was already out the door and bounding down the hall. Helmut glanced at the poetry book in his hand, a leather-bound edition with gilded pages from the late nineteenth century. He reluctantly sat down on the black wooden chair emblazoned in gold with the crest of Yale. Lux et Veritas.

"This is what you came for, I presume," Mr. Atwater said, striding into the room, handing Helmut four volumes, and placing a Harvard-Radcliffe mug of coffee on the edge of the desk in front of Helmut.

"Thank you very much, Jonathan."

"Here's the confirmation for Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs, just sign at the bottom."

Mr. Atwater handed Helmut two sheets of paper, the first a barely legible pink carbon of Helmut's original request, the second an agreement to return the books by such-and-such a date to Yale, which would return them to the library or archive that owned them. "What a quest for those!" Mr. Atwater continued. "At least we finally found them."

"Thanks." Helmut drank half a mug of coffee and pushed the four volumes into his backpack. All morning his head cold had dizzied him at the oddest moments.

Suddenly Helmut had the eerie feeling that something was wrong, that he had seen a mistake but had not recognized it for what it was. He signed the second sheet of paper. He folded it back and glanced at the first sheet. Ach! he thought. He had originally requested Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur. There it was, in fading blue ink. This was the wrongliterary review for the years 1957, 1961, 1965, and 1970. Mr. Atwater had made a rare mistake. Helmut's shoulder's slumped. He felt bloated and depressed. He handed back the sheets to Mr. Atwater.

What would be the point of telling Mr. Atwater he had wasted a month looking for the wrong review? Helmut gulped down the rest of the coffee and stood up. "Thanks again. I'll give you a call next week."

Helmut smiled politely and marched toward the circulation desk. Outside, it was gusty and warm for March. He might as well peruse these four volumes of Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs. He didn't have much to lose. If Mr. Atwater was right, they were obscure, if not rare, reviews. What would have been the point of deflating Atwater's enthusiasm when precious few cared as deeply about books anymore? Helmut's back ached, but the bike ride to Orange Street was quick and his backpack didn't seem too heavy.

***

Not until a few weeks later on April 29^th did Helmut open the 1961 volume of Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs. The Thomas Bernhard article for his boss Professor Werner Hopfgartner had been mailed weeks ago. The semester was near its end, and finals would begin in a week. Helmut was putting the final touches on Christa Wolf. Before Hopfgartner left for his summer vacation of hiking on the Alps, the professor and his assistant would bounce the essay back and forth a few times. Helmut had indeed discovered a few articles in Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs he might include in the professor's Compilation.

Before his retirement, Hopfgartner envisioned the Compilation as a synthesis and expansion of his ultimate views about literature and philosophy. German culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the professor wrote, had achieved a community as distinct about the good and the right as that of classical Greece. What the professor's clear and convincing prose advocated, in an almost revolutionary tone and certainly with a poetic cadence, was the creation of a set of real community values. Then, and only then, would adherence to such values be authentic to a culture. Individuals in such an authentic society would blossom into true human beings, the full potential of man. Anything less would be "fakery" or "decadence" or "the moral abyss of modernity" or "the bleakness of the soul." Modern society, Hopfgartner concluded, was on the bleak and lonely road of pernicious individualism and nihilistic hedonism.

Wednesday night-Thursday morning Helmut was reading an article in Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs on the American revival after the Kennedy election. It was 2:30 a.m. and Helmut desperately needed a distraction from the brain chatter that kept him awake. Suddenly, in the table of contents of the second quarter issue from 1961, he noticed that a W. Hopfgartner had written a lengthy, three-page letter to the editor. Helmut's heart leapt. What a fantastic coincidence! he thought. Perhaps Mr. Atwater's efforts had not been in vain.

Helmut didn't immediately read the letter, and instead checked the biographical lines at the end. The author was indeed a W. Hopfgartner who had also been a professor of literature. So there was a chance, however slim, that this W. Hopfgartner was the selfsame Werner Hopfgartner who now employed him.

The year 1961 was the year Professor Hopfgartner had arrived in America as the newest tenured professor at Smith College. After the Wall had gone up in Berlin, a spiritual incarceration had been plastered atop the existential malaise of the Continent. A double burden, Hopfgartner had once mused to his research assistant, which had simply been too much to bear. Helmut dropped the 1961 volume into his backpack. He would copy it tomorrow. Maybe he'd read it over the weekend. The Christa Wolf final rewrite had been delayed long enough. Helmut turned off his reading lamp and reset his alarm clock.

***

The sun was bright overhead by the time Ariane Sassolini, Helmut's girlfriend, drove him back to Orange Street, about a twenty-minute drive from her apartment in Hamden, Connecticut. They had spent another delicious Saturday night together. Helmut's bicycle was still locked to the backyard fence. His apartment upstairs was quiet, clean, empty. Finally, he had a little time to relax and be peacefully alone. He changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and bounded down the stairs. He bought a copy of the Sunday New York Timesat the grocery store on Pearl Street. This was definitely a day for the back porch. He shoved open the kitchen door, which he rarely opened, and it led, through a murky and filthy hallway, to the back staircase and to another rickety door with peeling lime-green paint. Beyond this second door was the back porch of the third floor. Tender, mint-green leaves had sprouted from the old elm that hovered over the porch like a gnarled hand. Last year's leaves—dried-up, yellow-brown, and crunchy—were packed into piles in each corner.

Helmut dragged out an old beach chair, a mug of coffee with milk, a milk crate to use as a small table, the newspaper, and a stack of photocopied articles, including W. Hopfgartner's "Why I Am Neither Guilty Nor Ashamed." The chair was as comfortable as he remembered it had been. A perfectly cool breeze meandered in from the north. The air was finally dry after the rainstorm last night. A squirrel pranced across the porch railing, unafraid. He pushed the newspaper away and refilled his coffee mug and settled himself on the porch again.

"Why I Am Neither Guilty Nor Ashamed" was short enough, just three pages. Helmut started to read it. Immediately his stomach twisted into a knot. His left foot, dangling over the railing, at once stopped bouncing to an unknown beat. The letter was a response to a prior issue of Geschichte und Literatur Österreichs. That previous issue had been dedicated to expurgating Austria's complicit role in the Anschluss and the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War. Of course, it was true that the cultured citizens of Vienna had cheered the triumphant Adolf Hitler on Währingerstrasse with an evident proto-fanaticism. And who didn't already know that the dreaded SS had been composed of more Austrians than Germans?

In any case, the letter from this W. Hopfgartner derided all such pandering as "weakness and indecision." Vague "foreign influences" were at work. It declared, in a staccato prose, that Austria had done nothing wrong in the war. In fact, the premise of the war had been "correct" in any case. Only its "practical implementation" had been distorted by the excesses and digressions of a few idiots. What had been this correct premise? The letter mentioned only an amorphous "authentic value system" for the German people. Only with this value system would the genuine Teutonic character be realized, in itself the highest embodiment of man. The rambling letter ended with a call to all Germans and Austrians, especially the new generations coming of age and those about to be born in the next decade, the future leaders of the Third Millennium.

"Rid yourselves of this guilt and this shame!" the letter exhorted its readers. "Believe not, in such a blind fashion, these accusations of what your parents did during the war. These lies will emasculate you. The German self will thus be destroyed! The great German spirit, so corrupted by guilt and shame, will not even be capable of correcting past excesses. How will we ever soar back to our splendor, creativity, and productivity? This is the only way. A future free of guilt."

Helmut Sanchez felt sick to his stomach. How could anyone have written this garbage, in 1961 or at any other point after the war? What kind of sick mind would rationalize away this massive moral black hole? Millions of Jews murdered simply because they were Jews. Millions of gypsies and Catholics and countless political prisoners and so-called subversives slaughtered by a regime gripped by a frenzy of murderous thinking. And this, exactly, was what had always troubled Helmut about the Holocaust and the war in general. That Germans, he felt, had a tendency to think too far, to an abstract and rigid self-righteousness that could all-too-easily devalue the simple aspects of daily life. Such a murderous abstractionism could be used to justify crushing something today for the sake of an escapist ideal of a far-off tomorrow.

Of course, the student Marxists at Freiburg were also like this. Religious terrorists who killed in the name of God were no different. So this fanaticism of the ideal was not limited to Germans, nor to fascists, nor even to the field of politics. It was a beast of the mind! Helmut thought. Elusive. Multifarious. Immortal.

Helmut had once dated a younger student from Karlsruhe, Stephanie Henke, a special girl. At a concert, she had been so overwhelmed by Beethoven's allegro assai conclusion to the Ninth Symphony that she cried and shrieked non-stop into the deathly silence at the end of the concert. An incredible orgasmic fury! What was even more shocking was that those around her, the prim and proper of Freiburg, approved of this primeval release with their admiring looks. Apparently this wild girl had really understood the heart of the music. Little did they notice the desperate gleam in her eyes, the spasmodic little twists of her head processing in a rapid-fire loop, the slash scars on her wrists.

During finals the previous semester, Stephanie had locked herself in the bathroom and screamed, "I will die a complete failure!" After a tense hour, Helmut had forced open the door and saved this beautiful creature from herself. So Helmut understood only too well that this murderous thinking was still pervasive and even part of his blood.

But what was his blood? Who was Helmut, really? That was the question that had tormented him all his life. Helmut Sanchez had always hoped his Mexican blood would save him from a free-fall into his German heritage. Yet certain parts of this heritage also captivated him, especially German philosophy and poetry. So instead of saving him outright, these mixed legacies confused him. He had never really felt at home with German culture, but in many ways he had harbored the same doubts about American culture. He was neither American nor German nor Mexican. He was neither here nor there. Sometimes he still felt like a fat, lonely, little boy. In any case, now he was on his own. He could still pull himself above his own wretched ambiguity about who he was. There was no need to doubt himself when his heart was clear. He could still feel repelled by W. Hopfgartner's letter. Helmut could still understand what was right and what was wrong.

Before he tucked the letter away in an empty blue folder, Helmut read it again Sunday night. He memorized the flow of thought. The ridiculous justifications and qualifications. The conviction and exhortation of its style. Even the seeming plausibility and rationality of what it said. In Helmut's head, there was still one well-formed doubt: perhaps this W. Hopfgartner was not the Werner Hopfgartner at Yale with the endless stream of inamoratas. Hopfgartner was indeed a common German name. Also, Professor Hopfgartner had been a professor in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the journal was from Austria. But more pressing in Helmut's mind was the need to find out more about his Werner Hopfgartner. Could the professor be the same vile character who wrote "Why I Am Neither Guilty Nor Ashamed"?

Sergio Troncoso

Sergio Troncoso isan instructor at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and a resident faculty member of the Yale Writers’ Conference in New Haven, Connecticut. He was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame and the Texas Institute of Letters and received the Literary Legacy Award from El Paso Community College. The Nature of Truthis a philosophical novel about a Yale research student who discovers that his boss, a renowned professor, hides a Nazi past. To savor the next two chapters--and buy copies--here’s his website: sergiotroncoso.com/novels/truth/index.htm.

---

Peek-a-book: A boy's animal family!

September 22, 2014, 10:15 am

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Beauford Peever's Animal Family

By Hector Curriel

The story of my book started some four years ago, in a casual conversation with my wife about how sometimes members in our family have certain animal characteristics. It seemed to be so hilarious, and then I thought that it would be a good story for a children’s book. This is my first experience being author and an illustrator at the same time, and I am so grateful to have done this wonderful project.

Beauford Peever’s Animal Family is a tale of a boy’s imagination, fueled by his love for animals, and a big discovery that will change the rest of his life. This ebook is suitable for children 4 years and up. Contains colorful illustrations and is great for the whole family. Available in a Spanish version also, as La Familia Animal de Beauford Peever, through Amazon.com.

Here are some of the opening pages and illustrations:

Hector Curriel, born in Lima, Peru, is a Cartoonist Book Illustrator, who now lives in Sioux Falls, SD. An editorial cartoonist, book illustrator, and fine artist for many newspapers, and magazines,, he is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and The National Cartoonists Society. One of the books he's illustrated, Saving Up Smiles for a Rainy Day, was a winner at the Midwest Book Award 2013.

Six-guns on the Table – Death at the Door

September 26, 2014, 12:18 am

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Excerpt from Dead Man’s Trail: author, Martin Hill Ortiz

In its Mexican days, Capp’s Hole served as a jail. Hardly more than head high, its small windows were barred. Bullet holes pocked its unpainted mud brick from the stray barrage of firing squads. Hitched in front, a red-brown horse stood eighteen hands tall, a preacher’s robe draped over its saddle blanket.

The walls were baked clay. The indoors were an oven, a stifling heat that could sweat away any momentarily sated thirst. Inside, the shadows seemed as heavy as the adobe walls, layered one atop the other, forming thick clots of darkness. Kerosene lanterns—two on the bar counter, two more hanging from the ceiling—provided mere spots of light. Asa scanned the chairs and dark recesses of the booths.

Four nodders sat around a table playing brag for chips of silver ore. A mutt stood atop the bench of a booth slurping up a spilt beer, its head tucked in the shadows, its mangy rear mooning the patrons.

The ancient bartender had more wrinkles than a shrunken head. His skin was translucent, his eyes yellowed. He waved a claw-like hand and clucked his tongue. 

“Tut-tut,” he said. “House rules. We ask all ‘comers to check their firearms behind the bar.”

“No,” Asa said, patting his holster.

“I asked.”

Asa bent over the bar, grateful for a little more headroom. He set his Stetson to the side. “What you got for a dime?” he asked.

“A pint of our finest gut-kicker.”

“Anything worth drinking?”

The bartender uncorked a tall bottle and filled a jigger. He said, “Taos Lightning.”

Asa took a taste. It burned his gums. “That’s from Taos?”

“The bottle is.”

“How many times have you refilled it?”

“Aces!”

Asa whirled. It was Tristan Smith; he’d seen better times. Too many days he’d spent flopped out beneath the desert sun, sleeping off benders. His face had crisped and blistered so often it possessed the leathery look of boiled shoes. He gave a long hacking cough into his hands and clumped up to the bar, one hand gripping his thigh. He braced an elbow against the counter to prop himself up. 

“Buy me a corn beer?” he asked.

The bartender held up five fingers. Asa tossed him a nickel.

“And one for my buddy,” Tristan said.

The bartender pushed over two mugs of swill.

“You know I could never stomach that corn piss,” Asa said.

“That a fact? I can drink both.”

Asa slapped a second nickel atop the counter.

Tristan took a greedy gulp. Scum stuck to his upper lip. “How’s that dog I sold you?” he asked.

“Still breathing.”

“Yup. Smith was good at that. And the horse?”

“Still running.”

“Really? He was always so sickly.”

“You starved him.”

“That a fact? Who could have guessed?”

Asa set his palm flat atop Tristan’s mug before he could take another swig. “Amigo, this is important. Have you seen any newcomers drop in here in the last few minutes?”

“Not really,” Tristan said, tugging his beer free. “’Cepting for him.” 

He nodded in the direction of a nook near the door. A stranger sat in the dark, leaning back against the wall, his legs slung up over the bench of a booth. The only things that could clearly be seen were his boots poking out of the stall, and his six-gun on top of the table.

“Tristan?” Asa said. “I need you for an urgent mission.”

Tristan screwed up his face with attention.

 “Head to the back of Skin and Bones and ask Malc for Mrs. Cade. Tell them to come here. I need her to point out a man before I kill him.”

Tristan gazed fearfully at the door, as though sunlight were his enemy.

“I’m counting on you,” Asa added.

Tristan gave a firm nod. He clumped along the floor, hand gripping his gimpy leg. He sailed a salute in the direction of the dark booth before opening the door and disappearing into the blinding daylight.

“You see that man in the booth with the gun on the table?” Asa said to the bartender. “Set us up with two drinks that won’t give us cause to shoot you.” He spun a quarter on the counter.

Asa took out his pistol. He ambled over to the stranger and set his gun on the tabletop alongside the other. Then, he slid into the bench across from him. They spent a long moment in silence, the stranger’s hat tipped down, his face a shadow. The bartender set two warm beers on the table.

Asa took a sip. The beer wasn’t half-bad. “I see you got your shooting iron ready,” Asa said.

“It’s a working pistol, my friend,” the stranger said. “Can’t leave it stuck in a holster. Might grow lazy.” His voice was nasally, his words delivered with the fervent pitch of a patent medicine pitchman.

Both Asa and the stranger kept one hand resting on the table, close by their weapons. “What brings you to Capp’s?” Asa said.

“The people I hunt come to places like this.”

“You hunt people?”

“I suppose I said that.”

“You’ve taken some lives?” Asa asked.

“When the need arises.”

“And what brings on this need?”

The stranger chuckled. “Doing them a favor. Life is God’s insult.”

“Then what’s death?”

“The apology.”

The stranger leaned forward. He smiled, sucking in his lips as though swallowing a laugh. He had wiry black sideburns that crawled from his temples and swooped to his moustache. His jaw was chisel-sharp, his skin a deep tan, and he had a spark of lunacy in his eyes. “Name’s Moreno. I go by Kit.”

Martin Hill Ortiz, a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a professor of Pharmacology at the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he lives with his wife and son. An extract from his first novel, A Predatory Mind, published in 2013 by Loose Leaves Publishing (e-book and soft cover available) has recently been featured in Somos en escrito. This year he’s published the novella, Dead Man’s Trail, through Seven Archons Press (soft cover available) and a three-volume compilation of the Best Stories in the English Language through Rook’s Page Press. He has a theatrical background, having run a comedy troupe in South Florida for several years. For copies of his works and more information, check www.martinhillortiz.com.

Author’s Note:

How I got involved in The Best Short Stories in the English Language anthology

Back in February, while researching the background for a novel, I came across a 1914 article in The New York Times, entitled “What is the Best Short Story in the English Language?” This piece summed up the results of a query of the most prominent authors of the time. Forty-nine stories were named, forty-four written in English and five originally from foreign languages (Russian, French, German and Hebrew).

Looking over the opinion of some of my favorite authors, I thought, I’d like to read their choices. I realized these would be public domain. I did not realize how difficult it would be to track down all of them. I thought to myself - I wish someone had done that for me, I would pay a reasonable price to read an e-book with these selections. 

With that in mind I contacted the people at Acedrex Publishing (a great Spanish-English bilingual publisher), and we put together the anthology in three volumes (totaling over 1500 pages). Response has generally been positive. To obtain e-copies, check: The Best Short Stories in the English Language, Volume I (e-book and soft cover available), Volume II (e-book available - soft cover soon) and Volume III (e-book available - soft cover soon).

..."just don’t tell him what you’re really like"

September 27, 2014, 9:36 pm

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My Good Gray Morning

Para Ernesto Trejo Siempre

By Stephen D. Gutierrez

Los dos poetasshowed up on my lawn in the early morning, Ernesto Trejo and Omar Salinas. They loomed in my window walking across the fog in purposeful strides, bumping up against each other in their eagerness to reach my door.

“Jackie! Ernesto Trejo and Omar Salinas are here! They’re at the door!”

“What!”

So I rushed to open it.

And there before me stood los dos poetas in the fog, hanging back out of politeness and courtesy, an old-world sense of formality.

“Come in, entra!” I shouted.

And then los dos poetas made themselves comfortable in my home.

“Steve! Jackie!” They greeted us both, and then they both lumbered through my house taking off their coats, heading toward the warmth of my wood-stoved study, my shabbily rugged comfort zone.

“What are you guys up to?” Jackie asked.

“Nothing, just bothering you,” Ernesto sat down with a smile. Se sentó.

Y entonces, Omar comenzó, clearing his throat and looking around for an ashtray. He started making fidgety movements with his fingers, digital preambles to his smokes.

So then en esta mañana, we let Omar out the door to smoke in the backyard.

Era gray and foggy afuera.

The heavy gray fog settled on him. He looked wet and cold. He looked miserable and unloved.

He stood alone in the universe under a tree.

Omar se fumó un cigarrillo debajo de mi árbol, y Ernesto,majestic in the gray, smiled.

We got down to business. “Steve, I got a proposition for you.”

“What?”

“Teach creative writing, fiction, just fiction for me.”
            “O.K., when do I start?”

“Monday.” He filled me in on the details.

The details were more somber than this story implies.

A few years later, the hint of massacre would be confirmed. Those errant cells in Ernesto Trejo’s body would win, and we would visit him in the Belmont Memorial Cemetery in Fresno, Omar and I would, standing over his grave in tottering silence.

“Era un poeta,”Omar would say, “un poeta con mucho corazón.” He would touch his own heart patting for a cigarette, and then he would smoke one, gazing off into the distance over the ivy fence at the few cars passing on the road.

I said a prayer over Ernesto Trejo’s grave, este vato who engineered me a job, and then got on my knees and pulled apart the few weeds already twisting over the headstone.

Underneath me on the cold earth read:

ERNESTO TREJO

PLACE A DYING SPARROW

IN MY HANDS

MY SOUL WILL FIND A TREE TO PERCH ON

1950 — 1991

“¿Ernesto?”

“¿Qué?”

“¿Qué dice usted, señor? ¿Cómo es en el otro lado?”

“Es muy suave, Esteban.  Es muy fino.”

Ernesto Trejo whispered through the trees around us, turning on his side to get some more sleep when we stayed too long, releasing a bird from the tree next to us.

And I watched it fly into the sky.

Ernesto Trejo, el mexicano transplanted to the Unites States in high school, mastering English in an exchange program in Fresno and staying for college to study economics, discovered himself as a poet. He plugged into the local literary scene in earnest, revealing talent and will, and marched on—graduated from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop with an M.F.A. in poetry, lived in Mexico for a year with his wife Diane and their new family—two kids, one girl and one boy—declined a job with the Mexican government at the highest level of diplomatic service, and then returned to Fresno, by strange coincidence a larger echo of his own hometown in Mexico, Fresnillo.

“I’ll see you, Ernesto, ya me voy.”

“OK.”

I got up off my knees.

Ernesto Trejo gané empleo con el colegio en Fresno,Fresno City College, and involved himself in literary activities around town, championing certain Chicano poets he deemed worthy, encouraging select Chicano prose writers he thought necessary, and imprinting on me a fine sense of my own importance when he signed his book to me at the Fig Garden Bookstore a few months before he died.

For Steve, Jackie, & Ben,

Hope you like these poems. Thank you for teaching my class. Fresno needs you.

Love, Ernesto.

And I could have cried right there. Perhaps I did even turn around and choke.

I had been passed over by the people in power at the big state university in Fresno for a job in creative writing, my writing deemed too paltry and insignificant for such titans as occupied the university seats then, two giants of the contemporary literary scene just too massive to contemplate without fearing their august selves and trembling in disbelief that I even dared lift a pencil in that town, a fucked-up show of arrogance and stupidity in my humble and Mexican opinion. I was made to feel small. I hadn’t even received a postcard acknowledging my existence, a response to my application, what I minimally expected. Maybe an interview. Nothing. I felt humiliated and shamed. But Ernesto Trejo redeemed me in my own eyes, Mexican to Chicano, validating my own worth.

 He reached out a hand from the grave.

“¡Cuídate, Steve! ¡Cuída a Omar, también!”

He saw us into our car before lying down again for sleep.

And Ernesto Trejo spoke Spanish around his friends, Omar Salinas and other Mexicans from around town, Omar a fine Mexican-American poet in his own right, who came in out of the cold that day into my gray den, el Omar did, rocking on his heels in my study, laughing, cracking up, blowing into his hands, just at the goddamned fríooutside.

Hacía fríooutside, and Omar Salinas followed Ernesto Trejo out my door to the car parked at the curb. They waded through the gray in the morning, Omar también a troubadour of the fields and the loneliness of being an outcast Mexican, a Sanger native whose bouts with schizophrenia informed his poetry and life. He had sad, terrible eyes, shook his head at the waste around him, and kept up his cheer with the comfort Ernesto Trejo provided him, the company of other Fresno poets, and coffee.

     Ernesto Trejo paused at my threshold before taking off, giving me final instructions in perfect English with the slightest of Mexican accents. He warned me of betrayers and haters, of those who would sabotage my efforts to be included, especially those coveting the job he was handing over to me, the job in creative writing considered a plum.

     “I want you,” he said, looking me straight in the eye, and Ernesto Trejo set my life on a certain course that morning.

     He pushed me out into the world.

     He gave me a chance.

     Este vato who was hired because of affirmative action, despite his excellence, that being the tool to wedge him in, gave me the help I needed.

     He told me to go see the dean who was cool, the dean amenable to us all, Chicanos, mexicanos transplantados, Mexican Americans, gente todos de la razaunida, cósmico y cómico, laughing as we went out. “Give him your best, Steve, just don’t tell him what you’re really like.”

“That would be bad,” I said, “wouldn’t it?”

And they both nodded sagely, estos cabrones, los dos poetas en Fresno, mis amigos mexicanos.

Stephen D. Gutierrez, a professor of English at California State University East Bay, with his latest book, The Mexican Man in His Backyard, completes his trilogy, My Three-Volume BOXED Set, composed of autobiographical and varied short stories and personal essays. Volumes I and II, Elements and Live from Fresno y Los, won respectively the Nilon Award from Fiction Collective II and an American Book Award. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous print and online outlets and his plays have been performed in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Buffalo, New York. “Game Day” was the winner of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition in the One-Act Category.

 

Phoenix Rising

October 6, 2014, 8:04 pm

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Felipe de Ortego y Gasca about 1943

Excerpt from Bravo Road: A memoir; author, Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

I was 14 when I first heard the name “Carnegie” in association with the word “steel.” As a wild orphan waif from the sun, in 1940 I was taken in by my father’s cousin, Rumaldo Mendez and his wife Mrs Lucy. They lived in Brinton, Pennsylvania, halfway between the Carnegie steel works in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and the Westinghouse Electric plant in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A trolley line from Pittsburgh ran through Braddock ending in East Pittsburgh, cutting through Brinton.

I didn’t learn about the history of Carnegie until I studied American history at Pitt during the years I was an undergraduate there from 1948 to 1952. However, my first job in 1946 after my Marine Corps years during World War II (1943-1946) was as a laborer at the Carnegie Steel Works in Braddock, Pennsylvania. As a laborer I was assigned to a gang of workers for manual and menial work throughout the plant.

Quite often gangs were used to “break down” the Bessemer blast furnaces which turned out the steel. That is, to “tear down” the interior brick lining of the furnaces. More often than not, the furnaces were still “hot”—that is, the bricks were hot enough to burn exposed skin. When “tearing down” those still hot furnaces, we worked with asbestos vests and gloves and shields. We also wore wooden clogs to keep our shoes from igniting as we traipsed across the floors of the furnaces strewn with embers hot bricks.

When we were through, masons would put up a new lining of bricks on the inside walls of the furnaces. The Bessemer process was the first industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process was named after Henry Bessemer, who patented the process in 1855. The slow Bessemer furnaces were replaced by Open-Hearth furnaces which were ultimately replaced by Electric-arc furnaces.

Oftentimes, gangs were taken down into the flues of the furnaces, there to “bag-out” the crust of soot that accumulated on the walls of the flues. We did the clean-out work without masks or respirators. Our work clothes had to be washed immediately. Showers were essential. Cleaning the flues was not one of my favorite jobs. Neither was working on the Ore-Trestle, that part of the steel mill where standard-sized gondolas and half-sized gondolas filled with “ore” from mining sites were shunted for discharge into waiting chain-driven metal carts routed on rails to the top of the furnaces where they spilled into the mix with other products in the steel-making process.

To empty the gondolas of their ore, laborers released the locks of the chutes at the bottom of the gondolas. In warm weather, the ore would just slide out of the gondolas into the waiting buckets. In cold weather when the ore was most likely frozen in the gondolas, laborers would bang the sides of the gondolas with 50 or 75 pound sledge hammers to expedite the slide of the ore. Particularly hard cases of frozen ore in the gondolas required someone to climb the gondola and with a long metal lance (bar) poke at the ore to urge a slide. To avoid losing a man with a suddenly unexpected surge, the lancers were tethered to the rim of the gondola. Though I never witnessed the loss of a lancer, stories circulated with gruesome details about lancers who failed to get tethered and disappeared with the slide of ore into the buckets. The details that followed were lurid. In the drawing the Stock House would be the Ore Trestle. Below the Ore Trestle the skip cars are filled with ore, coke, and limestone.

Chart by author

I was young and barely into my twenties but strong. That 129 pound kid of 17 who went off to Parris Island in South Carolina in August of 1943 emerged from the Marine Corps as a strong 140 pound man of 20 in search of the promises of life, ready to tackle it with 75 pound sledgehammers. Good naturedly I was the Mexican kid who had been a Marine. We were all aware of the boundaries of being good natured. The teamwork of the military was evident in the teamwork of the gangs on the Ore Trestle. Most of the gang had been in the Army, some in the Navy, I was the only one who had been in the Marine Corps during the War.

Wherever the labor gangs worked or converged, there was a lot of ruckus, cursing, and kibbitzing. The secret was not to take anything said personally, to become adept with reposts that let everyone know you were a regular guy who took in stride the ribbing that depended heavily on stereotyping. We were wops, spics, krauts, and—unfortunately—niggers. Despite the labels we were a reasonably cohesive group.

The Machine Shop section of the Mill attracted me most. The Old-time machinists were a no-nonsense group of professionals. On my rounds, I’d stop long enough to chat with them. I explained that in addition to being a Rifleman in the Marine Corps I had been an Aviation Machinist Mate, working on Corsair airplane engines to keep them aloft with Marine Corps pilots. That caught the attention of the Chief Machinist who had me assigned to the machinist group as an apprentice machinist. It didn’t take long for me to become one of the group—the Mexican kid . . . a Marine during the War.

In 1948 some gnawing awareness had wormed into my consciousness that urged me to consider college. The two colleges nearby were the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Tech. Going to college was actually spurred by an incident with two Carnegie Tech students working part-time at the Mill with one of the gangs I was attached to. A kibbitzing bout with them turned ugly, growing into a fist fight. They did a number on me but I gave as good as I got. Se me subio lo Mexicano. Their elitist comments got my dander up. Strange feelings of low esteem invaded my confidence and self-worth.

I sought out the local office of the Veterans Administration. Thanks to the V.A. in 1948 when I was 22 I was enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh as a provisional student with only one year of high school. As a student on the G.I. Bill I received a $125 dollars a month stipend from the government for my service during World War II. All my education expenses were covered by the G.I. Bill. That was the start of my academic career as a high school teacher first then as a professor in higher education, spanning 50 years.

Focusing on my studies at Pitt, I was unable to continue as an apprentice machinist at the Carnegie Steel Works so I signed on to the labor gangs at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Plant closer to the University of Pittsburgh on the north side of the Monongahela River near the 22nd Street Bridge leading to the South Side of Pittsburgh. I needed the money at the time to support a wife and a growing family. Eventually I went to work at the Homestead plant of U. S. Steel where I learned about the labor tactics of Andrew Carnegie and the Homestead Strike of 1892 during which Carnegie’s administration brought in Pinkerton agents as strike breakers. The melee was brutal. I vowed to continue my union membership with the Mine & Mill Workers of America which I kept up until 1952 when I finished my studies at Pitt.

In 1950 I was accepted into the Advanced Air Force ROTC Program at Pitt from which I received a stipend of $28 dollars a month. Every little bit helped to keep me and my family afloat. During the years from 1946 to 1952, I was also working as a jazz guitarist with different groups and combos around Pittsburgh, travelling a circuit when my studies permitted from Pittsburgh to Chicago. My life was filled with promise, purpose, and hope. My life would be different from the lives of my parents.

As a Comparative Studies major at Pitt, I focused on languages (English, Spanish, and French), literature, and philosophy. At graduation exercises at Pitt in 1952 I received a gold bar as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve. In six years I had moved forward in life by leaps and bounds. My regret was that my parents were not there to share that moment with me and my family.

Short of pilots due to the Korean Conflict, in 1952 the Air Force put out a call for pilot training. I applied and was accepted. I was 26-½ years old. A waiver from the Secretary of the Air Force kept me in the program since 26 was the maximum age. I reported for pilot training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, the day before my 27th birthday—the absolute cut-off date.

Editor’s Note:

Felipe sent me a photo of him as a very young Marine, but it was of low resolution so I asked him if he had another better photo of those times, and, by the way, what had drawn him to enlist.

His answer:

Sadly, I’ve no photos anymore of that time. Time, Tide, and moves have gobbled them up. I joined the Marines in August 1943 during the dark days of World War II when we weren’t sure we’d win the war. In May 1943 I completed the 9th grade of school. I should have completed the 11th grade. When I started school in 1932 I spoke no English and our teachers spoke no Spanish. I was held back to repeat 1st grade. Making no real progress with English by the time I reached the 4th grade, I was held back once more. It’s ironic that given my difficulty with the English language I wound up with a Ph.D. in English. Anyway, what prompted my joining the Marines when I turned 17 in 1943 was the dark mood of the country and patriotism to defend it. There were many 17 year-olds like me who signed up. At war’s end I wound up at Iwo (Jima) and Okinawa. I came home from the Pacific in 1946 and at 20 I was prepared for the world’s challenges and promises. I hung up my uniform with its plastron of medals and set out to meet my destiny. Here I am at 88 fulfilled by that destiny.

Felipe de Ortego y Gasca is Professor Emeritus of English, Texas State University System (Retired 1999), Founding Director, Chicano Studies Program, UT El Paso, 1970-72, the first Chicano Studies Program in Texas, and Editor-in-Chief, of the forthcoming Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Issues Today.

Fragments of a girl’s life, day by day

October 17, 2014, 10:33 am

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Extract from Gabi, A Girl in Pieces: author Isabel Quintero aka Gabi Hernandez

August5

Iwassittingatthe backofthe bustoday,watchingthe oldretardedcouple makingout(likeusual),thinkingaboutCindy,whenGeorginagotonthe bus.AssoonasIsawherstupidclownface,Ireallywished Ihadbegged mymomforatleastanotherhourtoletmeborrowthecarsoIcouldvisit Sebastian.ItriedtoactlikeIdidn’tsee her andpretendedtotextbut,of course,shesatnexttome.

“Hey,fatass.”

“Hola,LittlePayasa.”ShereallyhatesitwhenIcallherthat.So Ido itasoftenasIcan.

“Lookatthosetworetards.Hownasty.Peoplelikethatshouldnever evermakeout.It’ssofreakinggross!”

Itoldhershewasanidiotandnottosay thingslikethatbecause thatwasmean,andhowdoestwomentallychallengedpeoplelovingeach otheraffecther,buttalkingGeorginaoutofbeinganidiotislikemaking carnitasoutofchicken—unnatural.Luckilymystopcamebyquick,andI wasabletoleaveherbehindjustasshewasbeginningtoaskabout Cindy.

“Sohowisyourprego…”

Imadeanunkindgesturewithmymiddlefingerandstoodup.

WhenIgotoffthebus,Sebastianwasalreadywaiting.Hehadbeen goneforafewdayswithhis familyonavacationtoMexico,Mazatlanor somewherelike thatnearthebeach,sohewasultratan.RightawayI knewhewasupset.

“OhmyGod!IjusttalkedtoCindy!” “Didshetellyou?”

“Yes!”

“Canyoubelievethatshit?”HeshookhisheadandIsaid,“Well,she’s goneanddoneitnow,anditsucksbighairyass.But—shewantstokeep it.Iwastherethedayshetoldhermom.Formoralsupport,youknow,but itwentbad.Reallybad.Hermomalmostbeattheshitoutofher.Slapped herhardacrossthefaceandaskedmetoleave.Ididn’tknowwhattodo,I didn’twanttoleaveher,buthermomwentcrazyand wasyellingatmeto gohome,andIwasafraidthatshe’dhitmetoo,soIbookeditandleft.”

Wekeptgoingonlikethatthe wholetwoblockstohishouse.Whenwe gotthere,welockedourselvesinhisroom.WetalkedaboutCindyforever, and thenIfinallyaskedhimabouthistrip.Hetoldmeaboutallthecute boyshesaw.Hisdadlethimdrinkbeerwithhimbecauseapparentlyin Mexicothereisnolegaldrinkingage.Evenembryosenjoyabeerwith theirtacos,hesaid.Iwonderwhatthatwouldlooklike?Hmmm.Wekept ontalkingaboutMexicoandabouthisgrandmawhoishilariousandan awesomecook.Sebastian toldmeabouthowclosehefelttohisdadnow andthathethoughtthathewouldtellhimaboutbeinggayandthathe wassurehewouldunderstand.I’mnottoosureaboutthat.Hisdad may becoolwithhimbecausethey threwbackafewbeers,buthisdadhates gays.Iknow.I’veheardhimsayit.His exactwordswere,“Ihatepinches jotos.” Ididn’ttellSebastianthough,becauseIthoughtitwould hurthis feelings.EvenifItoldhim,hewouldsaysomethinglike, “It’sdifferent becauseit’sme.I’mhisson.”Yeah,Idon’tthinkthatwouldbe thecase. Wetalkedsomemoreaboutschoolandhowexcited(andnervous)weare thatthisisourlastyearandourplansforthefutureandblahblahblah. ItwasgettinglatesoIhadtoleave.Hewalkedmetothebusandwaited with me.Weheardacarscreechtoastopandturnedtoseewhathad happened.Therewasahomelesslookingguyonhisbikeweavingacross thestreettowardsus.Itwasmydad. Luckilythebusshowedupbeforehe sawme.

August7

Sebastiantoldhisparents.Heissleepingonourcouchuntilhefindsa permanenthome.

August10

Sebastianhasn’treallysaidanythingsincehisparentsdroppedhimoff. Theydidn’tevencomein,justdroppedhimoffandthrewhisstuffonthe sidewalk.Cindycameoverthatnight,wewatchedPrideandPrejudice,and mymomorderedussomepizza.She wasn’ttoohappythatCindycame overthough,butsheletherstaybecausesheknewthatSebastianneeded hisfriends.Earliertoday shehadgoneon thiswholespielaboutCindy’s pobrecitamadreandthepainthatshe wasgoingthroughbecauseofher bad,baddaughter.It wasreallylong.It wassomethinglike— “Youcan’thangoutwithheranymore.Sheisabadinfluence.She’s abad,badgirl.Iknewthatshewouldcometothis.Alwayssodesperate andsiempredeofrecida, nosedabaarespetar.Norespectforherselfat all.What’sshegonnado?Quitschool?Probably.Shecan’tdoboth.Maybe sheshouldgiveupthebaby.Idon’twantyoutotalktoheranymore.She’ll giveyoubadadviceandconvinceyoutodothesame thingshedid,and thenyou’llgoandopenyourlegsforeverybody.Youknowwho Ifeelsorry for?Hermom.HowisLindagoingtoshowherfaceatpartiesandchurch now?Didn’tthatmensathinkaboutwhatshewoulddotohermadre?Claro queno! Nomás abriolaspiernasyya.Quebonito!Ofcoursenot,hownice. Butnowthatsheopenedherlegsandhadagoodtime,theonewhois goingtohavetodealwitheverythingishermom.Queselfish.Don’teven thinkaboutcallingherorgoingoverthere.Hermomis probablyfeeling reallydepressedandprobablywantstobealone.I’llhavetocallherand tell her I’msorrytohearaboutwhathappened.PobrecitaLinda,Iwonder whatshedidto deservesuchabadgirl?ThankGod,you’renotlikethat.”

ShereallyhasnoideawhatCindyisgoingthrough.Iwouldhave thoughtthatbecauseIwasbornabastardchild,shewouldshowmore sympathy—thatshewouldknowhowitfeelstohaveyourparentsreact soirrationally.ButIguessasyougrowolder,youforgetthatyouwere everyoungandthatyoumayhavebeeninloveandmayhaveforgotten (ordidn’tthinkabout)condomsandmademistakes.Atleastmymomhas forgotten.Andbesides,it’snotlikeCindysaid,“I’mgoingtosleepwith anassholeandgetpregnant,justsothatmymomcan’tshowherfaceat partiesandmydadwon’ttalk tome.Why?BecauseIwanttobeseenas ahorribledaughter!Ha,ha,ha!”Itwassomethingthathappened.Itold herthatCindywasnota badinfluence,shejustmadea mistakeandthat shewasmyfriend,andwehadtobethereforSebastian.Iarguedand beggedandshefinallysaid,“Estabien.”

IwassurprisedthatsheletSebastian stay,surprisedthatsheactually feltbadforhim.Shesaidthateventhoughshehopedthatherownson wouldn’tbegay,ifhewasshewouldstilllovehim.Andthatonlybadmothers abandontheirchildren.Knowingthatmademekindofproudofmymom.

August15

Sowefinally foundoutwhathappened onthe daythat Sebastian’s parentskickedhimout.Apparentlyhisdadsaidsomethinglike,“Odioa losjotos!Ihatefags!”(Whichmust’vesoundedweirdbecausehisdadhas asuper thickMexicanaccent.)“Thetwoworstthingsthatcouldhappen toamanarethathiswifesleepswithanothermanandthathissonisgay. Andsincetumadrequerida,yasehabiarevolcadowiththatguyfromthe laundrymatandisobviouslyawhore,therewasonly onemorethingleft! You ruined mylife.Chingado!Hijodeputa!Get outofmyhouse!I don’t wanttoseeyoueveragain.Youarenosonofmine.”

So,yeah,itdidn’tgoasplanned.Hismomtookatelenovelaapproach tothesituationandtoldhimthatshewouldratherbedeadthanhaveagay sonandtriedtoslit herwrists.Obviouslyshedidn’t reallymeantodieor elseshewouldhavemadesuretopickuparealknifeandnotabutterknife. Ihadto holdinalaughat that.Abutterknife,really?Whodoesthat?That verynighttheytoldSebastianthathehadtoleave,andthat’swhenhe calledmecrying.Iwokeupmymomandshesaiditwasfine.EvenBetowas okaywithit.Andmybrotherisnotknownforhiscompassion.Theonlyone wedidn’ttellwasmydadbut heprobablywouldn’thavenoticedanyway.

Sebastianalsotoldmesomeotherthingsthatmademesad.Hetoldme howhe had alwaysknownhe wasgay,buthowhe had triedtobestraight. Howhestared atboobsandtriedtofeelsomething.Howheevenpretended tohaveacrushonSandra.Howheprayedeverynight,pleading,“Make me lovegirls,makeme lovegirls,”butGoddidn’tlisten.Itrytoimagine Sebastianonhisknees,cryingandprayingandnobodyanswering.

Iwonderhowitmustfeeltohavedisappointedyourmother somuch shewouldratherkillherselfthanlookatyou.Nevermind—Idon’twant toknow.

August18

Mymom isatit (again),whichmeansmydadfinallycamebackhome(and lookedlikehell).Wheneverhecomeshomeafterbeinggoneforweeks,with abeardandsmelling likehe’sneverheardofashower,shetriestomakeour livesseemasnormal (whatever thatis)aspossible.AndsinceSebastian ishere,she’stryingashardasever. However, allofherattemptsmakeus seemmoredysfunctionalthanbefore.Shecameintomyroom(un-freaking- announced!)andsawmeinmyunderwear! Igotsupermadandtoldherto pleasegetout.Shewasalllike,“Ay,I’veseenyounaked,I’myourmom.” Butshewaitedontheothersideofmydooranyway.Whenshecamein,she hadthispinksparklything hangingonherarm.Icringed,guessingatwhat itwas.Itwasadress.Afreakindress!Ugh!Whydoesshedo that?!?!She knowsIhatedresses!HowamIgoingtolookinadress?Ridiculous!Like anoverstuffedcarneasada burrito,that’show!Beansspillingout thetop, tortillasquishedtogetherat thebottom.Horrible.Justhorrible.

DressesandIdon’tgetalong.The wayIseeit,adressisrestricting. It’satrap.

Butmymomdoesn’tunderstandthis.Sheneverdoes.Idon’tgetit. Iguessit’sbecausewehavealightswitchrelationship.Sometimesshe’s wonderful.Sometimesnotsomuch.Whenshesays,“Nocomastanto. You’regettingfatterthanapregnantwoman,”she’snotsowonderful. Butwhenshesays,“Shelovestoread.Shehasa3.75.Mira,ledieron otrocertificado,”likesheknewitallalong(thatI’msmartandnotasbad asshethought),she’sthebest.Onandoff.Likelightitself—brightand dark.Motheranddaughter.That’sus.Iwishitweredifferent.Iwishshe wouldbemoreunderstanding,butthat’snotwhosheis,Iguess.

Thepinksparklydressdrapedonherarmisformyseniorpicture.SoI willlookpretty.NowI’mgoingtohavetowearit,otherwiseitwouldhurt herfeelings.Ohwell.Asieslavida.That’smylifeatleast.

August25

Senioryearstartstomorrow!Iamsooonotgoingtobeabletosleep. EvenSebastian(whoishavingoneofthe saddest summersever)is lookingforwardtoit.Wecouldn’tstoptalkingaboutschoolbutfinally justwenttobed.

Isabel Quintero

Isabel Quintero, born in Riverside, California, lives with her husband twenty minutes away in nearby Corona, in the Inland Empirejust east of Los Angeles. Her love of reading and writing, she says, comes from her mother reading to her before she went to bed and from the teachers who encouraged her to keep writing; her love of chorizo and carne asada tacos from her dad’s grilling on Sundays. A former elementary school library technician, she teaches at two community colleges part time. Copies are available from Cinco Puntos Publishing.

Gabi Hernandez, the writer and illustrator of the diary, was given birth and raised by the author in Santa Maria de Los Rosales, a “town” somewhere in the Inland Empire as well. The title refers to the fragmented parts of her life, set in what looks just like a diary, with entries for the different days in her high school senior year, all 288 pages of it except for 8 pages made up like a Zine, a poem with cut-outs from magazines, which, I’m told, is how some Zines get put together.