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El Paso Writers Update, Sat, Feb. 25, 2012

2012-02-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

El Paso Writers Update, Sat, Feb. 25, 2012

Barnet Lee Rosset

There was a lot of coverage of the death of Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. the founder of Grove Press. Grove Press of course has published many Chicano(a) authors throught the years, but most notable for publishing John Rechy's City of Night. See The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing.

On Rechy, there is a small reference to City of Night in American Songwriter, The Doors, “L.A. Woman” .

Ruben Salazar

A nice remembrance of Ruben Salazar on egpnews.com:

"Pioneering Latino journalist Ruben Salazar died at the hands of Los Angeles Sheriff’s as they broke up the August 29, 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. Today, his story is an inspiration to the Latino community, and to all those seeking social justice. That’s why we should celebrate his birthday, and not just remember his death." READ MORE.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

Coming out this week: the young adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, about the friendship between two teenage boys.

Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb is mentioned in this interesting article by Krys Lee: Should We Still Be Using The Term 'Ethnic Literature'?: "Writers such as Susan Choi retreat from the label "ethnic" for the very reason that Le's story suggests: A term originally intended to empower those traditionally marginalized can be used to dismiss minority writers. The range of books being published today are remarkable, and writers of color are coming out of the best MFA programs, earning rave critical reviews, and most notably, writing about such diverse social and political backgrounds that makes it difficult to lump them into one category." (Huttington Post). Read more.

Gilb will read at DePaul University. The event takes place February 29 at 6 p.m. in Program Room 115 of the John T. Richardson Library located just inside the 2350 North Kenmore entrance from Kelly Hall. More info.

Oscar "Zeta" Acosta

Check out NiteTalk: Cog Nomen's Buffalo Brown Gives Us the Lowdown for some lowdown on Oscar Zeta Acosta. "...one of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." That is Hunter S.Thompson's quote. Check out this GQ UK interview: Gonzo management.

Miguel Juarez

Miguel Juarez is interviewed about Luis Jimenez' "Los Lagartos" sculpture and the victory the El Paso community realized in getting the city of keep the sculpture center in San Jacinto Plaza. Check out: San Jacinto Concept Plans Finalized, Foster Out Of Project.

Matt Mendez

On Latino Rebels, check out Matt Mendez article Marjorie Ann Mendez is Coming to Arizona: A Guest Post by Matt Mendez #Librotraficante.

"I find it hard to believe that either Huppenthal or Horne actually believe an armed rebellion is marching their way. Instead what Huppenthal and Horne really fear is democratic change. Tom Horne, now Arizona’s attorney general, has been a hardliner against immigrants and immigration for years, accusing “Illegals” of voter fraud and accusing the Obama administration of pursuing the “illegal” vote when the justice department challenged Arizona’s voter ID law. “I think the motive is that the more illegals that vote, the better the Obama administration thinks it will do.” Huppenthal and Horne are not working to stave off revolution but cynically fomenting a culture of fear in Arizona, fear of immigrants and, as Sherman Alexie accurately points out, of an educated underclass in the hopes of keeping their political power." Read More.

Luis J. Rodriguez

A good update of Luis J. Rodriguez comings and goings: Check out: Updates since the New Year.

Librotraficante

There's a lot of pub on the Librotraficante tour which will include our own Dagoberto Gilb. Check out: Free the Books: Librotraficante Caravan Heads to Arizona to Create "Underground Libraries"

Rodolfo F. Acuña: Arizona The End of the Stairway

2012-02-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

Arizona: The End of the Stairway

The Abandonment of the Barrio

Rodolfo F. Acuña

Throughout the history of Mexican Americans, education has been considered the stairway to the middle-class. Education meant security and basics such as health insurance. This heaven meant better jobs and a small house or two for old age.

As with the European immigrant, the stairway was built in stages. Those with limited education could often get union jobs. After a generation or two in factories, Mexican Americans accumulated sufficient capital to keep their children in school, and a few sent them to college.

To build the stairway, workers and their families fought for compulsory education, they petitioned school boards, and led walkouts protesting de jure and de facto school segregation.

Mutalistas, el Congreso Mexicanista, Alianza Hispano-Americano, La Liga Protectora Latina, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), led campaigns for better schools. George I. Sánchez was a giant in advocating for this stairway.

However, it was not the 1960s that Chicano youth forced major breakthroughs. The Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) walkouts, the East LA School Walkouts, and small walkouts throughout the southwest and elsewhere had similar themes -- better education, more college prep classes, more Mexican American teachers, and the teaching of Mexican American Studies.

As a result Mexican Americans went to college in greater numbers. In 1968 there were about 100 Latino PhDs – a decade later they were an identifiable mass. In the intervening years at Cal State Northridge the Latino student population exploded from about 50 in 1969 to some 11,000 today.

Despite the gains the Latino dropout rate remains at about 60 percent; most barrio schools still offer a limited number of college prep classes. A larger portion of Latino students are being recruited and admitted from parochial, magnet and schools on the fringes of the barrio. Few males are enrolling. In some universities the ratio of Latino female/male is 65/35.

Like the nation’s roads, the Mexican American stairway to the middle-class heaven has fallen into disrepair. There are potholes everywhere. Outreach and special programs have become expendable and are under attack. The excuse is the budget.

Many Latino students could only afford college through financial assistance. However, early on financial aid was diluted by expanding the eligibility for assistance while shrinking funding.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the rising tuition. Without financial aid and loans, the bridge is beginning to tumble. At the California State Universities tuition will rise to $10,000 a year, which will put education out of the reach of students from barrio schools.

Putting this in perspective, I paid about $10 a year at Los Angeles State in the late 1950s; in 1969 fees amounted to about $50 a semester.

American corporations simply refuse to pay for the cost of social production. The baby boom generation that benefited from free education, the GI Bill, low interest housing, low gas and food prices, selfishly do not want to pay for the education of the young.

Mexico graduates more engineering students than the United States. Among sixteen 16 First World nations, the United State ranks number 13^th in affordability.

At the beginning of the last century, Mexican workers were excluded from unions and relied on self-help organizations. This became more difficult as the nation became highly urbanized.

The Americans consider themselves a generous people, and certain Americans are. However, this generosity does not extend to the poor. A few will give to the homeless on Christmas and feel somewhat less guilty, as long as it does not interfere with their Christmas meal. They give through organizations that qualify them for tax exemptions.

Historically Latinos have had a small middle-class. They are generous to family members. However, there is not a tradition of contributing to philanthropic organizations. Selected immigrant groups send money back to their communities, such as the Clubes Unidos Zacatecanos that remit billions of dollars annually to Zacatecas.

Latinos usually give through their churches. But, philanthropy is seen as foreign to most Latinos, especially Mexican Americans. They are concentrated in the working class. At the turn of this century, 25.8 percent of Mexican-born immigrants lived in poverty, over double the rate for natives.

According to one report, “[c]urrently, 53 percent of Latino households make charitable contributions to charities as opposed to 72 percent of all U.S. households.” It could be argued that comparisons are not fair. Poverty plays a role, as does the tax code where the middle-class get write offs. The reason Mexicans give for not contributing more is that they are not asked.

Let’s face it; we all owe our careers to the stairway. Without that stairway we would not have a middle-class to broker our gains in population into political and economic power. National Latino and Hispanic organizations cater to the middle class.

Keeping the stairway somewhat operable will be the greatest challenge for Latinos. Let us not be naïve and believe that everything will return to as it was in 1970 or 80. Tuition will continue to spiral. In California, fifty percent of the professors’ salaries and operational costs are derived from student tuition.

Surely administrators are blame for the inflation with university presidents earning in excess of $300,000 annually with perks. The bureaucracies in the university makes navigating them near impossible, and professor salaries at the top are near $100,000 annually and more.

I will not argue that professor salaries are not justified, just that they are part of the problem. I ask myself, would most teacher unions oppose plans to begin alternative institutions that did not include teacher contracts?

After long deliberation I have come to the conclusion that whether teacher unions or others like it or not, we have to find our own solutions. The maintenance of the stairway should be our first priority.

Presently Latino education is not very high on the priority list of progressives in this country. Perhaps they have seen too many movies on the Alamo.

I am under attack for a statement that I made in the early 1990s when educational access was again being limited. I said that we would not allow ourselves to be pushed into the intellectual ovens of ignorance and lack of opportunity. Education is a basic right, and we who are active with youth know the consequences of not being able to read.

The stairway represents the only hope for many.

In the near future we will be making a call for Latinos and others to come to a meeting to explore the possibility of starting a non-profit university that would keep the costs under $1,000 a year.

It is criminal how many for profit schools have sprung up in the past decade. Full-time students at for-profit schools paid an average of $30,900 annually in the 2007-2008 academic year. This was almost double the $15,600 average paid at public universities. The average cost of attending a private nonprofit college was $26,600.

If the government can allow such outlandish costs to be handed down to students then it can sanction real non-profit universities. The truth be told, universities and colleges have become as predatory as the loan sharks and Wall Street.

We will outline a plan which we will telecast throughout the nation in an effort to get retired teachers and professors to put together a non-profit institution. This is imperative because public education today is being privatized. Even at the California State Universities which were once called the “people’s college” there are for profit entities where students can get an alternative education – at a cost.

En nuestro mexico febrero 23 - dejo carranza pasar los hijos de Reagan

2012-02-23T09:24:00.001-07:00

En nuestro mexico febrero 23

dejo carranza pasar esos de alla del norte, los hijos de Reagan

En nuestro mexico febrero 23
dejo carranza pasar americanos
diez mil soldados
seicientos hay airoplanos
buscando a villa por todo el pais

comenzaron a hechar expediciones
los airoplanos comenzaron a volar
por distintas y varias direcciones
buscando a villa
queriendolo matar

los soldados que vinieron desde texas
a pancho villa no podian encontrar
muy fatigados de 20 horas de camino
los pobres hombres se querian regresar
los de a caballo no se podian sentar
y los de a pie no podian caminar
entonces villa les pasa en su airoplano
y desde arriba les dijo good bay

comenzaron a lanzar los airoplanos
entonces villa un gran plan les formo
se vistio de soldado americano
y a sus tropas tambien las transformo

en nuestro mexico febrero 23
dejo carranza pasar americanos
diez mil soldados
seicientos hay airoplanos
buscando a villa por todo el pais

Qué se creían los soldados de Tejas,

Que combatir era un baile de Calquís,

Con la cara llena de vergüenza

Se regresaron todos a su país.

Recent and Recommended Books of Note

2012-02-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

Recent and Recommended Books of Note

A Power among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

University of Illinois 978-0-252-03230-1

The extraordinary life of labor activist, immigrant, and feminist, Bessie Abramowitz Hillman

Karen Pastorello's pathbreaking biography of Bessie Abramowitz Hillman places Hillman at the center of events that marked the founding of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). Born in Tsarist Russia to an educated family, the teenaged Bessie Abramowitz immigrated alone to Chicago to escape an arranged marriage.

Empowered by her connection to the social feminist reform movement centered at Hull-House, she was one of the first to walk off the job as a button sewer in September 1910 in protest of an arbitrary reduction of wages. Within weeks, more than thirty-five thousand workers followed the lead of Abramowitz and her cohorts. A massive strike resulted, paralyzing men's clothing manufacturers in Chicago and paving the way for the organization of the men's garment industry under the United Garment Workers (UGW).

In 1914 Bessie Abramowitz Hillman led a breakaway group from the exclusionary UGW to reorganize as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and was the first woman appointed to the general executive board of the new union. While married to Sidney Hillman (the ACWA's first president) and raising two children, she traveled throughout the rural Northeast, organizing workers in sweatshops that had relocated from unionized metropolitan areas.

In the 1930s she worked to bring black laundry workers into ACWA, and during World War II she established child-care centers and recreational facilities for the children of war workers. After the war, she served on numerous federal commissions on women and labor, seeking to end race and class injustice and improve the quality of life for working women.

The description of Hillman's career as a feminist in the labor movement indicates the prominence of women labor activists in that movement during the early and middle twentieth century. Drawing from newly discovered, official union records and valuable interviews of family members, Pastorello traces the life of a key female labor activist whose sixty-year career spanned Progressive Era social feminism and the feminism of the postwar labor movement.

Demanding Child Care: Women’s Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971

Univ of Illinois 978-0-252-03625-5

Natalie M. Fousekis

A revealing study of early child care political action and advocates in California

During World War II, as women stepped in to fill jobs vacated by men in the armed services, the federal government established public child care centers in local communities for the first time. When the government announced plans to withdraw funding and terminate its child care services at the end of the war, women in California protested and lobbied to keep their centers open, even as these services rapidly vanished in other states.

Analyzing the informal networks of cross-class and cross-race reformers, policymakers, and educators, Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940–1971 traces the rapidly changing alliances among these groups. During the early stages of the childcare movement, feminists, Communists, and labor activists banded together, only to have these alliances dissolve by the 1950s as the movement welcomed new leadership composed of working-class mothers and early childhood educators. In the 1960s, when federal policymakers earmarked child care funds for children of women on welfare and children described as culturally deprived, it expanded child care services available to these groups but eventually eliminated public child care for the working poor.

Deftly exploring the possibilities for partnership and the limitations among these key parties as well as the structural forces impeding government support for broadly distributed child care, Fousekis helps to explain the barriers to a publicly funded comprehensive child care program in the United States.

"A gripping tale of California politics, working women's activism, and the welfare state. Fousekis introduces readers to a remarkable cast of characters: ordinary women who recognized that to support their families they needed the peace of mind that quality child care could provide; visionary educators and teachers who understood child care as part of public education, and not social assistance; and male allies in the legislature and public service who were instrumental in policymaking."--Eileen Boris, coeditor of The Practice of U.S. Women's History: Narratives, Dialogues, and Intersections

"A delightful book of interest to students and scholars of the welfare state, second-wave feminism, social reformers, the history of education, and the anti-Communist movement. Fousekis does an exemplary job of integrating women's personal stories into the childcare movement."--Robyn Muncy, author of Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935

Natalie M. Fousekis is an associate professor of history and the director of the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University,

Rascuache Layers: Toward a Theory of Ordinary Litigation

University of Arizona Press (September 1, 2011)

ISBN-10: 0816529833 ISBN-13: 978-0816529834

Alfredo Mirandé, a sociology professor, Stanford Law graduate, and part-time pro bono attorney, represents clients who are rascuache---a Spanish word for "poor" or even "wretched"---and on the margins of society. For Mirandé, however, rascuache means to be "down but not out," an underdog who is still holding its ground. Rascuache Lawyer offers a unique perspective on providing legal services to poor, usually minority, folks who are often just one short step from jail. Not only a passionate argument for rascuache lawyering, it is also a thoughtful, practical attempt to apply and test critical race theory---particularly Latino critical race theory---in day-to-day legal practice.

Every chapter presents an actual case from Mirandé's experience (only the names and places have been changed). His clients have been charged with everything from carrying a concealed weapon, indecent exposure, and trespassing to attempted murder, domestic violence, and child abuse. Among them are recent Mexican immigrants, drug addicts, gang members, and the homeless. All of them are destitute, and many are victims of racial profiling. Some "pay" Mirandé with bartered services such as painting, home repairs, or mechanical work on his car. And Mirandé doesn't always win their cases. But, as he recounts, he certainly works tirelessly to pursue all legal remedies.

Each case is presented as a letter to a fascinating (fictional) "Super Chicana" named Fermina Gabriel, who we are told is an accomplished lawyer, author, and singer. This narrative device allows the author to present his cases as if he were recounting them to a friend, drawing in the reader as a friend as well.

Bookending the individual cases, Mirandé's introductions and conclusions offer a compelling vision of progressive legal practice grounded in rascuache lawyering.

This is an important volume for anyone---practicing or teaching---involved in the legal defense of Latinas and Latinos.

Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile

University of Illinois, 978-0-252-07823-1 Pub Date: 2011

Magnus Course

A nuanced exploration of one of the largest and least understood indigenous peoples

Magnus Course blends convincing historical analysis with sophisticated contemporary theory in this superb ethnography of the Mapuche people of southern Chile. Based on many years of ethnographic fieldwork, Becoming Mapuche takes readers to the indigenous reserves where many Mapuche have been forced to live since the beginning of the twentieth century. Exploring their way of life, the book situates the Mapuche within broader anthropological debates about indigenous peoples in South America.

Comprising around 10 percent of the Chilean population, the Mapuche are one of the largest indigenous groups in the Americas. Despite increasing social and political marginalization, the Mapuche remain a distinct presence within Chilean society, giving rise to the burgeoning Mapuche political movement and holding on to their traditional language of Mapundungun, their religion, and their theory of self-creation.

In addition to accounts of the intimacies of everyday kinship and friendship, Course also offers the first complete ethnographic analyses of the major social events of contemporary rural Mapuche life--eluwün funerals, the ritual sport of palin, and the great ngillatun fertility ritual. The volume includes a glossary of terms in Mapudungun.

"In Becoming Mapuche, Magnus Course asks a question at once anthropological and Mapuche: what does it mean to be a 'true person'? On a theoretical level, this question allows the author to skillfully traverse back and forth across the abandoned terrain between the categories of classical modernist anthropology and those of its postmodern critique. In choosing this analytical strategy, the author has produced a remarkably rich ethnography of a rural Mapuche community, one that touches on the themes of both phases of anthropological thought in a rich synthesis of themes.

Further, in finding this systhesis, Course has surely begun to fulfill his own hope expressed herein, that of freeing Mapuche ethnography from its sub-disciplinary isolation and showing the way to comparisons with Andean and Amazonian societies and far beyond."--Peter Gow, author of An Amazonian Myth and Its History

"Becoming Mapuche makes significant contributions to South American ethnology by providing ethnographically based explorations of Mapuche concepts. Magnus Course also greatly contributes to more general theoretical concerns in anthropology such as social personhood, theories of exchange, and kinship studies. Written in a clear style, the book is both accessible to general readers and stimulating for anthropologists."--Jonathan D. Hill, author of Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon

"An insightful ethnographic account of the way the rural Mapuche person is constituted through different modes of men's sociality and how the centrifugal expansion of relations across time and space gives rise to collective social events. Course presents the stunning new political possibilities that emerge from a rural Mapuche class-based identity that challenges the ethnic perspectives held by urban Mapuche intellectuals and indigenous rights activists."--Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, author of Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche

Magnus Course is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.

I'm Neither Here nor There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty

Paperback Duke University Press Books (June 13, 2011)

ISBN-10: 0822350351 ISBN-13: 978-0822350354

Patricia Zavella (Author)

I’m Neither Here nor There explores how immigration influences the construction of family, identity, and community among Mexican Americans and migrants from Mexico. Based on long-term ethnographic research, Patricia Zavella describes how poor and working-class Mexican Americans and migrants to California’s central coast struggle for agency amid the region’s deteriorating economic conditions and the rise of racial nativism in the United States.

Zavella also examines tensions within the Mexican diaspora based on differences in legal status, generation, gender, sexuality, and language. She proposes “peripheral vision” to describe the sense of displacement and instability felt by Mexican Americans and Mexicans who migrate to the United States as well as by their family members in Mexico.

Drawing on close interactions with Mexicans on both sides of the border, Zavella examines migrant journeys to and within the United States, gendered racialization, and exploitation at workplaces, and the challenges that migrants face in forming and maintaining families. As she demonstrates, the desires of migrants to express their identities publicly and to establish a sense of cultural memory are realized partly through Latin American and Chicano protest music, and Mexican and indigenous folks songs played by musicians and cultural activists.

Lunes con Lalo: Focus Groups

2012-02-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Lunes con Lalo

Poetic Wisdom for Your Week

by Abelardo B. Delgado

Focus Groups

Hocus pocus,

out of focus

focus groups,

a few months

end up dictating

what must be done,

outlining health needs

shared by an entire community.

The vocal ones

even dare

prioritize and program

for those needs.

Those who best articulate

concerns and issues

determine the future

of the many who won't speak out.

Humans are consistently

misrepresented, politically,

ethnic and racial wise

and geographically as well.

Some go to heaven, others to hell.

from La Llorona: 43 Loronas of Abelardo

Published with permision of the Delgado family.

Rodolfo F. Acuña: Why Not Enjoy Yourself? Let the Younger People Take Over You Have Paid Your Dues

2012-02-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Why Not Enjoy Yourself?

Let the Younger People Take Over

You Have Paid Your Dues

Rodolfo F. Acuña

Chicana/o Studies at Cal State Northridge will be taking close to sixty Latinos and Asians students to Tucson later this month. It will be our third trip as a group within a year. Friends keep saying, “That is a big responsibility; you have paid your dues; why don’t you slow down and enjoy life?” In other words, take it easy, and let the young people clean up our mess.

Some make ridiculous statements such as that you must enjoy the pressure. What is probably meant to be a compliment is an insult. Only someone who is nuts enjoys constant stress and sleepless nights.

Frankly, I would be delighted if others would step up. No one enjoys constantly working as if there were no more tomorrows. No one enjoys sandwiching in writing and teaching, and never having enough time to edit and reflect – the tension of being constantly on stage gets to you.

I often wish that I would have become a monk. But, as a member of a community – a husband, father, grandfather, and teacher – I have no choice but to fight. The bottom line is that I care about the kind of world we leave behind.

Many of my Latino friends tell me not to worry; the Latino population is booming, and we are the future. Today Latinos are just over 15 percent of the population – over 50 million. If we were a nation, we would be the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. By 2050 Latinos will be almost a third of the U.S. But will it really make a difference?

Knowing history I realize that what we do today will affect 2050. Population is not a silver bullet, and this growth is precisely what worries me.

In the 1970s I had a conversation with the late Willie Velásquez, the founder of the Southwest Voter Registration Project, who was at the time leading a drive to register more Mexican Americans. I asked Willie if he were not being overly optimistic about the importance of registering and voting Mexican Americans. We could register more Latinos, but what was being done about the quality of representation once we turned out the voters?

Willie responded that everything went in cycles, and we first had to register our people. Over the years I have thought about this conversation. Looking at the outcome, I think Willie is probably turning over in his grave when he sees the quality of our political representatives, especially the trend of some Latinos running as Republicans. Who would have thought in the 1970s that Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking people would today be Hispanics?

As a group Latino politicos have not been especially progressive. Indeed, they have been less than courageous when it comes to police brutality and capital punishment. Latino politicos have been invisible during the escalation of tuition that is killing access to higher education for most. Few have spoken out on the Middle Eastern wars thus empowering President Barack Obama as he wags the dog’s tail.

In 2050, the Latino population will reach 30 percent. Surely, the gene pool will get darker; today in Los Angeles the probability of a first grade male marrying or partnering up with a Latina is about fifty percent. The only factors slowing down this process are where people live, go to school and economic class.

Has the political awareness of Latinos and Mexican Americans grown proportionately? I don’t think so! Political consciousness is like vocabulary -- it is learned and acquired, and it is not cultivated through the use of third grade clichés such as the Decade of the Hispanic or Chicana/o power. It is learned through political education and awareness.

The growth or development of political consciousness depends on individual and group experiences. The media has a lot to do with this socialization process.

However, when we look at the content of most programs Latinos have access to, it is disastrous. Univision, the largest of the Spanish language networks, is run by conservative investors, and its content is heavily influenced by right wing Cuban Americans in Miami. Consequent to this, the most informative pundit is Jorge Ramos, a Mexican transplant who is progressive on immigration but to right of center on Latin American and domestic issues. This begets programs such as Don Francisco that features contests such as Señorita Colita (Miss “Little Tail”).

The Democratic Party and the left have done very little to fill the vacuum in the Latino’s political education, although it is becoming its largest bloc of voters. It takes Latinos for granted because they have no other place to go, given the racism of the Republican Party.

Truth be told, the left media like poverty has fed off the Latino’s misery while reaping the benefits of their votes. It sheds tears over racism and inequality, theorizing about it and doing little more.

Aside from “Democracy Now,” there is not a prominent Latino writer nurtured by this gaggle of left media that includes The Nation, Mother Jones as well as others. The tragedy is that, if and when the Latino community votes Republican, there will be expressions of shock and blaming the victim.

What I have learned during my years of struggle is that I don’t have enough money, or prestige to change the group. I probably would have even less influence if I were at a a pampered professor at a prominent university, so I make changes through teaching working class students and by example.

At the moment I am concentrating on Mexican American and Central American students, a sector that includes most Latinos. According to the 2010 Census, Mexican Americans are officially 63 percent, and could be as high as 70 percent of the total Latino population. The Mexican origin population will grow the fastest during the next forty years due to Mexico’s proximity to the United States and the median age of Mexican women.

U.S. births are disproportionately Latino, accounting for one-in-four of the nation’s newborns in 2008. The growth is driven by Mexican Americans women who account anywhere from about 20 percent to 50 percent more children than non-Mexican Latinas.

The median age of Mexican origin women in the U.S. is 25, compared with 30 for non-Mexican-origin Latinas, 32 for blacks, 35 for Asians and 41 for whites. The typical Mexican American woman, ages 40 to 44, gives birth to 2.5 children versus 1.9 non-Mexican-Latinas.

Demographers predict that most future growth in the U.S. among Latinas will come from women with documents. Most of the growth within the Mexican American community will be poorer, less educated and concentrated in the working class sector.

The reality is simply that it is becoming more hazardous and costly for working class Latin Americans to migrate to the U.S. through the Mexican corridor that has been closed to them by drug gangs spawned by U.S. policy that has channeled the drug trade through Mexico.

In this scenario, the Mexican American middle-class plays an exceedingly important role. Necessarily they have to advocate for the civil rights of those not enjoying their privileges. However, the increase in tuition is threatening the stairway we built in the late 1960s for more Mexican Americans and Latinos going to college. There are also class divisions that occur among people of all color.

The only factors slowing this down assimilation are food and group consciousness, which lasts only so long.

Arizona as in the case of California Proposition 187 (1994) reminds the group that racism still exists. It defines who the bad guys are. However, this political education has to go much further.

In the past couple of years I have been writing pieces on Arizona to educate a small circle on the importance of that struggle. Good education is often a case of redundancy. It is the practice of constantly deducing and then applying lessons – much like the conjugation for verbs in Latin.

That is why we are taking students to Arizona. We want to educate them, and the best way is for them to experience it. In the last two trips, we have also been taking Asian students with us because we live in a multi-racial society, and we have to learn to work together. We share humanity.

Many of the students who have gone on the trips had never been out of California, some had never been out of LA. This effort will pay off because they in turn will use a more sophisticated political vocabulary, which they will teach their family members and eventually their children.

(c) Rodolfo F. Acuña 2012

Recent Releases

2012-02-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Recent Releases
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Billy the Kid and Other Plays

(Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Americas series) [Paperback]

University of Oklahoma Press (December 10, 2011)

Language: English ISBN-10: 0806142251 ISBN-13: 978-0806142258

Rudolfo Anaya (Author), Cecilia J. Aragon (Afterword), Robert Con Davis-Undiano (Afterword)

While award-winning author Rudolfo Anaya is known primarily as a novelist, his genius is also evident in dramatic works performed regularly in his native New Mexico and throughout the world. Billy the Kid and Other Plays collects seven of these works and offers them together for the first time.

Like his novels, many of Anaya’s plays are built from the folklore of the Southwest. This volume opens with The Season of La Llorona, in which Anaya fuses the Mexican legend of the dreaded “crying woman” with that of La Malinche, mistress and adviser to Hernán Cortés. Southwestern lore also shapes the title play, which provides a Mexican American perspective on the Kid—or Bilito, as he is known in

New Mexico—along with keen insight into the slipperiness of history. The Farolitos of Christmas and Matachines uncover both the sweet and the sinister in stories behind seasonal New Mexican rituals.

Oscar Castillo Papers and Photograph Collection

[Paperback]

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press (December 2, 2011)

Language: English ISBN-10: 0895511401 ISBN-13: 978-0895511409

Colin Gunckel (Editor)

Since the late 1960s, photographer Oscar Castillo has documented the Chicano community in Los Angeles and South Texas, from major political events to cultural practices to the work of muralists and painters. His photographs explore major themes (social movement, cultural heritage, urban environment, and everyday barrio life) and approaches (photojournalism, portraiture, art photography).

The Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection includes over 3,000 images by the photographer that are available through an online digital archive at UCLA.

Colin Gunckel brings together essays by scholars and artists who consider the social, political, historical, and aesthetic dimensions of Castillo's work. An illustrated section features selections from the digital archive. The book includes illustrations from the digital archive, a detailed finding aid for the Oscar Castillo Papers, a small collection of correspondence and other documents housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and a collection-level description of the digital archive. A selected bibliography completes the volume.

This book is made possible in part with support from The Getty Foundation.

Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico (New Americanists)

[Paperback]

Duke University Press Books (December 21, 2011)

ISBN-10: 0822350831 ISBN-13: 978-0822350835

José David Saldívar (Author)

A founder of U.S.-Mexico border studies, José David Saldívar is a leading figure in efforts to expand the scope of American studies. In Trans-Americanity, he advances that critical project by arguing for a transnational, antinational, and "outernational" paradigm for American studies. Saldívar urges Americanists to adopt a world-system scale of analysis.

"Americanity as a Concept," an essay by the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein, the architect of world-systems analysis, serves as a theoretical touchstone for Trans-Americanity. In conversation not only with Quijano and Wallerstein, but also with the theorists Gloria Anzaldúa, John Beverley, Ranajit Guha, Walter D. Mignolo, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Saldívar explores questions of the subaltern and the coloniality of power, emphasizing their location within postcolonial studies.

Analyzing the work of José Martí, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, and many other writers, he addresses concerns such as the "unspeakable" in subalternized African American, U.S. Latino and Latina, Cuban, and South Asian literature; the rhetorical form of postcolonial narratives; and constructions of subalternized identities. In Trans-Americanity, Saldívar demonstrates and makes the case for Americanist critique based on a globalized study of the Américas.

Gangland: The Rise of the Mexican Drug Cartels from El Paso to Vancouver

[Paperback] Paperback: 288 pagesWiley; 1 edition (December 13, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1118008057 ISBN-13: 978-1118008058

Jerry Langton (Author)

The members of Mexico's drug cartels are among the criminal underworld's most ambitious and ruthless entrepreneurs. Supplanting the once dominant Colombian cartels, the Mexican drug cartels are now the major distributor of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. and Canada. Not only have their drugs crossed north of the border, so have the cartels (in 2009, 230 active Mexican drug cartels have been reported in U.S. cities).

In Gangland, bestselling author Jerry Langton details their frightening stranglehold on the economy and daily life of Mexico today—and what it portends for the future of Mexico and its neighbours.

Offering a firsthand look from members of law enforcement, politicians, journalists, and people involved in the drug trade in Mexico and Canada, Gangland sheds a harsh light on the multibillion dollar industry that is the drug trade, the territorial wars, and the on-the-street reality for the United States, with the importation of narco-terrorists. With the unstinting realism and keen analysis that have made him an internationally respected journalist, Langton offers the bleak prospects of what a collapsed government in Mexico might lead to—a new Mexican warlord state not unlike Somalia.

Details the emergence of the Mexican drug cartels—the transformation of middlemen who ferried drugs from Bolivia and Colombia to the U.S. and Canada into self-styled entrepreneurs

Describes how the growth of the cartels led to violent territorial wars—with Felipe Calderon declaring war on the cartels in 2006

An unflinching examination of the world's most lucrative—and deadliest—drug cartel, Gangland lets readers explore, with brutal clarity, the newest front on America's latest war.

Decolonizing Native Histories: Collaboration, Knowledge, and Language in the Americas
(Narrating Native Histories) [Paperback] Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (December 30, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0822351528ISBN-13: 978-0822351528

Florencia E. Mallon (Author)

Decolonizing Native Histories is an interdisciplinary collection that grapples with the racial and ethnic politics of knowledge production and indigenous activism in the Americas. It analyzes the relationship of language to power and empowerment, and advocates for collaborations between community members, scholars, and activists that prioritize the rights of Native peoples to decide how their knowledge is used.

The contributors—academics and activists, indigenous and nonindigenous, from disciplines including history, anthropology, linguistics, and political science—explore the challenges of decolonization.

These wide-ranging case studies consider how language, the law, and the archive have historically served as instruments of colonialism and how they can be creatively transformed in constructing autonomy. The collection highlights points of commonality and solidarity across geographical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries and also reflects deep distinctions between North and South.

Decolonizing Native Histories looks at Native histories and narratives in an internationally comparative context, with the hope that international collaboration and understanding of local histories will foster new possibilities for indigenous mobilization and an increasingly decolonized future.

Proud Americans: Growing Up as Children of Immigrants
[Paperback] Paperback: 258 pagesPublisher: CreateSpace (December 3, 2011
ISBN-10: 1466294566 ISBN-13: 978-1466294561

Judie Fertig Panneton (Author)

Children of immigrants are different. They are their parents' guides to American ways. PROUD AMERICANS: GROWING UP AS CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS includes a collection of inspirational stories about approximately 50 people’s joys and struggles while coming of age in the United States as children of immigrants.

Included are Hollywood stars, high-profile media and business people, award-winning athletes, members of the President’s cabinet, elected officials and those whose names may not be recognizable but whose stories are certain to be memorable. You’ll meet people like Tony Xiong, whose dream is to become a police officer. Who would have guessed that's what he would want to become after growing up with two gang-member brothers who were often in trouble with the law? Then, there’s Natalia Estrada, a hair stylist who is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who were farm workers.

Estrada’s coming-of-age wisdom shows how she dreamed of a different heritage but grew to become a proud Mexican American. Dorothy Takeuchi remembers growing up as the child of Japanese immigrants and the time her family was forced to live in internment camps in the United States. In spite of the hatred and discrimination she witnessed, Takeuchi harbors no resentment and is proud to be an American. Hani and Maher Ahmad know what it’s like to have people call you names because of the color of your skin or the sound of your last name. They both lead productive lives and work against discrimination. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta mentions he's the son of Italian immigrants in every speech he gives. Panetta remembers his parents' reminders that they came to America to give him and his brother better opportunities. "Make us proud," they would tell him.

PROUD AMERICANS' author Judie Fertig Panneton is a child of immigrants, who are Holocaust survivors. This is her second book based on a collection of stories. Her first was THE BREAST CANCER BOOK OF STRENGTH & COURAGE. She is an award-winning journalist with experience as a print, TV, and radio reporter. Also featured, based on research, are individuals including: Hines Ward, Dr. Mehemet Oz, Jay Leno, Ann Curry, George Stephanopoulos, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rahm Emanuel, Jennifer Aniston, Christina Aguilera, Michael Savage, IvankaTrump,Apolo Ohno, Maria Menounos, Maurice Sendak, Timothy Geithner, Michael Dukakis, and Margaret Cho

MEX/LA: Mexican Modernisms in Los Angeles 1930-1985
[Hardcover] Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Hatje Cantz; Bilingual edition (December 31, 2011)
ISBN-10: 3775731334ISBN-13: 978-3775731331

Mariana Botey (Author), Harry Gamboa (Author), Ana Elena Mallet (Author), Catha Paquette (Author)

The years from 1945 to 1985 are often identified as the moment in which Los Angeles established itself as a leading cultural center in America. However, this conception of its history entirely excludes the very controversial presence of the Mexican muralists, as well as the work of other artists who were influenced by them and responded to their ideas.

It is likewise often thought that Los Angeles' Mexican culture arrived full formed from outside it, when in fact that culture originated within the city--it was in Los Angeles and Southern California that José Vasconcelos, Ricardo Flores Magón, Octavio Paz and other intellectuals developed the iconography of modern Mexico, while Anglos and Chicanos were developing their own. David Alfaro Siqueiros, Clemente Orozco, Alfredo Ramos Martínez and Jean Charlot made some of their earliest murals in Los Angeles, influencing the Mexican, Mexican-American and Chicano artists of the 1970s and 80s. MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles 1930-1985 focuses on the construction of different notions of "Mexicanidad" within modernist and contemporary art created in Los Angeles. From the Olvera Street mural by Siqueiros, to the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and the Disney silver-screen productions, to the revitalization of the street mural, up to the performance art of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, MEX/LA explores the bi-national and hybrid forms of artistic practices, popular culture and mass-media arts that have so uniquely shaped LoThe years from 1945 to 1985 are often identified as the moment in which Los Angeles established itself as a leading cultural center in America. However, this conception of its history entirely excludes the very controversial presence of the Mexican muralists, as well as the work of other artists who were influenced by them and responded to their ideas. It is likewise often thought that Los Angeles' Mexican culture arrived full formed from outside it, when in fact that culture originated within the city--it was in Los Angeles and Southern California that José Vasconcelos, Ricardo Flores Magón, Octavio Paz and other intellectuals developed the iconography of modern Mexico, while Anglos and Chicanos were developing their own.

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Clemente Orozco, Alfredo Ramos Martínez and Jean Charlot made some of their earliest murals in Los Angeles, influencing the Mexican, Mexican-American and Chicano artists of the 1970s and 80s. MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles 1930-1985 focuses on the construction of different notions of "Mexicanidad" within modernist and contemporary art created in Los Angeles.

From the Olvera Street mural by Siqueiros, to the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and the Disney silver-screen productions, to the revitalization of the street mural, up to the performance art of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, MEX/LA explores the bi-national and hybrid forms of artistic practices, popular culture and mass-media arts that have so uniquely shaped Los Angeles' cultural panorama. s Angeles' cultural panorama.

The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction
(Very Short Introductions) Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 14, 2011
ISBN-10: 0195379381ISBN-13: 978-0195379389

David Carrasco (Author)

This Very Short Introduction employs the disciplines of history, religious studies, and anthropology as it illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. Readers meet a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry, and philosophy, who were also profoundly committed to cosmic regeneration through the thrust of the ceremonial knife and through warfare.

Davïd Carrasco looks beyond Spanish accounts that have colored much of the Western narrative to let Aztec voices speak about their origin stories, the cosmic significance of their capital city, their methods of child rearing, and the contributions women made to daily life and the empire. Carrasco discusses the arrival of the Spaniards, contrasts Aztec mythical traditions about the origins of their city with actual urban life in Mesoamerica, and outlines the rise of the Aztec empire.

He also explores Aztec religion, which provided both justification for and alternatives to warfare, sacrifice, and imperialism, and he sheds light on Aztec poetry, philosophy, painting, and especially monumental sculpture and architecture. He concludes by looking at how the Aztecs have been portrayed in Western thought, art, film, and literature as well as in Latino culture and arts.

Billy the Kid's Last Ride
[Paperback] Publisher: Sunstone Press (December 20, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0865348472ISBN-13: 978-0865348479

John A. Aragon (Author)

The orphaned, bucktoothed, New York Irish boy speaks Spanish and wears a Mexican sombrero. He claims his name is William Bonney. His amigos call him ''Kid.'' To newspapers in the New Mexico Territory and across America, he is ''Billy the Kid.''

William was among the bravest of the McSween alliance in the Lincoln County War. He was lucky, too--lucky enough to shoot his way out when the rest of his faction was cornered and slaughtered in battle. He was later captured and condemned to hang, but he killed his guards and escaped. Now, William has one last chance. He heads into Old Mexico with his lover, the fierce Apache maiden Tzoeh.

There he hopes to start a new life, live in peace and obscurity, and be forgotten. But powerful Anglo ranchers plot to use William's hot temper, unmatched courage, consummate loyalty to his amigos, and superb skill with a six-gun for their own ends.

Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States

(UNC Press ISBN 978-0-8078-3497-8

Published: September 2011

Jorge Duany

In this comprehensive comparative study, Jorge Duany explores how migrants to the United States from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico maintain multiple ties to their countries of origin.

Chronicling these diasporas from the end of World War II to the present, Duany argues that each sending country's relationship to the United States shapes the transnational experience for each migrant group, from legal status and migratory patterns to work activities and the connections migrants retain with their home countries.

Blending extensive ethnographic, archival, and survey research, Duany proposes that contemporary migration challenges the traditional concept of the nation-state. Increasing numbers of immigrants and their descendants lead what Duany calls "bifocal" lives, bridging two or more states, markets, languages, and cultures throughout their lives.

Even as nations attempt to draw their boundaries more clearly, the ceaseless movement of transnational migrants, Duany argues, requires the rethinking of conventional equations between birthplace and residence, identity and citizenship, borders and boundaries.

Banned Books Decade

2012-02-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

A year or two again when we did a Banned Books Week Series on Chicano Literature we never know it could get any worse. Check out our Series:

Also see "Chicano writers ecstatic about new ethnic studies ban in Arizona"

Rough Notes on Arizona

2012-02-11T11:17:00.001-07:00

Rough Notes on Arizona

Rodolfo F. Acuña

In the now infamous Watergate scandal Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were told by deep throat that to "Follow The Money" in order to find those culpable for the Watergate break-in.

In the 1990s Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado in No Mercy:how conservative think tanks and foundations changed America's social agenda follow this advice and trace the role of family foundations in destroying bilingual education, in anti-affirmative action and eugenics scholarship. No Mercy is a fascinating account how right wing extremists and think tanks are funded by billionaire zealots who want to protect their tax privileges and power.

The involvement of the Tea Party and neo-fascist organization has been well documented in the Republican Party's political takeover of Arizona as well as their war on Mexicans. These groups are bonded by a community interests with the prison industry and gun dealers and manufacturers.

Many articles have drawn direct ties between the Tea Party and Charles and David Koch who fund this eliminate the Mexican drive. The strategy is to use race and lies to undermine school integration as well as programs that have improved the educational performance of not only Mexican American students but others in special classes.

A case in point is the Mexican American Studies program of the Tucson Unified School District that has had incredible results. Failed businessmen and politicos Tom Horne and John Huppenthan have ridden this anti-Mexican wave by sowing racism and outright lies. Horne and Hupenthal are the present and past Arizona superintendents of public instruction. Nowhere else but in Arizona would these two gentlemen have been elected to statewide office. In the case of Huppenthal, he has taken mendacity to new heights. He ordered a study of the Tucson program, squandered $170,000 on a study that contradicted his conclusions. In order to be vindicated he is now holding hearings at the state capital; this time goes too far and shows his hand as well as who is pulling his strings. Using deep throats insight of "follow the money;" the connections appear clear.

One of his last expert witnesses is Susan Stotsky, a mathematics professor at the University of Arkansas, who has made a career as an expert on multicultural education of which she knows nothing about. She is heavily funded by right wing organizations and has served on various commissions under Republican presidents. Like my lawyer Moe Vasquez would say, she has biases and is a paid gun, she’ll say anthing. Stotsky is part of that right conspiracy to kill multicultural studies. If these were not just hearings this case could be made in just following the money, who has funded her research? What are her qualifications? However, Huppenthal controls the hearings and has not allowed for this type of vetting.

What do we know about Stotsky? The thing that came leaping out that she in on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. Founded in 1987 the NAS was spearheaded by Stephen Balch who believed that Western Civilization was under siege and he has to defend it. From the beginning the NAS attacked anything that advocates critical thinking. Among the funders are the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, Koch brothers, and the Earhart, and Coors foundations. The Koch have become major players on the right since the mid-90s when it funded the Cato Institute.

Stotsky’s testimony will come as no surprise. Unlike the Cambium National Academic Educational Partners http://saveethnicstudies.org/assets/docs/state_audit/Cambium_Audit.pdf she does not a commitment to the truth and objectivity but a bias and opinion that has been paid for. Only in Arizona could a person who knows nothing about Mexican American children, never taught them, and has a well-documented prejudice against Mexican American Studies testify as an expert witness. But it is a blind leading the blind scenario with Horne and Huppenthal serving as superintendents of public instruction and knowing nothing about education. In turn their bias is being affirmed by bought witness. Only in Arizona, or is it?

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Feb. 6

2012-02-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Feb. 6
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Bert Corona

Burt Corona is mentioned in David Bacon's article Criminalizing Immigrants for Profit on Truth-out.org. "In 1947, after reading a newspaper article about the crash of a plane carrying a group of Mexican contract workers back to the border, Woody Guthrie wrote a poem, later set to music by Martin Hoffman. In haunting lyrics Guthrie describes how it caught fire as it flew low over Los Gatos Canyon, near the farming town of Coalinga, at the edge of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Observers below saw people and belongings flung out of the aircraft before it hit the ground – falling, as Guthrie sang, like leaves." Read more.

Check out this article on going behind the ban as books by many Chicano authors are banned, including Dagoberto Gilb. Read "The Librotraficante Behind the Movement to Smuggle "Wetbooks" Back Into Arizona.":

"Manuel Muñoz's book, Zigzagger, is banned at the high school right across from the University of Arizona campus where he is a professor of creative writing. Munoz graduated from Harvard, received his MFA from Cornell University, and is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts. Apparently, the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) has found that all of that literary pedigree only led him to 'promote the overthrow of the United States government.'"

Check out this OC Metro article on Rafael Lopez with some mention of Pat Mora:

Rafael Lopez: a visual journeyman.

A small mention of John Rechy is in Dora Levy Mossanen's look at The Last Romanov. (Huffington Post)

Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual. You bet, check out this

A Conversation with C.M. Mayo After Translating Madero´s Spiritist Manual on the Literal, Latin American Voices Blog: "You decided to translate Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual 100 years after it first was published. What triggered your desire to work on this project when, even at the time the book was released, he was mocked in newspapers as a crazy man who talked until he was blue on the face?" Read More.

THE LIBROTRAFICANTES CARAVAN COMING TO MESILLA

2012-02-10T10:46:00.002-07:00

PRESS RELEASE
Contact:
Denise Chávez
Border Book Festival
bbf@borderbookfestival.com
575-523-3988

Tony Diaz
AztecMuse@aol.com
(713) 867-8943
Websites: www.librotraficante.com, www.nuestrapalabra.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2, 2012

THE LIBROTRAFICANTES CARAVAN COMING TO MESILLA

Latino Studies has been banned in Arizona.

But writers and activists are organizing a caravan to Tucson to smuggle =anned Latino books back into Arizona!

The Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan will leave Houston on Monday, M=rch 12 arriving in Tucson, Arizona Saturday, March 17.

A stop at the Cultural Center de Mesilla, home base of the Border Book F=stival will take place on Thursday, March 15 at ten a.m. Librotrafican=e organizer Tony Díaz, and various writers will be present for a pres= conference and a Quick Lit Throw Down and reading.

The caravan will headed to Albuquerque that evening for a Librotraficant= Banned Book Bash at a location to be announced.

The caravan will be filled with authors and activists who will be taking=anned books back into Arizona, to give away. The bus will be filled wi=h authors who were banned, new authors, as well as other advocates conc=rned with preserving First Amendment rights of Equal Protection and Fre=dom of Speech.

The Caravan will be making stops in Texas, New Mexico, and, of course, A=izona. More stops will be listed as they are finalized. More will be ad=ed as funding permits.

Banned authors have embraced the caravan and will participate throughout=he week, including Sandra Cisneros, Dagoberto Gilb, Luis Alberto Urrea= and others.

Donations can be given to Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their S=y by visiting the website www.librotraficante.com

The caravan is intended to:

1. Raise awareness of the issue. Some people still do not now that Latin= Studies is being banned in Arizona.
2. P well enough. This is a chance to bring attention to their work.
3. Celebrate many cultures: Children of the American Dream must unite to=reserve the civil rights of all Americans.

For more information, contact the BBF at 575-523-3988, bbf@borderbookfes=ival.com

Dr. Cornel West's Historic Visit to Phoenix, Arizona

2012-02-08T21:01:00.002-07:00

Feliz Cumpleños a Nuestro Poeta laureado chicano Abelardo Delgado

2011-11-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Abelardo B. Delgado

(Nov. 27, 1930 - July 23, 2004)

En la vida y en la mas allá, seguir siendo nuestro poeta laureado chicano

Con Mis Versos

Con mis diversos

casi versos

mato mitos

y destapo verdades

empolvadas por siete siglos

de mentiras.

Con mis versos

planto azucenas

sobre cadenas

de gente.

Esclavizada por si misma.

Con mis versos

arrullo a los enamorados

empapados y pegados

con su propio sudor

de amor

en un lecho ajeno.

Con mis versos

hago a los sordos

escuchar el canto

de los madrugadores pájaros.

Con mis versos

visito otros universos

aun no descubiertos

y sin boleto de viaje.

Con mis versos

lleno tinajas de chia

en Chiapas

y se las llevo

a los Zapatistas en la selva

para que luzcan bien

sus caras escondidas

y sus miradas encendidas.

Con mis versos

les arreglo a los indocumentados

pasaportes anaranjados.

(c) Abelardo Delgado. From La llorona; 43 llorona abelardo. Barrio Publications, 1997. Published with permission of the estate of Abelardo Delgado

Thanksgiving in America by Felipe Ortego

2011-11-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

THANKSGIVING IN AMERICA

From The National Hispanic Reporter, November 1991; posted on the Deming Headlight, November 25, 2010.

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

In most enterprises, moments of thanks- giving take place for safe arrival or deliverance. The story about the first Thanksgiving in America credits the Pilgrims at the Massachusetts Bay Colony celebrating their safe arrival at the Atlantic frontier of the “new world”.

That band of Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth, England, on September 15, 1620 on the Mayflower with 103 religious dissenters on board. Their original destination was the Virginia colony, but they put to at Cape Cod on November 19, and set foot on Plymouth rock (Massachusetts) on December 21 (December 11, Old Style).

It is recorded that these Pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecution in England; they actually came to practice Puritanism, a religious fundamentalism of intolerance that eliminated parliamentary government in England between 1649 and 1660.

The Pilgrims who came to America were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the King and the Church of England for their unorthodox beliefs. They were political revolutionaries who meant to over throw the English monarchy and did in 1649. Noble as their victory was, Puritan tyranny simply replaced royal tyranny.

But in 1620, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony were outcasts who could not fit into English mainstream society. They regarded their Wampanoag Indian benefactors as their enemy, as noted in the Plymouth Thanksgiving sermon of 1623 by Mather the Elder who gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague of smallpox that destroyed the majority of the Wampanoag Indians. He praised God for eliminating “chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth.

To the Pilgrims, the Indians were heathens and, therefore, instruments of the Devil. Squanto, the only educated Wampanoag among the Indians, was regarded as merely an instrument of God set in the wilderness to provide for the survival of the Chosen Elect–the Pilgrims.

Records are not very clear about when the Pilgrims celebrated that first Thanksgiving. And stories about that first Pilgrim thanks- giving have been embroidered with touches of Indian charity helping those Pilgrims through their first rough winter in America.

But at that first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, Pilgrim friendship was feigned and the peace offered tenuous. A generation later when the population shift favored the whites. Puritans slaughtered Indians genocidally in the conflict that has become known as King Philip’s War, after which King Philip of the Indians was beheaded and the Wampanoags sold into slavery. So much for the myth of harmony about that first Thanksgiving.

The myth of that first Thanksgiving actually came into being during the 19^th century when the national goal of assimilation emerged as a way to homogenize a diversity of people into a unified nation through a common national (albeit mythical) history.

But the Pilgrim Thanksgiving of 1621 was not the first thanksgiving in America. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon pro-claimed thanksgiving when his crew put ashore on what is now St. Augustine, Florida. In his account of the Conquest of Mexico, Bernal Diaz notes a moment of thanksgiving in 1519 joined by Cortez and his men for safe passage to what is now Veracruz, Mexico.

A story of thanksgiving is told about Panfilo de Narvaez and his expedition to Florida in 1526. Another story of thanksgiving is told about Coronado and his men, taking place on the banks of the Rio Grande near present-day San Elizario, Texas, in 1540 near what is today El Paso. And on September 8, 1565, Don Pedro Menendez declared a day of thanks before begining construction of St. Augustine, Florida. Stories of thanksgiving abound.

Mention is made here and there in American history about a national day of thanksgiving. On October 3, 1863, for example, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a day of thanksgiving . And in 1905, Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation declaring November 12 as a day of thanksgiving. Not Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving Day did not actually become a national holiday until December 26, 1941, with House Joint Resolution 41 (77^th Congress, 1^st Session) declaring the 4^th Thursday in Novem-ber as Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving is a day all Americans commemorate. But Thanksgiving is not a proprietary holiday. The Pilgrims didn’t invent it. Nor did the Spanish. But when we think of the first thanksgiving we need to look at the forgotten (some would say “neglected”) pages of American history. For the history of the United States during the period when its lands were Spanish is as much a part of American history as is the history of the period when its lands were English.

More importantly, perhaps, is to remember that as a national holiday, Thanksgiving Day is of recent origin, belonging to the children of the 20^th century. It’s time to re-commemorate Thanksgiving Day as a day of hope for the American children of the 21^st century.

Metacomet's Head, Massasoit children

Fusilamiento de Felipe Angeles

2011-11-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

Fusilamiento de Felipe Angeles

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En mil novecientos veinte
señores, tengan presente
fusilaron en Chihuahua
a un general muy valiente. De artillero comenzó
su carrera militar,
y en poco tiempo llegó
a ser un gran general.
El gobierno comprendió
los males que iba a causar,
y mandó que lo persiguieran
pa’ mandarlo a fusilar.
Con veinte hombres que traía
puso cuatro de avanzada,
para ver si no le tendían
una terrible emboscada.
En el cerro de la mora
le toco la mala suerte,
lo tomaron prisionero,
lo sentenciaron a muerte.
El reloj marca las horas
se acerca la ejecución,
preparen muy bien sus armas
y apúntenme al corazón.
Apúntenme al corazón,
no me demuestren tristeza,
a los hombres como yo
no se les dá en la cabeza.
Ya con esta me despido
por las hojas de un granado,
aquí termina el corrido
de un general afamado.

New Acquisitions Novemver 2011

2011-11-25T10:37:00.001-07:00

New Acquisitions for November 2011

Two New Gems from Wings Press on Lorna Dee Cervantes; Southern Latino Cooking from North Carolina Press; Rudolfo Anaya Plays on Univ. of Oklahoma Press; Pedro Moya de Contreras off Unv. of OK

The following review copies have been received by Pluma Fronteriza:

Billy the Kid and Other Plays

(Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Americas series)

Paperback Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (December 10, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0806142251 ISBN-13: 978-0806142258

Rudolfo Anaya (Author), Cecilia J. Aragon (Afterword), Robert Con Davis-Undiano (Afterword)

Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems

Paperback Wing Press 978-0-916727-84-0

ePub ISBN: 978-1-60940-153-5
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-60940-154-2
Library PDF ISBN: 978-1-60940-155-9

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

In this delightful book, Lorna Dee Cervantes has undertaken a mad discipline: the 100 word format unleashes paradoxically vast effects. Full of playfulness, rage and her traditional fire, Ciento is a masterful performance. (The title, said out loud, not only means "100," but can be read in another way to say: "I feel.") These are the world's biggest, deepest, miniatures. You will dip into it again and again.
— Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter and The Queen of America

Come down from your Tower of Loneliness and enter the hurly burly of Love in Lorna Dee Cervantes' magnificent book of poems, Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems. Each poem is 100 words long. Each poem overflows with an abundance of poetic energy, insight, eroticism, and above all, humor. Someone once said you know when you've read a good poem because when the poem stops, you go through the windshield. In this collection, you go through the windshield at almost every line. As Lorna Dee says in her poem "100 Words to the Chaos (Without You)," whatever pattern of attraction she has for you, the reader, she longs to "lay it on a Fibonacci /sequential spiral dance to you." Buy this book. Read it. It'll keep you young and in love forever.
— E. A. "Tony" Mares, author of With the Eyes of a Raptor and Astonishing Light: Conversations I Never Had With Patrociño Barela

Stunned Into Being: Essays on the Poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes

Paperback Wings Press 9780916727888 ||

by Eliza Rodriguez y Gibson

Editor Eliza Rodriguez y Gibson writes that Lorna Dee Cervantes' phrase “the poetry of improbability” describes perfectly “the critical possibilities of poetry: it juxtaposes the horrors of nuclear weapons testing with images of beauty; it gives the ineffable mass and color; and ultimately, it presents the reader with a choice that is predicated on our agency as thinking and doing subject in the world...Ultimately that sense of possibility is what drives Cervantes' vision, and it is what draws so many readers to her work”

Pedro Moya De Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571-1591

Hardcover Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd); 2 edition (March 15, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0806141719 ISBN-13: 978-0806141718

Stafford Poole (Author)

A definitive portrait of a Spanish cleric and royalist who fundamentally shaped New Spain, updated in light of newly available sources.

For a brief few years in the sixteenth century, Pedro Moya de Contreras was the most powerful man in the New World. A church official and loyal royalist, he came to Mexico in 1571 to establish the Inquisition and later became archbishop and viceroy for the region.

This new edition of Stafford Poole s definitive portrait of Moya de Contreras, first published in 1971, now offers an expanded understanding of this enigmatic figure s influence on the development of New Spain. In tracing the career of a sixteenth-century church official and administrator who was more notable for what he did than for who he was, Poole offers a rich source of information about Spanish rule in colonial Mexico and the evolving relationship between the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic Church.

For this second edition, Poole draws on newly available sources to fill in gaps regarding Moya de Contreras s shadowy early career and final years in Spain. He also explores in greater depth the churchman s influence as Grand Inquisitor in light of the plethora of new research and recent publications on the Spanish Inquisition.

Poole shows that Moya de Contreras was as diligent at carrying out the tortures of the Inquisition as he was at exposing government and church corruption. His reforming zeal reached its culmination in his leadership of the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585, which enacted a legal code for the Mexican Church that lasted more than three hundred years.

The New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes that Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South

Hardcover Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (August 15, 2011)

Language: English ISBN-10: 0807834947 ISBN-13: 978-0807834947

Sandra A. Gutierrez (Author)

In this splendid cookbook, bicultural chef Sandra Gutierrez blends ingredients, traditions, and culinary techniques, creatively marrying the diverse and delicious cuisines of more than twenty Latin American countries with the beloved food of the American South.

The New Southern-Latino Table features 150 original and delightfully tasty recipes that combine the best of both culinary cultures. Sandra, who has taught thousands of people how to cook, highlights the surprising affinities between the foodways of the Latin and Southern regions--including a wide variety of ethnic roots in each tradition and many shared basic ingredients--while embracing their flavorful contrasts and fascinating histories.

These lively dishes--including Jalapeno Deviled Eggs, Cocktail Chiles Rellenos with Latin Pimiento Cheese, Two-Corn Summer Salad, Latin Fried Chicken with Smoky Ketchup, Macaroni con Queso, and Chile Chocolate Brownies--promise to spark the imaginations and the meals of home cooks, seasoned or novice, and of food lovers everywhere. Along with delectable appetizers, salads, entrees, side dishes, and desserts, Sandra also provides a handy glossary, a section on how to navigate a Latin tienda, and a guide to ingredient sources. The New Southern-Latino Table brings to your home innovative, vibrant dishes that meld Latin American and Southern palates.

El Paso Writers Update for Nov. 20, 2011

2011-11-20T19:32:00.001-07:00

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Nov. 20, 2011
News on Troncoso, Gilb, Jesus Tafoya, Octavio Solis, Luis J. Rodriguez
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Praise for Dagoberto's Gilb's New Book

I'm sure everyone got to see the New York Times feature on Dagoberto Gilb. If not, check out From Here to Oaxaca by Bridget Kevan: "Where are we when we are before the end yet after the beginning? We are in the midst of life, where everything happens. Before the end and after the beginning, one celebrates a perfect sixth birthday, looks for a job, has an affair, remembers old girlfriends, suffers a stroke. These are the moments Dagoberto Gilb describes in his elegiac third story collection, “Before the End, After the Beginning.” READ MORE.

Of interest also out of Victoria, Texas is UHV writer-in-residence draws national praise for latest book (Victoria Advoacte).

Also check out this short review by Susannah Meadows in the New York Times. READ IT NOW
and this youtube presentation: See it now

Troncoso on a Role

If you missed Sergio Troncoso's reading at UT El Paso a few weeks ago, check out this You Tube video of the reading: Sergio Troncoso Reading.

Also check out this piece on the Hudson Valley Writers Gala which honored Sergio Troncoso among others. Read now. Troncoso has posted several reviews of his novel From This Wicked Patch of Dust on his website. Read Reviews Now.

Octavio Solis' "June in a Box"

Check out this piece about Octavio Solis' play "June in a Box": "Solis, who wrote Cal Shakes' epic saga "Pastures of Heaven," became intrigued with the story of June Robles, a 6-year-old girl kidnapped on her way home from school and held for 19 days in a box in the Arizona desert. He wondered how she managed to survive and what the effect the experience had on her later in life. The result of his investigations is a dreamlike, hauntingly lyrical piece of theater that stirs the imagination long after you leave the theater." READ NOW.

Ruben Salazar Honored

The Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project honored Ruben Salazar at their annual Annual Fiesta Fronteriza. Read more .

Luis J. Rodriguez on Occupy America

Check out Luis J. Rodriguez blog post The Heart of Occupy America:
"In the early hours of Tuesday, November 15, New York City police officers attacked and removed Occupy Wall Street Protestors from Liberty Plaza in the city’s financial district, leading to many arrests and the removal of tents, property, and other items. This is Ground Zero for the Occupy Movement sweeping across the United States and other parts of the world." READ MORE.

4th Annual McNair-Tafoya Symposium

Sul Ross State University held its fourth annual McNair-Tafoya Symposium on Monday at the Morgan University Center. The university's McNair-Tafoya Symposium is named in memory of Jesus Tafoya, an associate professor of Spanish, who died in 2008 and who was a mentor from the beginning of the McNair program. Read More.

Honoring America's Veterans By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

2011-11-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

American soldiers of the 353rd Infantry near a church at Stenay, Meus in France. Foto taken on November 11, 1918, two minutes before the armistice ending World War I went into effect. --Department of Veterans Affairs.

HONORING AMERICA’S VETERANS

Previous version titled “Veteran’s Day: Pain and Promise” appeared in Newspaper Tree, November 10, 2008; Silver City Daily Press, November 11, 2008; La Prensa, San Antonio, Texas, November 11, 2007. Posted on Somos en Escritos: Latino Literary Online Magazine.

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Since the founding of the nation, some 48 million men and women have served in the U.S. military. More than half are alive today. A small number of World War II veterans are still with us, though they are dying at the rate of about 1,000 a day.

In the United States there are two days that honor American veterans: one is Memorial Day — the last Monday in May — and the other is Veteran’s Day —each year on November 11.

Some sources indicate that Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic when, as decorations, flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

In May of 1966, President Lyndon Johnson officially declared Waterloo N.Y. as the official birthplace of Memorial Day. In December of 2000, Congress passed the “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution to remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day.

Until 1968 when the Congress established the Uniform Holiday act and moved Memorial Day to the last Monday in May, the nation celebrated Decoration / Memorial Day on May 30^th as a day of remembrance for Americans who died in battle.

On January 19, 1999, efforts were made to restore Memorial Day back to May 30^th instead of “the last Monday in May,” the traditional day of observance of Decoration / Memorial Day. The efforts were unsuccessful.

In the 20^th century, the War of nations (World War I) ended on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 and the day was proclaimed as Armistice Day in remembrance of the end of World War I and is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

By Executive Order, in November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. The day was later renamed Veterans Day to honor those who have served in any of the armed forces during war.

Each year on November 11, the nation celebrates that legacy and commemorates its contribution to the American character. In 2004 the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to name the city of Emporia, Kansas, as the official founding city of Veterans Day.

When World War II ended in August of 1945, I was 19 years old and a Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I had survived the vagaries of that grueling war and, putting my uniform aside, went out into the world to make my “fortune” with the 16 million men and women who served in that effort.

What that fortune would be, I had no idea. Thanks to the University of Pittsburgh (1948-1952) that fortune has turned out to be an academic career spanning almost six decades and a staggering production of published words. All this with only one year of high school and no GED.

What I knew at war’s end was that as a World War II veteran the promises of America strengthened my resolve to confront the challenges of the nation at mid-century. What I also knew was that as a veteran I was part of a legacy of military service stretching back to the foundations of the nation.

n Veterans Day, in particular, I think about the youth of our nation fighting in brutal climes like Afghanistan and Iraq. I think about Willie Bains, a companion of my youth who went off to the European Theater during World War II and never came back. We should have grown old together and reveled in conversations about our children and grandchildren.

On Veterans Day, especially, I think about the World War I veterans I used to see in my youth on the streets of San Antonio, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, hawking paper poppies (symbolic of Memorial Day) for donations.

Inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields” (December 18, 1915) by Lt. Colonel John McCrae a Medical Doctor of the Canadian Army, Moina Michaels initiated the tradition of sporting poppies on Decoration/Memorial Day.

I remember how many veterans of World War I in my youth were without limbs, how many of them were blind, how many of them had grown old before their time, had given up on life and the promises of their country — all this after having given themselves to America.

Though they are less, today I see maimed and crippled veterans of World War II struggling to come to terms with the visions they still carry in their heads about that conflagration.

And now in our nation there are veterans of Viet Nam and subsequent battles waiting for the largesse of the nation to heal them of their wounds, to succor them in their time of need.

The nation has not served its veterans well, those who gave their full measure of devotion “to protect and defend.” This is not a panegyric to the nobility of war, for there is little nobility in the ravages of warfare. Memorial Day and Veterans Day should be a reminder to all of us that, despite our differences, regardless of color, religion, ethnicity, or gender, we should pay homage to our fellow Americans who have defended the ramparts of our democracy even though that democracy has at times disdained their service.

Memorial Day and Veterans Day are flitting moments in the enduring cycle of nation-building. We have not yet formed “a more perfect union.” Ronald Reagan’s shining city on the hill still awaits us while the blood of our children is spent today on campaigns that remind us of Greek and Roman excursions into foreign lands in pursuit of empire.

And what of the veterans of those campaigns? Those men and women who have sacrificed (and are sacrificing) so much in pursuit of an imperious chimera whose flight takes (has taken) us into perilous regions. What of their sacrifices? All the sacrifices of our veterans over the life of our nation create a collectivity of patriotism dedicated to the ideals of the nation rather than to the vagaries of its politics. For that reason we should honor our live and fallen veterans on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

--John McCrae

Felipe de Ortego y Gasca is Scholar in Residence, Chair, Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University; USMC, World War II, 1943-1946 (Platoon Sergeant); USAF, Korean and Viet Nam Conflicts, 1952-1962 (Active Duty: Captain; Major, USAFR)

El Paso County Sheriff's Office linked to Fast and Furious

2011-11-03T23:18:00.003-07:00

Nov 4, 12:05 AM EDT

AP Associated Pest

El Paso County Sheriff's Office linked to Fast and Furious

Vin Diesel and Sheriff Wiles Seen at Party

By TOCAYO TRIFT

AP Film Writer

El Paso (AP) -- The El Paso County Sheriff's Office was among several local law enforcement agencies that was asked to aid in the making of various films in the “Fast and the Furious” film series. These new allegations have surprised both El Paso's film critics and non-critics alike spurring both parties to plead “please no more 'Fast and Furious' movies!”

The “Fast and the Furious” franchise started in 2001 with the original “The Fast and The Furious,” not to be confused with “Fast & Furious” (2009) or the forthcoming “Fast/Furious” (coming in 2013) or “Fast-Furious” (coming in 2014), or “Fast (i.e. Furious)”(coming in 2015).

Left, Vin Diesel ("The Fast") and Right, Sheriff Richard Wiles ("The Furious")

This series of films was marked with significant bad acting and terrible plots. Sources report that DVDs of the various “Fast and the Furious” movies were allowed to be smuggled into Mexico.

However, Sheriff Richard Wiles says that his office only supported the making of “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006) and not any other film in the franchise. Regarding the smuggling of the franchise movies into Mexico, Wiles stated that his office is “not the Mexican border patrol.”

Since its inception, the injection of “Fast and the Furious” movies into the Mexican economy has had great repercussions. “Imagine, Mexican kids trying to imitate Vin Diesel's acting skills,” stated Mexican President Felipe Calderon, “we want are kids to learn from the masters of playing Mexicans like Charleston Heston, Natalie Wood, Jennifer Lopez, and El Paso City Representative Steve Ortega.”

Wiles said he will not get into the film criticism on the films and said his office will continue assisting with the production of more “Fast and Furious” movies.

The ATF also known as the Bureau of Atrocious and Terrible Films first introduced Vin Diesel films into Mexico hoping to stop the import of excellent Mexican films into the US especially by noted Mexican directors such as Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday that he just remembered Mexicans and Mexico existed, and he plans to question Vin Diesel regarding the film-walking operations with Texas connections.

Last year, the El Paso Film Police found stash of films including “The Fast and The Furious” (2001), “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003), “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006), “Fast & Furious” (2009), “Fast Five” (2011), and “Fast & Furious 6” (2013) in a West El Paso home reputed to belong to El Paso City Representative Cortney Niland.

Lunes Con Lalo: Encounter and Financial Restrictions

2011-10-31T06:47:00.000-07:00

Abelardo & Dolores Delgado (Emanuel Martinez)

Lunes Con Lalo

Poetic Wisdom for Your Week by Abelardo Delgado

Encounter

I just heard

a misplaced word

as another minute

passed me by.

Each minute

comes much closer.

My heart behaves

strangely.

My mind makes circles

of excitement

as if

life itself

was about to be born.

Two people bound to meet

cease being people

and entangle in some angelic harp

approach each other.

They don't run

to each

other

but fly with anxious wings

which in their hearts

happily flutter.

Time, jealous of the way

these two are using it,

refused to move.

It freezes their encounter

Their embrace

becomes a stone

and their kiss

turns to marble.

Their words become lava,

they taste desire's guava.

=========

Financial Restriction

Match your good will

to a dollar bill.

Seven blessings

won't pay back rent.

I can't buy

a bag of groceries

with all your rosaries.

From La Llorona: 43 Lloronas of Abelardo
(c) Abelardo Delgado

Published with permission of the Delgado Estate.

Double Speak By Rodolfo F. Acuña

2011-10-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Double Speak

By Rodolfo F. Acuña

Stuart Chase’s The Tyranny of Words (1938) described an “anxiety culture” where the manipulation of word meanings was a device for control. Chase’s book encouraged the study of semantics (the science of word meaning). Within a decade George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) coined the notion of doublespeak, the act of disguising and distorting of words.

What was then a conversation point has become the norm. Today, doublespeak is so common that euphemisms such as “downsizing” for layoffs or you’re fired and “take out” for destroy or murder are used without reflection. The intentional ambiguity has become part of the political stratagem.

The intent of doublespeak is to deny or disguise the truth. As propaganda it rivals Adolph Hitler’s Big Lie and is today so widespread that out of necessity the field of linguistics has grown to the point that there are numerable subfields.

Doublespeak has led to the field of forensic linguistics to breakdown the meaning or intent of words to juries and judges alike. This has led to the development of the International Association of Forensic Linguists that publishes the Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law.

George Carlin had a whole routine on euphemisms such as he "passed away," avoiding the reality of “he is dead.” The use of euphemisms is nothing new; in the 18^th century, Shakespeare in Hamlet used the euphemism “die” for “orgasm,” thus Hamlet said "I die in your lap." The problem today is that the use is so pervasive.

There are varying layers of euphemisms which involve sophisticated metaphors. They can be traced back to the Greeks and historically they have enriched poetry and dichos (proverbs). Euphemisms are so common that we often accept their literal meaning without reflection.

To protect oneself it is important to be cautious and develop a general knowledge of semantics. University of California Los Angeles professor Otto Santa Ana’s Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse is especially informative. Santa Ana gives the reader awareness and the tools to decipher propaganda. Particularly interesting is how the government uses metaphors such “desert storms” substituting it for the reality of the war or invasion of Iraq in the 1990s.

Just thinking about different meanings, how different is the use of “Manifest Destiny” from Deutschland über alles. In U.S. history the so-called Western Expansion has been described as “The Winning of the West” as if the Indian Wars had been a ballgame.

In other instances, it is called the “Western Expansion,” the “Western Movement,” or the “re-annexation of Texas and the Southwest” (which again are all euphemisms for Manifest Destiny). Are these expressions factual?

History is replete with examples of doublespeak. At the turn of the 19^th century industrialists and bankers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon built financial and industrial empires by exploiting the public, the natural resources and exploiting and assassinating workers. Their behavior was so nefarious that historians and reformers dubbed them the Robber Barons.

Later foundations endowed by the robber barons funded historians such as Allan Nevins to rewrite history and rechristen them “Captains of Industry.” The Texas based King Ranch, which accumulated a million acres of land, much of it stolen from Mexican farmers, paid Historian Tom Lea to write a Horatio Alger-like eulogy to Richard King.

In recent times, countless other instances of doublespeak have crept into the American vernacular. Expressions such as “pulling oneself up by his or her bootstrap,” “equality,” “equal opportunity,” “free world” or the “democratic world” are misused. We refer to countries led by dictators as “democratic” simply because they support us. Western Civilization means the white world and along with the “free world” insidiously refer to countries that at one time had empires and profited from the sale of slaves.

As a student of urban history, words such as redevelopment and urban renewal bug me. In Tucson I came across a group called the Southern Arizona Leadership Council whose members have made fortunes by buying government land at bargain prices and displacing homeowners. They have made millions by having the inside track to contracts and jobs.

In Los Angeles we call “urban development” or “urban renewal,” people removers or bulldozed communities. People were displaced and others made huge profits because of this removal.

Lately, words like “class warfare” and “equality” have taken on distorted meanings. In the present economic crisis people call the one percent who often pay minimal or no pay taxes, “job creators.” Are they job creators when most have received huge federal bailouts and they refuse to reinvest the money in American jobs? For that matter are they patriotic because they wear flag pins? Are the ninety-nine percent waging class warfare by criticizing the privilege of the few?

For that matter, are the Kochs philanthropists because their foundations donate money to art galleries that bear their names? Should they be called philanthropists for funding groups to fight government regulation with the purpose of making higher business profits and paying lower taxes?

The tranny of words becomes dangerous when translating foreign words. Recently my friend Arnaldo Cordova wrote an article in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

in which he referred to the rash of bombings in Mexico as being the byproduct of “delinquencia organizada,” which upon a hurried reading I translated as organized juvenile delinquency. Boy was I embarrassed.

But look at the idiots who translate the word la raza as strictly meaning race when it popularly refers to a people. Because of the gullibility or ignorance of others the xenophobes continue to intentionally confuse communication, entering Hitler’s Big Lie twilight zone.

Recent anti-immigrant campaigns have taken a similar bent. In 1994 the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 campaign that restricted public services for undocumented immigrants was insidiously called 187. In California Section 187 refers to the California Penal Code that defines the crime of murder.

This demonetization has its roots in the “term illegal alien.” Illegal conjures the imagery of criminality; alien invokes the imagery of body snatchers from outer space.

This imagery plays on the American fears that recall 1980s movies of extraterrestrial invasions. They are popularized by people who still believe in the boogeyman and are afraid of the dark. Many white people in Arizona are afraid that they are losing their patrimony to the Mexican body snatchers, although most Mexicans have been in Arizona longer than the snowbirds.

Words have meaning; there are consequences in distorting them. Look no further than the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” In the process, the truth becomes a casualty when it loses its sense of reality. What is keeping this country afloat is scientific or critical thinking and we are losing this edge. Doublespeak is the antithesis of science.

Thinking is not bad, it won’t kill you. Msgr. Ivan Illich in his book Tools for Conviviality (1975), laments the loss of convivial tools in our society:

I choose the term "conviviality" to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members.

Our anxiety culture today is in danger of losing its most basic convivial tool -- reasoned communication. Today, doublespeak has crossed over the line. People are captives of the political euphemisms of others who are purposely dishonest. In the end, this will lead to lethal consequences that may in many instances kill and in other occasions make us poorer and less free as the truth loses its sense of reality.

Published with permission of Rodolfo F. Acuña

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Oct. 16, Part I

2011-10-16T10:32:00.001-07:00

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Oct. 16, Part I
News on Sasha Pimentel Chacon, Dagoberto Gilb, Miguel Juarez, Pat Mora and more
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Above, left to right, Pluma editor Raymundo Eli Rojas, Miguel Juarez, and Hector Gonzalez talking about saving El Paso's Lincoln Center and Luis Jimenez' sculpture "Los Lagartos"

Two full months of actvism has prevented me from posting a whole lot on the PF blog. I've finally come to the realization that I no longer have time to do a full newsletter of Pluma Fronteriza and Libros, Libros. I'm talking about the hardcopy. I'd enjoy any recommendation though. I'm still thinking about it.

Sasha will accept the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award Today

UT El Paso prof wins American Book Award

Our biggest news we have is that UTEP Creative Writing professor Sasha Pimentel Chacon Won the Before Columbus Foundaton's American Book Award. See El Diario de El Paso article "Premian libro de poesía de inmigrante": "Una mezcla de sencillez, orgullo y alma de niña se observan en los ojos rasgados de la ahora paseña Sasha Pimentel Chacón, una escritora que llegó hace apenas cuatro años a estos lares para quedarse." READ MORE.

Also see this West End Press media release on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/notes/west-end-press/sasha-pimentel-chac%C3%B3n-to-accept-american-book-award-in-berkeley-october-16/10150358544122305

Gilb and Fountain to receive Awards in November

Also Poet Carrie Fountain of Las Cruces will receive the emerging author award from the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation's inaugural Illumine awards for excellence in literary achievement in November. Dagoberto Gilb will be offered the fiction award. Read more.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

Saenz in Chicago

John Green and Benjamin Alire Sáenz, authors known for their "coming-of-age"characters, will be in conversation with Donna Seaman discussing Saul Bellow's book "The Adventures of Augie March" at 6 p.m. at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.; free. Registration is required. 312-747-8191. See chicagopubliclibrary1b1c.eventbrite.com.

Saenz is mention in an article in the San Antonio Express-News which features El Pasoen Heidi Marquez Smith: "Director of Book Festival Wants To Reach More Kids."

Luis J. Rodriguez

Rodriguez in the Huff

John Rogers features Luis Rodriguez in his article "Words prevailed over gangs for Luis J. Rodriguez". "Even when he was a notorious street punk, shooting at people and shooting up heroin, there was always something a little different about Luis J. Rodriguez. If he wasn't pulling a knife to settle a dispute or running to avoid the law, Rodriguez was just as likely to be off somewhere reading: Homer's "Odyssey" maybe; or John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"; or some other great work." READ MORE.

Dagoberto Gilb (courtesy of The Venture)

Gilb on Nuestra Palabra Tour

Nuestra Palabra Tour will be coming to El Paso which may include Junot Diaz, Sandra Cisneros, Dagoberto Gilb among other. See "Nuestra Palabra takes its Latino literature showcase on the road."

Gilb's forthcoming short story collection (next month!) is listed in "Celebrate Hispanic heritage with a good read": "Finding a book by, for or about a person of Hispanic heritage used to be a chore. We forget there was a time when mainstream bookstores and libraries carried little to nothing that could pass for a book about the Latino experience in the United States." READ MORE.

Wedding Bells at Cinco Puntos

Congrads to Cinco Puntos Press' Johnny Byrd on his recent marriage. See Cinco Puntos' statement "Yes, Johnny Byrd did get married!"

Mary Wright as the Library Lady and Gabe Martinez as Tom‡s in 'Tomas and the Library Lady,' a bilingual play by Pennsylvania Youth Theatre. Public performances are Tuesday and Oct. 18 at the Bethlehem Public Library, and Oct. 22 at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks. (contributed photo / October 5, 2011)

Tomas and the Library Lady

See this article about "Tomas and the Library Lady" based on Pat Mora's award-winning children's book. The story was adapted for the stage in 2005 by Latino playwright Jose Cruz Gonzale. The play will be performed on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Check out "Free bilingual play presents inspirational story": "Tomas, the main character in Pat Mora's book "Tomas and the Library Lady," is an inspirational character. Through the kindness of a stranger, he learns how important reading, hard work and perseverance are to success." READ MORE.

Miguel Juarez on "El Vaquero" Removal

We will be featuring an interview with Miguel Juarez soon regarding his activism on part for Luis Jimenez' Los Lagartos and Lincoln Center (El Paso). He was recently quoted by the El Paso Times and other venues regarding the city of El Paso losing Luis Jimenez "El Vaquero" sculpture. See Juarez' comments as well as photage of the removal "Adios, 'Vaquero': Luis Jimenez's famed sculpture leaves longtime home."

Troncoso to be honored at Gala

Sergio Troncoso is to be honored at the The Hudson Valley Writers' Center annual gala at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 3. The event is at Tappan Hill Mansion, the former Hudson Valley estate of Mark Twain. Tickets are $250. For information, call 914-332-5953.

David D. Romo

When Sergio Troncoso was in town a few weeks ago he said you won't find his books at Costco. Nevertheless, I did find David D. Romo's book. On David Romo, he is quoted in the El Paso Times article "Links of the past: Some of El Paso's landmarks in fight to survive."

Pluma Fronteriza - Your Chicano Literature News Headquarters

El Paso Writers Update, Sat, Feb. 25, 2012

Rodolfo F. Acuña: Arizona The End of the Stairway

En nuestro mexico febrero 23 - dejo carranza pasar los hijos de Reagan

Recent and Recommended Books of Note

Recent and Recommended Books of Note

A Power among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

Demanding Child Care: Women’s Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971

Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile

I'm Neither Here nor There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty

Paperback Duke University Press Books (June 13, 2011)

ISBN-10: 0822350351 ISBN-13: 978-0822350354

Lunes con Lalo: Focus Groups

Rodolfo F. Acuña: Why Not Enjoy Yourself? Let the Younger People Take Over You Have Paid Your Dues

Recent Releases

Banned Books Decade

Lunes con Lalo Delgado: National Jefes - Some Not Too Objective Observations Part III, Banned Books Week, and New Book Titles in September 2010

Banned Book #2: Always Running and a Visit with Don Luis and the Idenfication of Chicano Literature

Chicano Banned Book #3: Bless Me, Ultima - Felipe Ortego

Tommy Stands Alone - Banned Book #4

Antonio's Card: Banned Book #5

Also see "Chicano writers ecstatic about new ethnic studies ban in Arizona"

Rough Notes on Arizona

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Feb. 6

Rafael Lopez: a visual journeyman.

A small mention of John Rechy is in Dora Levy Mossanen's look at The Last Romanov. (Huffington Post)

Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual. You bet, check out this

THE LIBROTRAFICANTES CARAVAN COMING TO MESILLA

Dr. Cornel West's Historic Visit to Phoenix, Arizona

Feliz Cumpleños a Nuestro Poeta laureado chicano Abelardo Delgado

Thanksgiving in America by Felipe Ortego

Metacomet's Head, Massasoit children

Fusilamiento de Felipe Angeles

New Acquisitions Novemver 2011

El Paso Writers Update for Nov. 20, 2011

Honoring America's Veterans By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

El Paso County Sheriff's Office linked to Fast and Furious

Nov 4, 12:05 AM EDT

AP Associated Pest

El Paso County Sheriff's Office linked to Fast and Furious

Lunes Con Lalo: Encounter and Financial Restrictions

Double Speak By Rodolfo F. Acuña

El Paso Writers Update for Week of Oct. 16, Part I