Chicanonautica: Carlos Castaneda’s Very Weird Shit

by Ernest Hogan 

 

I can’t ignore Carlos Castaneda. Not only was he a bestselling author from the Latinoid Continuum, a big influence on pop culture (the Force in Star Wars is based on power), and a lot of scifiistas. He also encroaches on my territory. So when I heard about Ru Marshall’s American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda, I knew I had to read and review it.

It’s a thick one and it took me a while, mostly because it kept giving me a lot to think about. I’d read a little, and have to stop and let my brain chew on the chunks of weird shit.

And what weird shit . . .

Telling women his semen would instantly give them shamanistic power. Having another man impregnate his wife so he could have a blond son (he was el Negro of his family). His “I am in Peru or Mexico" gag. Immortality. Travel to other dimensions . . .

I had always thought Hunter S. Thompson summed him up in a letter to Oscar Zeta Acosta: “Very weird. The old man really fucked the kid around, eh?” Only now it looks like don Juan didn’t exist. Just who was doing the fucking around here? I have to reconsider my thinking.

It’s that kind of book.

It triggers memories of the world since the Sixties. As the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, I have a unique perspective. Yeah, he wasn’t quite a Chicano in the sense of a Mexican choosing a non-Anglo identity. He was from Peru, but told people he was Brazilian–how do you think people saw him in SoCal? He was cut off (though largely by his own choice) from his family/tribal/ancestral roots, living between cultures, creating his own identity–that’s Chicano.

Also immigrants who can’t fully assimilate tend to become Chicanos.

I read his first two books back in the Seventies largely because they were unavoidable. They were entertaining. I didn’t consider them fiction. 

Since I find the idea of a know-it-all telling everyone what to do a turn-off, I went no further. Besides gurus were–and still are–crawling out of the woodwork.

I don’t believe in gurus.

Thank Tezcatlipoca for my built-in bullshit detector!

Also every Yaqui I’ve met who’s heard of him thought he was full of shit.

Sometimes his name comes up when people try to describe my work, though I’m probably closer to Oscar Acosta, but that’s still misleading.

Sometimes it’s easier to let people have their misconceptions of me than to explain my Chicano-is-a-sci-fi-state-of-being reality. It’s not really lying. What do you do when they don’t seem to be capable of seeing the truth?

Maybe I am un poco like him.

Unlike him, I am not a pathological liar. Apparently, he lied constantly. Ru Marshall did an amazing twenty-year job of sorting through this man’s work and utterances, cross referencing it with interviews with people who knew and encountered him and coming up with an epic biography that is, in my humble opinion, more interesting and fantastic than Castaneda's books. 

He lived writing fiction in his head all the time. So do I. I am painfully aware of where my real life ends and the sci-fi begins. I have no interest in making others live in my fantasies.

It is impressive that he got anthropologists at UCLA to give him a doctorate for a novel, though the fact that he was a rich, bestselling author probably breached the experiment. It’s not surprising that Simon & Schuster didn’t care any more than his readers did. Fiction? Nonfiction? They only care if the books sell. I’ve heard that there are people who read all his books then start over. They fill a need that I don't have.

I think.

This is all amusing, up until you get to the mysterious deaths and disappearances following his death, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see successful media adaptations. The chapter about the fucking around with Fellini alone would make a wild and crazy movie. In all, it’s a bizarre soap opera dealing with the Great American/Latinoid Spiritual Crisis.

The peoples of the United States of America have a strong lust for spirituality. It’s a product they keep trying to buy. It makes them prey to the manipulations of narcissistic sociopaths. We need to learn to recognize and resist them.

And stop electing them.

Be careful out there.

Ernest Hogan’s New, Improved Ancient Chicano Sci-Fi Wisdom is not a cult. When he finds himself sounding like a guru, he laughs. Or is that the laughter of Tezcatlipoca?

Los Angeles Libros Festival

 

For more information visit https://www.lapl.org/libros

Un festival del libro bilingüe para toda la familia

Los Angeles Libros Festival ofrecerá una entretenida programación con cuentacuentos, conciertos, autores, talleres, libros y comunidad. Entrada gratuita.

Sábado 26 de septiembre 2026

Biblioteca Central

630 W. 5th St.

Los Angeles, CA 90071

A Free Bilingual Book Festival for the Whole Family

Los Angeles Libros Festival will offer a full day of entertainment featuring Spanish-language and bilingual storytelling, musical performances, authors, workshops, books, and community. Free and open to the general public.

Saturday, September 26, 2026

Central Library

630 W. 5th St.

Los Angeles, CA 90071

Presented by the Los Angeles Public Library in partnership with LA librería and REFORMA Los Angeles, the event features an interdisciplinary lineup:

*Storytelling & Authors: Spanish-language and bilingual storytimes, panels with award-winning authors, and illustrator showcases. 

*Live Entertainment: Hands-on arts and crafts workshops, a photo booth, and custom bilingual poetry typed out live on antique typewriters. 

*Mercadito: A book fair market powered by LA librería where families can browse and purchase Spanish-language children's and young adult literature. 

Admission: The festival is entirely free and open to the public. While walk-ins are welcome, the library encourages families to register a free spot on Eventbrite to help monitor attendance.

Parking: Reduced validation parking ($1) is available directly beneath the library at the 524 South Flower St. garage for Saturday attendees who show their library card at the information desk. 

El Gluten-free Chicano Cooks: Enchiladas Suizas

El Gluten-free Chicano Serves Home-made Enchiladas Suizas
Michael Sedano. Fotos by Thelma T. Reyna.

Back when travel to Tijuana was safe from ICEhole interference, my first stop was Sanborn’s in Rio Tijuana for their enchiladas suiza plate. The food arrives hot and tasty, swimming in rich suiza sauce, so delicious I want to lick the plate but I don’t want to give tourists from el otro lado a bad name.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas decided recently to cure his antojo for enchiladas suizas and mejor, without the hassle of crossing the border. It's been a few years for el Gluten-free Chicas Patas making suizas and he tweaked the ingredients and method un poquito.

Enchiladas suizas are company food, fancy, tasty, inexpensive, and they make an impressive plate.

Among the better features of enchiladas suizas is their simplicity to make, hence when company arrives you can concentrate on being the best amphitrión and accept your guests’ lavish compliments.

How many mouths? This determines how much sauce you’re going to want. You want a goodly amount of sauce and grated cheese. Plan on two enchiladas per diner. As it happens, Thelma and I are light eaters so one was more than enough. 

Buy good tortillas, avoid thin ones because they will tear when you lift them from the oil. Using a torn tort produces an usuitable roll. In today's preparation, the Gluten-free Chicano bought cheap torts and regretted it when the tongs tore the tort as they came out of the sartén. Shoulda used a lower flame and done it by hand; fingers won't tear a hole in the eucharist.

Echiladas Suizas are incredibly rich and delicious so accompaniments can be elegantly simple; frijoles, a salad (fruit salad can double as dessert), fruit juice (fresh, or fermented, i.e. champagne), sandía or ice cream dessert, and the sine qua non beverage of a winning dinner pachanga, good champagne. The Gluten-free Chicano prefers California's best, Korbel Natural. The fotos show just how rare--el GFC had to buy the sweeter version, not Brut, the "Extra Dry". It's a delicious wine notwithstanding not first nor second choice.

The Gluten-free Chicano gets asco from all-white colored food, so he uses yellow cheese and a tomato to add some color to the sour cream/crema based sauce. Serve on a plate with some color contrast to the food.k Maybe garnish with red onion rings.

Carbohydrate volume. I use the USDA's carb counting page. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-search?type=Foundation to estimate the total carbs in the recipe and thus the carbohydrates in a single enchilada.

cheese: 1 cup 2.44 grams (g)

crema: 200 grams 4 g

sour cream: 100 grams 6 g

chicken: 0 g

chile: 100 grams 5 g

onion: 100 grams 2 g

garlic: 4 dientes 4 g

tortilla: 1 each 8 g, 6 torts is 48 g

tomato: 1 each 5 g

cilantro: 9 sprigs < 1 g

bell pepper: ½ cup 6 g

onion: 1 ea 15 g

Total in these quantities is 98 g. The Gluten-free Chicano's dietitian limits a big meal to 60 g carbs. Making six enchiladas gives you a 98/6 or 16 g per enchilada. Diabetic2 like el GFC are safe even if he overeats. This is not artificial intelligence but a human researcher, though, like the robot, I can make arithmetic errors. Use the link and check your own numbers.

 

Ingredients for two people with sobras for breakfast and even lonche

Roasted chicken thigh, back, and leg meat.

Mexican crema (<half the bottle)

Sour cream (1/4 cup)

Hatch chiles (six peeled and de-seeded)

Jack cheese, X-tra Sharp Cheddar (Grate enough cheese to cover all the enchiladas)

Corn tortillas (six)

Garlic (4 dientes)

Onion (1/3 brown or red)

Cilantro (1/3 of a bunch, stems and leaves)

Bell pepper (1/4 of a whole)

Tomato (al gusto, ½ a round or a whole Roma)

Salt

Black Pepper

  

Get Ready to Roll

Preheat oven to 350º

Non-stick spray or grease a casserole dish. Pour a ¼” of suiza sauce into the bottom of the dish.

Pull pollo off the carcass and shred. Please, no bones nor fragments so pull the meat and squeeze it for hard stuff. Mix in some cilantro, chopped onion and garlic, salt, black pepper to taste.

 

Suiza Sauce: espeso or soupy, that is the question.

Blender or food processor, whiz the crema, garlic, sour cream, chiles, tomato, garlic, cilantro, onion, bell pepper into a homogeneous sauce. It will be thick; if you want a soupy sauce, add milk or water. 

This recipe comes out thick and suitably viscous.The thick preparation works deliciously and is easy to work with.  Next time I'll use milk or broth for a soupy-ish sauce, just because every preparation needs to reward you with a different cooking and dining experience. Cooking with an experimental attitude is a secret to grand good times.

 

Assembling enchiladas 

Heat torts in a sartén with a splash of olive oil. Stack them on a plate to cool and supply the bull cook who will take a large pinch of chicken meat and roll a tortilla around the meat. Arrange the enchiladas into the casserole dish.

Pour suiza sauce over the enchiladas. Cover with grated cheese.

Bake the enchiladas for 20 minutes, or more to lightly toast the cheese.

Serve and disfrutar. Ajúa!

Illustrations (foto: Thelma T. Reyna):

Prepping chicken

Whizzing suiza sauce

Rolling enchiladas

Ready for the oven

Finished enchiladas

Plated meal

Shredding chicken by hand to find bones and gristle, remove skin

Using a Ninja tool to blend the suiza sauce. A blender or a  
food processor will do just as well. If you don't incorporate rajas and
other solid vegetables, a mixer will blend the liquids satisfactorily.

Wilting tortilla de maíz. Fearless cooks use fingers alone on low flame.

Tortillas don't stick when piled atop one another.
Wilt both sides of the first, then wilt one side only, placing
the "wet" side up as you build your stack of wilted tortillas.

This is a thick sauce; some prefer a thinner concoction, easily
achieved with water, milk, or broth. El GFC will add water next time.

A four-finger pinch of chicken and onion per roll. Some palates
will appreciate a pinch of comino seeds and cayenne.

Assemble into baking dish. Thin torts tore when lifted from
the oil, hence the ugly roll. The mistakes are covered by sauce but the
enchiladas fall apart when lifted from the baked collection.

Cover them with all the suiza sauce.

Cover with grated cheese.

Into the 350º oven.

20 minutes later, out of the oven ready to plate.

Lunch or Dinner is served. This is Korbel "extra dry", the sweeter label
owing to the rarity of Korbel Natural.

“Jaguar” por Xánath Caraza

“Jaguar” por Xánath Caraza

 

Xanath Caraza

Jaguar

 

Canta en mi penumbra

e inunda de flores mi voz.

 

Que las voces de las abuelas

me arrullen en las noches sin luna.

 

Que tus rugidos resuenen

en la bóveda vacía de esta jungla.

 

Que se vaya la oscuridad,

los abuelos llenen de luz la mañana.

 

¡Trae poesía, Jaguar!

Y con ella el viento del sur.

 

In xóchitl in cuicatl enredada

en mi larga cabellera negra.

 

Viento dulce y aroma a jazmín

hasta mi adolorido corazón.

 

Que el norte, sur, este y oeste

escuchen tu sonoro canto.

 

Abrázame, Jaguar, envuélveme

con tus poderosas garras.

 

 

Xanath Caraza

Jaguar

 

Sing in my penumbra

and flood my voice with flowers.

 

May the voices of the grandmothers

lull me to sleep on moonless nights.

 

May your roars reverberate

in the empty dome of this jungle.

 

May darkness depart

and grandfathers fill the morning with light.

 

Bring poetry, Jaguar!

And with it the wind of the south.

 

In xochitl in cuicatl entangled

in my long black hair.

 

Sweet wind and scent of jasmine

reach my yearning heart.

 

May the north, south, east, and west

hear your resonant song.

 

Embrace me, Jaguar, cloak me

in your powerful claws.

 

 

Xanath Caraza

“Jaguar / Jaguar” están incluidos en el poemario Balamkú (2019). Traducido al inglés por Sandra Kingery.

 

In 2020 Balamkú received second place for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Book of Poetry Award by the International Latino Book Awards.

 

Balamkú (Es una zona maya del estado de Campeche en México) significa: el templo del jaguar

 

 

The Spirit Moves Differently in San Cristobal, Chiapas

 

                                                                                       

El Templo de Santo Domingo

     It was a fourteen-hour bus ride from Mexico City, south to Chiapas, San Cristobal de Las Casas. It took one day of sleep in a hotel to rest. The second day, after wandering through charming colonia city, I stand insider the church at Santa Domingo, a highly decorated classic baroque structure rivaling any in Europe, behind me Tzotzil Maya selling their wares to the scores of tourists who crowd the city, looking to see the places the Zapatista army attacked back in the early 1990s. 

     As a teacher, I am in San Cristobal, and in this church, to observe and gather information, detaching myself from anything emotional, to clearly analyze everything around me. The bullet holes in the walls remind me of the sounds of war, some place far off, another lifetime ago.

     In a corner of the church just beyond the altar, two Indians pray, their voices echoing, reverential and melodic, more a sacred chant than a recitation. One calls out and the other answers, like a priest and choir. The sounds of their voices rise up towards the rafters and pull me away from my thoughts, like something inside me is rising along with their song. I listen. In front of them they’ve set up their own shrine, five or six tall candles and sticks of incense, the smoke rising and a pungent odor filling the air. The shorter man takes two small glasses from a pouch at his side. He fills them with a dark liquid.

     Behind me, a group of European and Asian tourists enter the church. They look around, as if browsing in a store, ignoring the intricate detail in the architecture, the sculptures, and the paintings. Instead, they watch the two men. To them, the dark, the light, the cavernous temple, and the indigenous ritual must appear superstitious, perhaps barbaric, something prehistoric. To me, a wanderer, a sojourner, their ceremony appears magical, mystical, yet deeply religious. 

     I can see why protestant ministers are convincing Mexicans to turn from the religions of their fathers, and conquerors, to evangelical churches, convincing them Indo-Catholic rites are performative mumbo-jumbo, spiritual smoke and mirrors, yet these two men move as if they are in a trance.

     The tourists turn and leave, as if they’ve interrupted a private exorcism. The smoke reaches me. The chanting fills each crevice of the church. I lose track of time. It’s getting late. I want to leave, but I can’t move. I listen. Something stirs inside me. Nothing exists except these two men dressed in ragged clothes, and the thin, worn soles of their sandals, more like extensions of their feet. They pray, moving closer to the candles and incense. They drink the dark liquid from their small glasses. The prayers begin again, exotic but lush, like a mediation.

                                                                                              

Tzotzil women selling their wares

          There is an invisible tug at my side, something forcing me to stand, but there’s no one, only me. I resist the invisible energy until I’m on my feet, feeling levitated. I go automatically to the woman selling religious items from a cart. I see myself buy a rosary, small hand-carved wood beads, fifty pesos, about $2.50. I return to my seat. The two men, still chanting, swaying slowly. They stop. It’s like the quiet after a storm. The church is silent. Another group of tourists enters, looks around and leaves. The men raise their drinks, say another prayer and empty their glasses.

     Before I leave, I want to tell them how deeply their prayers affected me, but I don’t want to intrude. I stand to leave, but I’m pulled toward them, like a magnet. They watch as I approach. It is him, the man I saw this morning, in the church of St. Nicholas, the man who wouldn’t accept my money. He'd told me he wasn't begging and didn't accept charity. He had said something strange, like we would meet again.

     He smiles. My legs seem to weaken at the coincidence, like I need to sit down, but I don’t. “Hello, again,” I say, in Spanish. He nods. “You are right,” I add, “one never knows.”

     I ask, in Spanish, if he is a deacon, or priest. His face is old and weathered. He smiles, shyly, and says, “No, an ilol.” He sees my confusion and clarifies. “My people call me a healer.”

     Though, I am more spiritual than religious, my religion a part of my culture. I tell them both how much their prayers moved me. I have no idea how, but I hear myself asking for their blessing. I hold out my rosary. I ask if they will pray for me. It’s as if someone else is speaking, but I hear my voice. The man who led the prayers asks my name and from where I come. He tells me his name is Epifanio but is called Pablo, and his friend is Pedro. I offer a slight smile at the symbolism, Peter and Paul, he Rock and the Epiphany, enlightenment and strength. It’s as if I’ve been waiting for both of them, so familiar yet complete strangers.

     As if he has done this before, Epifanio places his hand over mine, the one holding the rosary. He places the other hand over my head. Pedro puts one hand on my shoulder. They begin to pray in their native tongue. They raise their eyes upward. I stand, immoveable. Faces pass through my mind, friends and relatives, strangers I've encountered on my journey. Epifanio switches to Spanish, a smooth transition, as if the two languages are one. 

     He prays for my family. He asks the virgin of Caridad to protect me and accompany me on my travels. He says my kamel is carrying a heavy burden, my chulel is lost, and he asks the Holy Spirit to return it. I don’t’ understand the two words I take as Tzotzil. If things are incongruent in my life, he prays that I learn to find order and understanding. He goes deeper, saying other unfamiliar words, chulmetic, chulotic, and nichmonil.

     He calls me his brother and my family his family, all one in God’s love. I wonder if our Gods are the same, some in the church not happy with Tzotzil blending religious practices. He prays for my wife and me, a partnership to last forever, and no matter what, we will remain friends in God’s love. I am startled. I open my eyes and look at him. His eyes are closed. I didn’t tell him I was married. I no longer hear his words. I think I hear him say my wife's name. I can't recall telling him, or I can’t remember. Or maybe I misunderstood, and he used the word in his prayer. 

     When they finish, I wipe moisture from my eyes. I give Pedro two-hundred pesos, about $20.00, a lot in Chiapas in 2013.

     “It’s not necessary,” Epifanio says. 

     “This time you provided a service.”

     He bows, picks up his glass, refills it, sips the liquid, and hands it to me. I drink. It tastes strong, bitter. He whispers, “Pox,” pronouncing it “posh.” It is not easy to make, so I have heard. Coke has cornered the market, even in Tzotzil ceremonies. The two men gather the cups, candles, and incense container, and leave the church through a side entrance. The woman selling religious items is gone.

     I sit alone. I hear the echoes of people on the street outside. The church is empty. I stay seated. I open my hand. The rosary is not there. I look around me, up and down the pew. I rush out the side entrance to see if Epifanio or Pedro has taken my rosary, but they are gone. I return to the pew. The rosary is there, a tiny heap of wooden beads.