The world's longest-established Chicana Chicano, Latina Latino literary blog.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
The New Elites and the War Against Knowledge
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Lotería Remedios Oracle: A 54-Card Deck and Guidebook Cards
Written by Xelena González.
Illusttrated by Jose Sotelo Yamasaki.
*Publisher: Hay House LLC
*Print length: 144 pages
*ISBN-10: 1401974724
*ISBN-13: 978-1401974725
A beautifully-illustrated 54-card oracle deck that reimagines the iconic game of Lotería by using the traditional symbols for divination, reflection, and healing.
La Rosa. La Muerte. El Nopal. These are just a few of the 54 iconic symbols that appear in the beloved card game Lotería, also known as Mexican Bingo. Since reaching modern-day Mexico in 1779, the deck has seen many artful incarnations, and across Latinx cultures, it has served the multilayered purpose of practicing the Spanish language, bringing loved ones together, and of course, trying our luck.
But Lotería Remedios enters the cards into the canon of cartomancy: it uses the traditional symbols for divination, reflection, and self-healing. Here author Xelena González, a member of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation, is continuing the work of her great-grandmother, a curandera sought-after and highly respected for her abilities. Through beautiful illustrations and lyrical written remedios, La Sirena (The Mermaid) becomes an invitation to view your own magic and beauty. La Bandera (The Flag) suggests the need to wave your flag high, so that you may discover who is ready to join your cause. And the much-loved La Luna (The Moon) encourage you to look within, and understand that night will always find its morning, that the tide always changes.
Xelena González practices the healing arts through writing and movement. She is a storyteller, dancer, and visiting author who centers self-love in her multi-disciplinary workshops for all ages. Her picture books include the multiple award-winning ALL AROUND US (Cinco Puntos Press, 2017), the recently-released WHERE WONDER GROWS (Lee & Low, 2022), and the forthcoming title REMEMBERING (Simon & Schuster, 2023). Xelena’s storytelling skills were honed as a public librarian in her hometown of Yanaguana/San Antonio and in Guangzhou, China, where she served as head librarian for an international school. Through her author visits, she has introduced a method of “tai chi storytelling” to more than 100 schools, museums, and libraries around the globe.
Jose Sotelo Yamasaki is a San Antonio based painter, screenprinter, and illustrator. He has garnered a national following as the owner and operator of El Fin, an exclusive online gallery showcasing the vibrant artwork that has made San Antonio a cultural mecca. His work is heavily influenced by Mesoamerican design, Mexican folk art, and Japanese Zen art. In this way, Jose’s creations pay homage to his mixed ancestries.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
On-line Floricanto features Angel Guerrero
La Bloga-Tuesday proudly shares poetry from a recently-debuted poet, Angel Guerrero. Guerrero’s work has taken an upward trajectory ever since the poet made her initial public reading at the Eagle Rock branch of the Los Angeles Public Library in May 2024.
Since the reading, Angel Guerrero’s been published in Don Campbell’s So Cal Steps and the upcoming on-line Altadena Poetry Review. Guerrero has shared her work at Casa Reyna's Poetry Garden in a backyard floricanto. This is Angel's first On-line Floricanto appearance.
Guerrero enjoys a diverse artistic life. She’s a noted collector of Chicana Chicano artists, she studied sculpture and painting with Magu, Angel Guerrero was assistant to Pola López for the restoration of the Daniel Cervantes indigenous faces mural at the foot of Los Angeles’ endangered Southwest Museum.
Editor's Note: La Bloga's On-line Floricanto series started in 2010 in collaboration with Francisco X. Alarcón qepd, in anticipation of that year's three-day Festival de Flor y Canto: Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow, organized by Michael Sedano. Francisco and Michael reasoned that that Fall's reunion of poets from the first Flor y Canto in 1973 shouldn't be limited by geography, hence we took the opportunity to share established and emerging work, particularly work submitted to the Face group, Poets Responding to SB1070, via La Bloga-Tuesday.
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Angel Guerrero, left, Pola López, right, restoring a heritage mural in northeast Los Angeles |
On-Line Floricanto Featuring Angel Guerrero
by Angel Guerrero
For what seems like forever.
I’ve climbed Seventy-One,
Each one has my name engraved on it.
This is my path, and it is well-worn.
I step carefully nowadays,
gone are the days of
Skipping and jumping
and daring myself to fly,
Slipping and falling to the bottom,
only to start again.
That energy has faded,
and caution has taken its place.
I dare not look down
a dense fog threatens to overtake me.
So, I look upward
and refuse to lament the past.
I climb slowly,
I am unsteady,
but some days I get excited
to see what awaits on the other side.
But every step has its own lessons and wonder,
One day soon I’ll reach my destination
So, for now,
I will continue climbing.
THINGS LEFT BEHIND
by Angel Guerrero
I run around my bedroom frightened by the familiar voice on my cell phone,
The voice sends out warnings of
Amber Alerts, Flashfloods, and Earthquakes.
And now that voice insists,
we must leave, leave our home,
Our art, sculptures, books, our love letters,
Small and large items, mean something only to me.
Everything is precious,
our photographs, the kind you can hold in your hand,
The images of life together, our youth,
And family members we will never kiss or hold again,
We must get out now, “it’s only stuff.”
So instead, we gather necessary items,
our survival kit is small,
And our time is short.
I search out my husband's eyes,
His still-strong arms envelop my quivering body and still my fears.
As we turn to leave, he whispers in my ear
“It’s only stuff.”
I realize that the things we leave behind are no longer
more important
Than our fingers holding on tightly to each other.
He leads me down the staircase
just in time to hear
That the warning was not meant for us,
But for another community of people.
We stand frozen.
Our hearts are pained for them, in shock, for them.
For the many who will now have to deal
with this horrific loss
we pray that your families survived
And that it is only their things that were left behind.
CHARRED STAIRS
by Angel Guerrero
I went to search for you,
but could not find you.
Everything was gone,
Charred rubble,
which was once precious memories,
Was all that was left.
Gone was the beauty that had once existed,
All was scorched beyond recognition.
So, on and on I walked,
So sure, I would find the path that led to you.
Finally, I looked up and there was your street.
I followed the now-broken road
Once edged by everything that was lush and green.
I walked until I saw the stairway that led to your home,
It was stark and blackened by the ravenous flames.
My heart was filled with dread,
but I climbed on.
Once at the top, I fell to my knees in tears,
As if it had been my home,
As if it had been, my loss, my pain.
Finally, I turned and slowly walked down those stairs,
Which no longer led,
to anyone or anything,
I once knew.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
Interpretamos la niebla / We Interpret Fog por Xánath Caraza
Interpretamos la niebla / We Interpret Fog por Xánath Caraza
Interpretamos
la niebla en la concavidad infinita. En el alba reconocemos la opalescencia en
las montañas y el aroma a madera penetra la piel. Descubrimos las aves en las
frondas de la aurora mientras la lluvia se desliza en las calles empedradas y
golpea los techos de teja. El rocío, en las violetas, se vuelve bruma con los
áureos rayos de sol mientras un colibrí busca miel. Las sombras de los
ancestros, bordadas en el follaje de los cedros, se vislumbran cuando la luz
del amanecer las traspasa.
We Interpret Fog
We interpret fog inside the infinite concavity. At dawn, we recognize
opalescence within the mountains while the scent of wood penetrates our flesh.
We discover birds upon the fronds of first light as the rain slips along
cobblestone streets and strikes tile roofs. The dew, on the violets, turns to
haze in the golden sunlight while a hummingbird hunts for honey. When the
morning light soaks through it, the shadows of the ancestors, embroidered
within the foliage of cedars, can be discerned.
Poema incluido en el
manuscrito De niebla y olvido de Xánath Caraza. Traducido por Sandra
Kingery.
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Xanath Caraza |
Friday, July 25, 2025
New Literature About a Pair of Icons of Resistance
Mafalda: Book One
Quino
Elsewhere Editions -- June 10, 2025
Six-year-old Mafalda loves democracy and hates soup. What democratic sector do cats fall into? she asks, then unfurls a toilet paper red carpet and gives her very own presidential address. Mafalda’s precociousness and passion stump all grown-ups around her. Dissident and rebellious, she refuses to abandon the world to her parents’ generation, who seem so lost.
Alongside the irascible Mafalda, readers will meet her eclectic entourage: dreamy Felipe and gossipy Susanita, young-capitalist Manolito and rebellious Miguelito. You can clearly see Mafalda is small, when she is dreaming in bed or soaring on a swing — “As usual, as soon as you put your feet on the ground, the fun finishes,” Mafalda grumbles — but her hopes for the world and her heart are as huge as can be. Generations of readers have discovered themselves in Mafalda’s boundlessly adventurous spirit, and learned to question, rebel, and hope.
Edinburgh University Press - July 31, 2025
[from the publisher]
Luis Rodríguez is a prominent Latinx poet, memoirist and activist renowned for his candid visceral accounts of urban working-class life that includes youth gang violence, incarceration and drug abuse, grueling factory work and union organizing activities and collective approaches to redemption and political empowerment, which have resonated across multiple communities in the United States and abroad. Accordingly, whilst Rodríguez has been the focus of some critical scholarship, huge segments of his life, work and legacy remain unexamined. This anthology has commissioned new and unique critical essays and reflections on Rodríguez’s life and works, putting forward new ideas about bringing the voices of 'barrio organic intellectuals' to the fore. The anthology deliberately includes traditional academics as well as more public intellectuals and creative writers from across Europe and the Americas to reflect Rodriguez’s own diverse outputs as a prisoner author and activist.
Thursday, July 24, 2025
Chicanonautica: Chicano Art Interrupts This Pogrom . . . Program . . . De-Program . . . Re-Program . . .
by Ernest Hogan
One of the perks of being the Father of Chicano Sci-Fi is that people send me weird shit. And I love me some weird shit.
So, in the middle of this jam-packed bizarro summer, a small, slim, unsolicited package appeared in my P.O. box. It was from L.A. The handwriting, name, and address were all unfamiliar to me. I grabbed my Swiss Army knife and sliced.
It was a paperback book: Aztec Leisure Suit Or Brown People Under Fluorescent Light. Sounds like a Chicanonautica kinda thing. The author was Vincent Ramos. The front cover and the blurb on the back intrigued me.
Flipping through it, I found that there weren’t many words. Most of it was photos reproduced in full color on slick paper. They were of collages.
They fit perfectly with the title.
Collage is a good art form for Chicanos—do it myself on occasion—because we are collages.
Once at an event celebrating Latino science fiction, I met a brown girl who looked like she could still be in grade school. She wanted to be a writer and asked me and Rudy Ch. Garcia what the rules for being a Chicano writer were. We both immediately told her that there weren’t any. She looked confused.
You see, just being a Chicano is a do-it-yourself project. Rasquache!
I wonder -- what happened to her? Is she currently writing stuff that will soon astound the world? Or was she shocked into her senses and became a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or something else reasonable?
Weird, mixed-up, rasquache stuff makes me smile. It makes me feel at home—it’s not just where I come from, but what I am!
Some folks think I’m trying to be avant-garde, but we’ve been doing this stuff for centuries, since before diverse cultures got together in the marketplace of Teotihuacán, when we were smuggling the wisdom of the Centipede God and Giant River Serpents up from lost garden cities of the Amazon . . .
This little book is a brain-battering barrage of conflicting symbols. Andy Warhol probably couldn’t handle it. It’s like a visual version of William S. Burroughs and Biron Gyson’s cut-up/fold-in technique and J.G. Ballard when he was writing The Atrocity Exhibition (aka Love and Napalm: Export USA) and “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan.”
Make art not war? Nah. Art is war.
That is, if you’re doing it right . . .
Someday scholars will study Aztec Leisure Suit, searching for clues to the arcane mysteries of Chicano (and its ever-mutating Siamese twin Latino Latin, Latine, Latinx . . .) identity as if it were an untranslated codex from a lost civilization. The problem is, we aren’t lost. We’re right here. We’re everywhere.
Some people’s sensory arrays get overloaded when they try to focus on us.
“Ya got any ID?” they keep asking.
Good question . . .
Maybe I should carry around a copy, and when ICE asks who and what the quehquetza I am, I’ll hand it to them.
I wonder if their brains will explode.
Ernest Hogan is descended from Mexican circus performers who sometimes dressed like bullfighters.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
A-Ztec: A Bilingual Alphabet Book
Written and illustrated by Emmanuel Valtierra.
*Publisher: Levine Querido
*Publication date: September 9, 2025
*Language: English
*Print length: 64 pages
*ISBN-10: 1646145674
*ISBN-13: 978-1646145676
Chocolatl
and Axolotl
Guacamole
and Quetzacoatl.
Open up this treasury
Aztec words--
from A to Z!
From singular artist Emmanuel Valtierra comes a spectacular introduction to twenty-six words, concepts, and gods central to Aztec and Mexican culture, presented in both English and Spanish.
Emmanuel Valtierra is a Texan Mexican illustrator. He studied graphic design at the Visual Arts Faculty in Monterrey, Nuevo León. Since 2016, he has focused on creating different projects related to the Aztec culture, among which stands out Codex Valtierra that won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2018. Through his work, he intends to instill Mexican pre-Hispanic cultures and to show its ancestral arts to new generations.
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Late Tuesday Antojo: Enfrijoladas
It was the department party for the TAs. A pot luck. The department would supply the beverages, the TAs brought the food. One of the TAs came up to me and, in a gesture of camaraderie, warned "Watch out for the enchilados, they're really hot."
The myth of Mexican food had struck again. The dish prepared by The Gluten-free Chicano is anything but chiloso. Some tastebuds are more sensitive than others, and that particular crowd, it turned out, was typical of many. "Mexican food" means burn your mouth delicious.
By now, most diners understand "Mexican food" doesn't have to start out chiloso, but that's always an option, either in the preparation or serving a hot salsa on the side.
The enfrijolada can be made really hot by adding any number of chiles to the mix. Serving a pot luck or dinner crowd, the Gluten-free Chicano tones down the fire.
Pre-heat the oven to 350º.

Cube chicken meat (the Gluten-free Chicano used a COSTCO roasted chicken and removed the breasts for this dish).
Mince a medium-sized onion, six or eight branches of cilantro, a couple teeth of garlic.
Add ⅓ can of diced tomatoes.
You can use black olives but the Gluten-free Chicano wanted a more piquant flavor so this preparation added a dozen pimiento-stuffed green olives.
If serving people with appreciative taste buds, finely mince two serrano chiles.
Add a cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese.
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Fill generously. |
Soften a good quality corn tortilla in hot olive oil in a small frying pan. The Gluten-free Chicano prefers Diana's brand of extra large tortilla de maíz. The manufacturer uses only corn, lime, and water, no xanthan gum and no additives.
Using tongs, dip the first tortilla on both sides until it is flexible. Transfer that to a plate. Dip the next tortillas on one side, and place the oiled side up on top of the stack.
The tortillas will cool enough to roll by hand.
Add a large pinch of filling and spread it across a softened tortilla. (You can soften the tortillas in a microwave oven. Wrap them in a dish towel and microwave for 30 seconds on high. But work quickly because microwaving makes them sticky as they cool).
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Roll into a tight bundle |
Repeat this until the baking dish is filled. If you run out of space while rolling, just roll on top of the done ones.
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Fill the baking dish snugly |
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Top with left-over stuffing |
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Add a layer of beans; fried or de la olla. |
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Slather sour cream or crema mexicana across the surface |
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Garnish with shredded cheese |
Set the timer for 45 minutes if using cold ingredients, 30 if using warm filling.
There are two schools of thought on service. I prefer to find the open-ends and spatula a single enfrijolada to each plate (or two for larger appetites). You can cut through the top like a casserole and serve a 4" square.
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Bake. Note the open ends for serving |
Enfrijoladas is a low-cost, highly nutritious, and gluten-free dish. Beware "gourmet" tortillas as the "gourmet" part means some menacing industrial entity has added wheat to the masa.
A crisp green salad, a hearty red wine, or lots of Bard's Gluten-free beer will make the meal a major hit.
"Damn," one of the TAs said, pushing away from the table to get seconds, "I didn't know Mexican food could be so delicious! I'm sure glad you're in the program."
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Friday, July 18, 2025
Wondering What My Mother Would Be Like at Age 76
Earlier this month. I attended Gunpowder Press’s release of their new anthology: Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond. Since 2025 commemorates the 175th anniversary of California’s statehood, the anthology features 175 California writers. My mother, Blanca Estela Palacio, would have been the same age as many of the women represented in the collection. December 5, she would be 76. For the world, she is forever immortalized at age 44. I am older than she was the last time I saw her alive, but not old enough to contribute to this anthology. The collection gives me an insight into what her life concerns would be as an aging Baby Boomer. Many favorite people and poets are included in this impressive poetry collection, a few micro essays are also tucked in.
As a child, I remember thinking that my mom was an exceptional women who had grown up with the best music. I was the oddball teenager who preferred her parents’ music and dances to her own generation’s. My mother was proud of the fact that she was a Baby Boomer, the generation of children born to parents who lived through World War Two, who protested the Vietnam War, who marched for peace, women’s rights, civil rights, and affirmative action.
Blanca Estela and Melinda Palacio |
While my mother was born in Texas, she is very much a California girl. California is where she grew up, became a teacher, an activist, and a single mother who also took care of her parents and siblings during her short life. Because I keep aging and my mother does not, I often wonder what her life would be like now. I become wistful around women who have the opportunity for mother-daughter dates. There’s so much about my life in Santa Barbara that I wish I could have shared with my mother. We often took summer road trips from Los Angeles to San Francisco and on several occasions visited my uncle who was stationed at Vandenberg Airforce Base in Lompoc, but we never stopped in Santa Barbara. I don’t think my mom knew the town existed. Solvang was our usual stopping point. To this day, I have no explanation as to why we never stopped in Santa Barbara. I know she would have loved Santa Barbara, given that she enjoyed Solvang’s small town charm.
Ten years after my mother passed, I met a mother traveling with her adult daughter. I was so happy for the two of them. I told them how lucky they were. Mother and daughter Lucy agreed. They had the same round face and blue eyes. It still puts a smile on my face to think of the two women sharing an aisle on the airplane with twenty-year old younger me. While I can no longer travel with my mother, we sure shared some fun travels together to Hawaii, Mexico, and Europe. In reading Women In a Golden State, I see my mother in so many of the poems. Sharon Langley’s poem, I Saw My Mom Today, reminds me that I only need to look in the mirror see my mother: “Purse. Pucker, now pose./That’s her smile for sure./I saw my mom today.”
Thanks to Gunpowder Press editors Diana Raab and Chryss Yost, there’s a collection of 175 poems that share the concerns of Women in a Golden State and the anthology my mother would be included in if she were a living poet.
*This article also appears in the Santa Barbara Independent
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Emma Goldman and the Magon Brothers
Mexican Anarchists in Los Angeles |
I’m nearly finished with the second volume of Emma Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life, including the first volume close to 1000 pages. Not only a dynamic speaker, Goldman was a superb writer, making her life’s story read like a novel, but allow me to digress.
I’d been at my ex-brother-in-law’s home as
he was preparing to move to a senior citizen’s memory care facility. His wife had died earlier in the year, and he
was no longer able to care for himself. His doctor told him it was dangerous living
alone, especially as his mind slipped a little more each year.
I had my eye on a wall filled with books,
all hard covers, and old. Jerry told me to take whatever I wanted. He’d
inherited the books from a woman who had taken him in when he was a teenager, after her
husband’s death. Flora Mae was one of the first women to graduate from Stanford
with a degree in political science. She and her husband had no children, so she
pretty much left everything she owned to Jerry.
The first time I pulled Goldman’s
autobiography from the bookcase, newspaper clippings poured out. Flora Mae had
kept many of the book’s original reviews. The autobiography was printed in
1931, first edition, a classic, and in good shape. I had studied Goldman’s
work, along with other anarchists, like her good friend, Russian-American Alexander "Sasha"
Berkman, who spent 20 years in prison for attempting to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, chairman of Carnegie Steel who tried to stop striking workers using violence.
I’d also read the writings and life
stories of the Flores Magon brothers, Ricardo and Enrique, Mexican anarchists,
the brains behind the Mexican Revolution, who coined Zapata's words "It's better to die on one'feet than to live on one's knees." The brothers had fled Mexico to El Paso, St. Louis, then on to L.A., where they continued exposing corruption and
crime in Mexican politics. They believed American justice would protect them
from Mexico’s autocratic rulers. It didn’t.
Ironically, the U.S. government feared the
Magon brothers’ speeches and newspaper, Regeneracion, would incite workers in
the U.S. to defy their employers. Woodrow Wilson’s administration arrested the
brothers, and, in something of a kangaroo court, found them guilty of sedition.
What the court used to convict them was one line from a newspaper article
they’d written, an inspiring, symbolic line telling workers to “…drop the tools
and take up the rifle that is waiting for the hero’s caress.”
For those words, Ricardo received 21-years
in Leavenworth federal prison where he died under suspicious circumstances. Enrique
received 15-years at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. Unfortunately for the brothers, at the
time, the U.S. had just entered WWI, and Woodrow Wilson had passed the sedition
Trading with Enemies Act, a way to jail or deport immigrants they thought
dangerous to U.S. national security. Wilson had also passed the country’s first
Selective Service Act, and anyone who refused to register or submit to the
draft could receive 30 years in prison.
For me, all of this was material for my
third book Death and the American Dream, an historical novel about Los Angeles
politics and the media in the 1920s. As often happens when a writer gets lost
in research, I might have gotten carried away by the politics of the time,
mainly immigrant and workers’ rights, as well as the relationship between
Mexico and the U.S. during WWI.
In Rochester, New York, Emma Goldman, a
Russian-Jewish migrant, had worked in sweatshops as a teenager. She absorbed
the conditions and began to speak out against the injustices she witnessed and
experienced. She became an anarchist, like the Flores Magon brothers. In fact,
Goldman and her political partner, Alexander “Sasha” Berkman had helped raise
funds for Ricardo and Enriquez’s defense.
As far back as the late 1800s, U.S.
industry, mostly agriculture and the railroads, flooded Mexican villages with
flyers announcing employment opportunities in the American Southwest. The companies also
sent U.S. contractors to Mexico who traveled through villages contracting
workers to travel north. The companies promised a good pay, decent living and
working conditions.
When Mexicans attempted to cross the
border, many were arrested and jailed for participating in unfair labor
practices. The company contractors arrived and paid their fines. Once freed,
Mexican workers were forced to labor without pay, until their debt to the
company had been paid. It was a form of indentured servitude. If they purchased
anything on credit at the company’s story, it was added to their debt. If they
tried to escape, they were pursued by federal marshals or private detective
agencies. It was in this environment that men and woman like Emma Goldman,
Sasha Berkman, and Magon and his followers tried to educate the workers.
Anarchism isn’t an easy concept to
understand. When most of us think of anarchists, we think chaos, as in, “It’s
complete anarchy.” Political anarchists do not support one government over
another, neither capitalist nor socialist, democracy, fascism, or communism. In
a sense, they don’t believe in governments at all. Here is where it gets
confusing. Can a society exist without a structured government? Anarchists
think they can.
Francisco “Pancho” Villa was something of
an anarchist, though he didn’t know it. After Villa attacked a town in
Chihuahua and routed the federal soldiers, the corrupt mayor, and his cronies,
one of Villa's men asked, “What do we do now? The people want action.” Myth has it
that Villa asked the people what they needed. They told him they were starving.
The government and army had forced them to work and taken everything they
produced.
Supposedly, Villa told the town’s bakers
to start baking bread to feed the people, not unlike Jesus feeding the
multitudes. It worked. Common sense. After that, Villa took one problem at a
time and began figuring a way to solve them, using common sense and fairness,
reminding me of a scene from Don Quixote, where the people of a town voted for Sancho
Panza to be their mayor. From what I recall, Sancho, too, began solving
problems by using common sense. So, why is governing so hard? Politics and
greed, which any good anarchist abhors.
In volume II of Goldman's book, the Wilson Administration
deports both Emma and Sasha to Russia, where the communists have recently been
victorious over the Tsar. Emma does not like what she sees of communism's early rise and
begins to observe and report. As Americans, she and Sasha hold privileged
positions over other foreigners in Russia at the time. The two land a job
working with a museum traveling the country to collect historical documents to
record the events of the revolution.
Goldman does not hold back in her
criticism of the communist system, sometimes barely making her way out of
dangerous situations, especially during a time when everybody was under
suspicion of being an anti-revolutionist. She traveled to the Ukraine, Kiev,
where Russia set up its capital and where she learned of Jewish atrocities
committed in the hundreds-of-thousands. She described the hatred between the
communist proletariats who would love nothing more than to see communist
intellectuals placed up against a wall and shot. The Cheka, something of a
Soviet Gestapo, executed anybody accused of stealing food or even a pair of shoes to survive. The communists refer to them as speculators.
After barely surviving the journey through Ukraine and
the Crimea, both considered a part of Russia, at the time, she was allowed to travel to the north of Russia, where people in
towns cooperated, shared food and other necessities and survived in relative peace, where there were no firing squads or people stealing from each other.
Goldman’s autobiography is a marvel. She has a keen eye for detail and doesn’t hesitate
to call out injustices wherever she sees them, whether in a capitalist or commuist state. She not naive and also understands Russia's difficulties as bands of anti-revolutionists continue to battle the communists, to return Russia to
the Tsar. She is able to explain a complicated system, its early struggles and,
possibly, downfall, like the idiological struggle between Lenin and Trotsky, so relevant to
today’s crisis in Russia and the Ukraine.