Chicanonautica: Beyond the Fourth of July in Aztlán

by Ernest Hogan

My wife, Emily Devenport, had to work on July 4th, which scientists are saying was the hottest day on this planet since people started keeping records. I was alone that night, expecting political shenanigans to break out under the full, Buck supermoon since the Supreme Court and Moms for Liberty started running amok. That didn’t happen, just some forgettable rants by some of the usual suspects and a few shootings, mass and otherwise. (Yargh! Did I just write that? What’s the world coming to?)

What we did have were actual fireworks making my neighborhood seem like a war zone. Illegal rockets  exploded overhead, rattling roofs, sidewalks, and skeletons. They were more powerful than what we’ve had in the past. Wonder what would happen if one of them bullseye’d someone’s living room? It was just dumb luck that my picture of the spectacular moon didn’t include showers of multicolored sparks.

Anyway, Emily had Thursday off, so we did a road trip.

It was hot, so we decided on Walnut Canyon, hoping it would be cooler. Didn’t matter where we went, the point was to get away, see what the hell’s going on in Arizona, Aztlán, America . . . Gas prices were plummeting, which is mondo weird for the summer tourist season. The homeless, or rather, unhoused were zombie-staggering or ranting at invisible listeners. Did I mention that it was hot?

We did a spontaneous stop at Montezuma Castle, where Montezuma never set foot. It was mostly blocked off since the recent flooding. Trees had been vandalized. Rattlesnakes and sacred datura were lurking about. There also was a delicious spicy, deserty smell.

Back on the road, I got inspired for the story I was working on. Scribbled sloppy notes in the car. Yo-ho, yo-ho, the writer’s life for me . . .

And despite the heat–we did have water bottles–we did the Walnut Canyon Island Trail with all those stairs, down into the cliff dwellings. It never gets old. We see new things every time we’re there. And the whole place is going through constant transformation.

This time, I did some checking, reading signs, and watching the film in the visitor’s center, fact-checking my theory about the Sinagua going to Mexico and becoming the Mexica. Turns out the eruption of Sunset Crater in 1085 CE marked the beginning of the cliff dwelling culture, not its end. The Sinagua left there around 1250 CE, leaving the dwellings to become the Hopi,Yavapai, and six other affiliated tribes. Their reasons were drought, the dwindling population of game animals–you know, climate change–and fear of surrounding tribes. The Mexica, AKA the Aztecs, arrived in the valley of Mexico, after a talking statue told them to go on a quest for a vision of an eagle fighting a snake on an island, probably encountering the Apache, Comanche, Yaqui, Huichol, and Chichimec along the way, (uh-oh, there’s an idea for a novel, just what I need . . .)  around 1250 CE.

Hmm. Could Walnut Canyon be Aztlán?

Has anyone thought of doing DNA testing?

We took Route 66 to Flagstaff where we had lunch at the Galaxy Diner. There we saw the only sign of politics on this road trip. Really, there were no demonstrations, bumper stickers, signs, flags, or any other indications that we are hurtling toward an apocalyptic election year, just an old white man with a white ponytail, and a white beard. He wore a TRUMP 2024 cap.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that: “In Phoenix, every day for the foreseeable future should reach at least 110 degrees.”

Ernest Hogan writes sci-fi while being Chicano when he's not playing crackpot archaeo/anthropologist.

Chicanonautica: Here There Be Monsters

by Ernest Hogan

Not long ago, I did a Chicanonautica about my new story "Cuca" that's in the anthology American Monsters Part Two. I also wrote a piece for the publisher's blog, to help with the promotion. You may have noticed that I'm big on that sort of thing.

 "Aztlán: A Nexus of Monsters" is based on my life and travels in the region, provides background for the story, so it is of interest to La Bloga readers.

So, enjoy, and do what Cuca would do.

Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, recommends you ignore the much hyped American Dirt, and read his novel, High Aztech, instead.

Chicano plots for your blockbuster

by Rudy Ch. Garcia
If you've got writer's block about your next novel, short story or lit piece to win that Pulitzer, read on.

On long-distance calls with my mom this year, one of her regular reports was about how the trees in her yard were dying in the Texas drought. No matter how much she watered, she still lost about half of them on her quarter-acre property on the outskirts of San Antonio, even her hardy mesquites. She, and her trees, are just another example of collateral damage from global warming. Mom's in her 80s and I'm in my 60s, so neither one of us will suffer long from this. However, a child of six will likely have a long thirsty future, maybe one with not very many trees.

Six-year-olds, Chicano and otherwise, dying trees, drought, an arid American Southwest (and northern Mexico), global warming--what's any of this got to do with a lit blog? Nothing more than the Occupy movement, Greenpeace and election politics have to do with latino lit. If we don't see connections to us, then we will make none.

This July's 60mph dust storms in the Phoenix area seem a reincarnation of the 50s Dust Bowl's immense storms, called "Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers." Those eventually affected one hundred million acres, centered in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes. Many "Okies" families moved to California where economic conditions were little better than what they'd left. They affected author John Steinbeck enough to write about in The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, [wherein many of these "Hispanics" were portrayed as lazy shiftless drunks]. Those droughts began in the Southwestern United States, New Mexico and Texas during 1950 and '51; the drought spread through the Central Plains, Midwest and certain Rocky Mountain States, particularly between 1953 and 1957, and into Nebraska. Texas experienced the most severe drought in recorded history. 244 of Texas’ 254 counties were declared federal disaster areas.

Before I share the background of hard data that might kick-start or revive your lit career, here're some themes that sound like science fiction but could eventually qualify as nonfiction:

1. Epic war story: Drought-stricken Mexican peasants move across the border in the tens of thousands to avoid starvation, and successfully overcome thousands of troops stationed along the border. The forced-migration results in genocidal slaughter, but also overcrowding in homes far from the border. Oh, wait--that's already nonfiction.

2. Neohistorical fiction: An Irish-American-Chicano descendant of Billy the Kid finds safe harbor in those overcrowded homes because of his love for a mexicana and his Spanish poetry lamenting the loss of the few verdant patches in Aztlán. He's on the run from Homeland Security who used a security wand on him at the Denver airport, a violation he returned by taking out several with his Azteco-karate.

3. A thriller: New Mexican and southern Colorado descendants of the Spanish land-grant families unite with Greenpeace activists to put a stop to Las Vegas water theft in a plot reminiscent of The Monkey Wrench Gang, except it's got more than all-Anglo protagonists.

4. A comedy about the daily trials of four urban Denver Chicano families having to take in their NM and Texas permanently unemployed relatives who only know how to pick pecans and shear sheep.

5. A tragic epic about how one anciana in her 90s struggles to keep her mesquite trees alive, despite a limited income and the exorbitant cost of watering her lawn. The antagonists are played by her prosperous sons who wrestle each month whether to send her money to support her manic love for dying trees.

6. Fantasy/sci-fi: A long-thought-dead Anasazi deity is freed by 2012 SW dust storms from where his previous believers had incarcerated him to prevent future droughts. He wreaks havoc by leading megastorms into burying Scottsdale, then uses fractures in the Earth precipitated by energy company hydraulic fracting to level most of the Rocky Mt. Front Range, until some mexicanito first graders learn to sing one of the ancient songs, sapping his powers and taking them into themselves to become new superheroes--Los Seis Valientes de Globeville.

7. You've got the idea by now; you don't even have to let your imagination work that hard. There's much lit material from what will become "The Age of Thirst," as author deBuys describes it in excerpts that follow. Save these bullets and take one PRN, whenever you're wondering where your future plots--and your future--will take you.

This data is liberally taken from a longer piece by William deBuys [12/4/11] entitled "The Age of Thirst in the American West: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization", posted at Tomgram, a site I've previously recommended. My comments are [bracketed].

• 2010 tied for the warmest year on record. And 2011? According to the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), it is likely to come in 10th, once November and December temperatures are tallied.

• With 2011 in the top ten despite La Niña, 13 of the warmest years since record-keeping began have occurred in the last 15 years.

• A recent study indicates Arctic ice is now melting at rates unprecedented in the last 1,450 years, as far back as reasonably accurate reconstructions of an environment can be modeled.

• According to science journal Nature, the melting permafrost of the tundra may soon begin releasing global-warming gases in massive quantities.
• Recently, Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency, suggested that by century’s end Earth’s temperature could rise by a staggering 6º Celsius (almost 11º Fahrenheit).
• International climate-change negotiators had been trying to keep that rise to a “mere” 2º C. “Everybody, even schoolchildren, knows this is a catastrophe for all of us,” was the way Birol summed the situation up. If only it were so, but here in the U.S., none of the above news was even considered front-page worthy.
• In 2010, the 1%'s superprofit/consumer economies pumped more CO2 into the atmosphere than at any time since the industrial revolution began: 564 million tons more than in 2009. Our changes to more extreme weather this year all come from just less than 1 degree of the six degrees still to come.
• Texas daily temperatures averaged 86.7° in June–August, 2011--a staggering 5.4°F above normal," according to the WMO, the highest average “ever recorded for any American state.” How much more above normal will they be when the other 5 degrees come into play?
• This year is but the precursor to our children's, grandchildren's, [nephews', nieces', etc.] future. New records:
• Biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres)
• Biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres)
• All-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres)
• 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of recordkeeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana.
• Hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.
• Virtually every urban center in Aztlán experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix leading the march toward unlivability this summer with a new record of 33 days of shoe-melting 110º F or higher. [Imagine not being able to finish a beer out on the patio before it got too hot to drink, for a whole month.]
• If you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, possibly the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.
• The Colorado River, which the reservoir impounds, supplies all or part of the water on which nearly 30 million people depend, most of them living downstream of Lake Mead in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Tijuana, and scores of smaller communities in the United States and Mexico. In 1999, the lake was full. Patricia Mulroy, who heads the water utility serving Las Vegas, rues the optimism of those bygone days. “We had a fifty-year, reliable water supply,” she says. “By 2002, we had no water supply. We were out. We were done.”
• In 2000, the lake began to fall -- like a boulder off a cliff, bouncing a couple of times on the way down. Its water level dropped a staggering 130 feet, stopping less than seven feet above the stage that would have triggered reductions in downstream deliveries.
• The states of the so-called Lower Basin of the Colorado River -- California, Arizona, and Nevada -- have been living beyond their water means for years. Any departure from recent decades of hydrological abundance, even a return to long-term average flows in the Colorado River, would produce a painful reckoning for those states. Even worse is surely on the way.
• Independent studies at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in California and the University of Colorado evaluated the viability of Lake Mead and eventually arrived at similar conclusions: after about 2026, the risk of “failure” at Lake Mead, according to a member of the Colorado group, “just skyrockets.” Failure in this context would mean water levels lower than the dam’s lowest intake, no water heading downstream, and the lake becoming a “dead pool.”
• The Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct make the urban conglomerations of southern California possible. If both fail at once, the result will be, as promised, the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.
• Droughts more severe and far longer than anything known in recent centuries have occurred repeatedly [in Aztlán]. The droughts of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, of the 1950s, and the period from 1998-2004 did not last a full decade.
• By contrast, the drought that brought the civilization of the ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi of Chaco Canyon, to its knees in the twelfth century, by contrast, lasted more than 30 years. The one that finished off Mesa Verdean culture in the thirteenth century was dubbed a “megadrought.”
• Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who played a major role in the Nobel-Prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, relates that the prospect of 130° F days in Phoenix worries him far less than the prospect of decades of acute dryness. “If anything is scary, the scariest is that we could trip across a transition into a megadrought.” He adds, “You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than ones of the past.”
• Other scientists believe that the Southwest is already making the transition to a “new climatology,” a new normal that will at least bring to mind the aridity of the Dust Bowl years. Richard Seager of Columbia University, for instance, suggests that “the cycle of natural dry periods and wet periods will continue, but… around a mean that gets drier. So the depths -- the dry parts of the naturally occurring droughts -- will be drier than we’re used to, and the wet parts won’t be as wet.”
• After the Chacoan drought, corn-farming ancestral Puebloans still remained in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. They hung on, even if at lower population densities. After the Mesa Verdean drought, everybody left.
• Archaeologists judge that the aridifying world of the Mesa Verdeans was fatally afflicted by violence. Warfare and societal breakdown, evidently driven by the changing climate, [maybe} helped end that culture.
• We know at least one big thing about how this particular tragedy will turn out: the so-called civilization of the Southwest will not survive the present century, not at its present scale anyway. The question yet to be answered is how much it will have to shrink, and at what cost.

William deBuys is the author of seven books, including the just published A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), and The Walk (an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize). He has long been involved in environmental affairs in the Southwest, including service as founding chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, which administers the 87,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico.

Copyright 2011 William deBuys

TomDispatch.com is for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our post-9/11 world and a clear sense of how our imperial globe actually works. Read more about the site's founder and editor Tom Engelhardt and his guest authors.

Chicanonautica: From Aztlán to the Center of the Earth

Aztlán is my native land. That's the American Southwest, to those who aren't tuned into the Chicano politico/poetics of the last half-century. I love these mountains, deserts, these crazy mixed-up peoples, and the millennia of history lost and found.

I may never make it to Mars, but Aztlán is a Mars on Earth. No wonder Hollywood came here to create its Wild West and sci-fi mythologies. Last time I was in Utah they were filming Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars. I would love it if, someday, colonies on Mars looked like Aztlán.

So I was delighted to read Tom Miller's Revenge of the Saguaro. It's not science fiction or fantasy. It's non-fiction, a travel book that's stranger than sci-fi. It makes make me homesick for Aztlán, and I live here. I'll be packing it, along with David Hatcher Childress' Lost Cities & Ancient Mysteries of the Southwest on future Aztláni road trips.

Not only does Tom Miller cover the Border, Bisbee, folk songs, cockfighting, and more . . . but he charges into Chicanonautica territory. I am eternally grateful to him for letting me know about Gumersindo Esquer, who some call the Mexican Jules Verne, a Renaissance Man of the Sonoyta.

The comparison to Verne comes from Esquer's 1928 novel, Campos del Fuego (Fields of Fire) that Miller describes as “a wild sort of psychedelically inspired Mexican science fiction.” Everything I can find about the book make me drool: It starts out as a realistic account of a trip into the volcanic craters of the Sierra del Pinacate, just north of the Border, that turns into journey into an underground lost world.

“Gumersindo Esquer of Sonoyota: a Mexican Jules Verne in the Footsteps of William Hornaday,” by William K, Hartmann, Gayle Harrison Hartmann, Guillermo Munro Palacio, (Journal of the Southwest, Summer 2007) describes Esquer as an Aztlán visionary, outdoorsman, teacher, poet, gun enthusiast, and even painter. One painting – sadly missing – was called “Sonoyta in the Year 2000” showed a train crossing the region that he believed would one day become an important crossroads.

So here I am, dying to read this book – unfortunately, it's out of print.

It's listed in Google Books – with no reviews and not much information. Amazon says it's, “Currently unavailable.” It was reprinted in Mexico in 1985. Around 1964, archaeologist Irwin Hayden did an English translation that has never been published.

I'll be scanning for it as I comb through used book stores and antique malls, which brings me to one of the great ironies of our so-called Information Age: There are more things on Heaven and Earth than are accessable on the Internet. Everyday more stuff is saved, but a lot of futuristico/fantastico stuff -- that, despite being old, is wonderful and can do things to your brain that will make you better able to cope with the craziness to come – crumbles to dust.

We are in a race against time. It would be a shame if Campos del Fuego suffered the same fate as Esquers' painting of futuristic Sonotya.

Meanwhile, if you see a copy of Campos anywhere, please let me know.

Ernest Hogan has climbed pyramids from Tenochitlán to Chichén Itzá.

To Boldly Go Where No Juan Has Gone Before

Art by Carl Bandy

Spaced-out Chicanos

The following press release recently showed up in my inbox. Two Chicanos in space, on the same spaceship - juan giant step for raza. What a movie this could be. Is the solar system ready for a pair of fast-talking pachucos lowriding through outer space? Houston, no hay problema. George Lopez and Paul Rodriguez in the starring roles.

And who knew that our blogging comrade also has an exciting double life as an astronaut?

The space shuttle is scheduled for lift-off on August 28 at 11:59 PM.

HOUSTON - NASA astronaut José Hernández, set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery on STS-128, is providing insights about his mission on Twitter in both English and Spanish. He is the agency's first bilingual Twitterer.

Hernández, whose Twitter account is astro_jose, can be followed at:

http://www.twitter.com/astro_jose

Hernández, who considers Stockton, Calif., his hometown, grew up in a migrant farming family, traveling each year between Mexico and California. He did not learn English until the age of 12.

It will be the first shuttle mission to feature two Latino astronauts. Danny Olivas, who also is of Mexican descent, is among Hernández's six crew mates.

For Hernández's complete biography, visit:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/hernandez-jm.html

Olivas's biography is here:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/olivas.html


For more information about the STS-128 mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts128

More spacey news -- the official location of Aztlán has finally been mapped. Turns out that Aztlán is on one of Saturn's moons, Titan. At least according to NASA, that's where you can find it. More about this at this link, or here.


From NASA - original caption released with image: The Cassini spacecraft charts a quartet of dark albedo features on the moon Titan. From upper left to lower right of the image are Fenzal, Aztlan, Aaru and Senkyo.



Su Teatro 2009-2010 Season Kicks Off with José Torres-Tama

The Cone of Uncertainty:
New Orleans After Katrina

Four years after Katrina, José Torres-Tama utilizes various performance mediums, including satirical reenactments, socio-political commentary, movement, and sound in his acclaimed solo piece The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans After Katrina--a deep, first-hand exploration of the rich cultural history of the Big Easy and a wry analysis of the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by a native son.

Please join us as we kick off a season full of American Masterpieces.

The Cone of Uncertainty plays
Friday, September 4 at 7pm
Saturday, September 5 at 7pm
at the Denver School of the Arts (7111 Montview Blvd--just off Quebec, a couple blocks north of Colfax).

Tickets are $18, $15 students/seniors, $12 each for groups of 12 or more. Call to purchase: 303.296.0219, and ask about our special student group discount rate.

Or, purchase an all-inclusive Su Teatro Season VIP, and see The Cone of Uncertainty plus four other theater performances, and receive a full festival pass to the XicanIndie FilmFest, Neruda Poetry Festival, and 14th Annual Chicano Music Festival and Auction, all for just $145! Call now: 303.296.0219.


Poetry y Más
The Colorado Humanities and Arts Council (CHAC) presents the monthly Poetry y Más on September 12, 2:00 - 4:00 pm. This month features celebrated guest poets Giovanni Lopez and Ara Cruz with his new book A Journey in Red & Black Ink.

Peruse the full lineup of CHAC events at the website.

772 Santa Fe Drive Denver, CO 80204 [ view map ]
phone: 303-571-0440
HOURS: Wednesday & Thursday 10 AM - 4 PM
Friday 12 - 10 PM & Saturday 12 - 4 PM


A Dozen on Denver in Book Form
A Dozen on Denver: Stories
Fulcrum Publishing
November 15, 2009

From the publisher:

In this original tribute, twelve talented authors celebrate Denver’s 150th anniversary, each creating a unique story based on a different decade in the city’s colorful history. Ranging from the pioneer days to WWII aftermath to a haunting vision of the future, this lively volume offers an eclectic mix of exceptional storytelling, each complemented by contemporary illustrations. Edited by the the Rocky Mountain News and featuring twelve Colorado authors: Margaret Coel, Pam Houston, Sandra Dallas, Nick Arvin, Joanne Greenberg, Connie Willis, Manuel Ramos, Arnold Grossman, Robert Greer, Diane Mott Davidson, Laura Pritchett, and Robert Pogue Ziegler. Illustrated by Charles Chamberlin.

You can learn how this project came about here, and here. It was probably the last great idea from the late Rocky Mountain News.

Remember the 3 L's -- Lopez, Late Night, 'Leven.


Later.