More News from Poet and Pulitzer Nominee, Margo Tamez

Please take some time to read about the land struggle that is currently underway, and not being covered by mainstream media. Margo Tamez, author of Naked Wanting and Raven Eye, wants readers to know about the struggle between the Department of Homeland Security and native peoples on the issue of border rights.

Border struggle article, here.

For background on Margo, her poetry, and her commitments, read my conversation with her, here.


Lisa Alvarado

News from Poet MargoTamez---Indigenous Lands at Risk

There is some disturbing news from poet Margo Tamez, author of Naked Wanting and Raven Eye, concerning the Department of Homeland Security, native peoples and border rights.

Border struggle article, here.

For background on Margo, her poetry, and her commitments, read my post, here.

Lisa Alvarado

Urgent News from Margo Tamez/Indigenous Lands at Stake

Press Release: For Wide Distribution
From: Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache, Jumano Apache)
December 6, 2007
Re: Chertoff Announces Eminent Occupation of Land Title Holders Refusing to Sign NSA Waivers

Dear supporters of the Lipan Apache Women Title Holder Defenders:

Ahi'i'e for all your wonderful outpouring of support to our elders of El Calaboz. We need your help on our continuing efforts to protect and keep safe the elders of our struggle against U.S. tyranny.

Today we have serious news to share and to update on the situation unfolding in the traditional lands of the Lipan Apache communities of the Mexico-US militarized border region. Chertoff announced plans to force occupation of South Texas families who refuse
to allow the government access to their lands.

See the story in the Houston Chronicle:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5357676.html

United States occupation of South Texas people refusing Homeland Security access to their traditional lands is EMINENT. 'Refusers' such as the Lipan Apache Land Grant Women Defense, co-led by my mother, Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez (Lipan Apache, Basque-Apache), in the rancheria of El Calaboz, have frustrated the NSA, Border Patrol and Army Corps of Engineers officials for over two years, and increasingly in the last two months.

Using tactics such as public announcements over the news service, used as intimidation and as psychological warfare--NSA/Chertoff exploits the press to prepare the nation to invade South Texas--and indigenous peoples--who are being 'architected as the perpetual enemies of the United States. This is an old story of genocidal tactics and militarization.

This scenario played out before, in 19th century, in 20th century. And now the 21st, my mother, the 'child of lightning ceremony', is fighting for the vestiges of our traditional lands. My mother, and the ancestors of 'the place where the Lipan pray', have been critical to our land-based struggle, and they are leaders in an Apache struggle in the Mexico-US International Boundary region. Our elder voices direct us in a huge role that Apache people will play in standing up against tyranny of the settler society. We cannot do this without the support and the solidarity of our indigenous sisters and brothers who are also at the forefront of the 21st century battles for our rights as indigenous peole with ancient footprints on this land.

My mother, at this stage of our community-based struggle, indicates that she is prepared to receive national and international support for our small community on the peripheries of U.S. empire. She wrote a comment on the page of this newsstory out of Houston, Texas.

Today we are submitting our comments to the Environmental Impact Statement authorities, and parallel to that we are submitting an indepth case study of our histories under U.S., Mexican, Spanish, Vatican and corporate domination to the International Indian Treaty Council shadow report to be submitted to the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Racism and Racial Discrimination in December.

Please read Chertoff's public announcement to occupy South Texas oppressed groups, and pass on WIDELY to all networks. I'm going to attach the CENSORED story, so new folks to our struggle can become educated rapidly. In peace in the struggle against tyranny.

Margo Tamez
(Lipan Apache, Jumano Apache)

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/11/urgent-call-for-helphomeland-
security.html
Urgent Call for Help from Lipan Apache Women Defense

http://www.kpfk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3574
&Itemid=79&lang=en
American Indian Airwaves interview of Margo Tamez: "The Militarization of Indigenous Women's Lives at the Mexico-U.S. International Boundary."

http://www.nativewiki.org/Margo_Tamez

Lisa Alvarado

Tres Tresoros

Everynight Life

Celeste Frazier Delgado, Jose Esteban Muñoz (eds.)

This book explores the varied tradition of dance throughout Latino/a America: salsa, merengue, rumba, mambo, tango, samba and norteña as a language of resistance. The editors reveal the history of these popular forms of dance as syncretic practices of African, indigenous, and mestizo people in the Americas. Much in the same way popular forms of African-American dance preserved traditional values of an oppressed people, so did the people’s of Latino/a America survive a dominant culture of of liquidation and negation. The most striking example of this is the Brazilian example, capoeira. It's both a syncretic dance practice of Yoruba devotees and a martial art. Slaves and former slaves developed capoeira as a means to resist and defend themselves. To a lesser extent, dance forms as popular as salsa, merengue, etc. reflect ancient tribal forms which celebrate the earth and body, resisting co-optation by European invaders. In fact, these dances insinuated themselves into mainstream culture and became popular themselves. They represent a kind of subversion to a Eurocentric idea of body, personal space and identity. I was fascinated by the editors’ premise that dance uses the body and its movement as a language, a code. I was reminded of the possibility to invent story by movement, by the symbolism of moving flesh.

ISBN-10: 0822319195
ISBN-13: 978-0822319191

Riverbed of Memory
Daisy Zamora

Daisy Zamora was a member of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Liberation Army. She was program director of the clandestine Radio Sandino during the revolution, and later became a Vice Minister of Culture in the revolutionary government. In Riverbed of Memory, Zamora writes poetry about the horrors of war, its causes and its aftermath. What's stunning about the book is its elliptical, subtle portrayal of its subject matter. She creates a riveting portrayal of violence and death, by inference, and it's all the more powerful because of it. I was spellbound by a writer who could capture the essence of something horrible without cliche, without beating the reader to a bloody pulp. Zamora accomplishes this with economy and simplicity. In a particularly strong piece, Zamora compares the spilled blood of a child to the first fruit of the harvest, crushed under the boot of a soldier, its pulp staining the earth. I found in Riverbed of Memory examples of how to write about strongly charged material indirectly, helping the reader to understand the enormity of catastrophe by describing the shadow it casts.

ISBN-10: 0872862739
ISBN-13: 978-0872862739

Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds
Gabriella De Ferrari

Gabriella De Ferrari is a curator, lecturer and Peruvian expatriate living in New York City. Gringa Latina is the story of her journey between two worlds. She describes in loving detail her life in a small rural town where her father was a doctor. The reader follows De Ferrari through her home town, along its riverbank, its grove of olive trees, the sights and sounds of her mother’s kitchen. With similar detail, she describes her culture shock at the crowds of people in New York, her first subway ride, her first nervous attempts to mount and promote an exhibit. While clearly De Ferrari’s affluence protected her from the worst aspects of being a stranger in a strange land, she captures the emigre’s sense of loneliness, loss and anomie. Her language is clean and spare, and I found this book helpful in thinking about the creation of memoir as a whole, and my piece in particular. Gringa Latina uses the very personal account of one woman’s journey to tell a larger human story through the use of the particular, connection to place, and the recreation of home.

ISBN-10: 1568361459
ISBN-13: 978-1568361451

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CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN'S Latina Leadership Council

6:30 p.m. wine and cheese reception
8-9:30 p.m. performance

Friday, Nov. 9

Chicago Dramatists
1105 W. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL

Call (312) 577-2801 ext. 229. Tickets are $45.

Proceeds from this event benefit the Unidas Fund of the Latina Leadership Council. No refunds or exchanges. A world premiere production, "MACHOS" is an interview-based play about contemporary masculinities. As always, Teatro Luna asks hard-hitting questions, such as: Exactly how did you learn to use the urinal? "MACHOS" presents a range of true-life stories with Teatro Luna’s trademark humor and unique Latina point-of-view.

"MACHOS" follows Teatro Luna's critically-acclaimed shows "S-E-X-OH" and "LUNATIC(A)S." It moves beyond the everyday stereotypes of gender, offering a complex look at how 50 men (and eight Latina women) learned how to be men. Performances
are drawn from interviews with 50 men nationwide and performed by an all-Latina cast in drag. After the performance there will be a reception with director Coya Paz and the actors.

Featuring Belinda Cervantes, Maritza Cervantes, Yadira Correa, Gina Cornejo, Ilana Faust,
Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez and Wendy Vargas.

Learn more about the Latina Leadership Council of Chicago Foundation for Women

Chicago Dramatists is wheelchair-accessible.
If you have other accesibility needs or questions, please contact Marisol Ybarra by Nov. 6 at (312) 577-2836 / TTY (312) 577-2803 or mybarra@cfw.org.

SAVE THE DATE

November 3, Saturday

¡Siempre Latina!
Gala Dinner

Garden Manor
4722 W. Armitage
Chicago, IL

Tickets:

$60 advance
$70 at door

Available:

Mestiza 1010 W. 18 Street Chicago, IL
312 563 0132

Early to Bed 5232 N. Sheridan Rd. Chicago, IL
773 271 1219

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AND MORE ABOUT MARGO TAMEZ

THE OTHER VOICES WOMEN’S READING SERIES PRESENTS MARGO TAMEZ

MARGO TAMEZ is the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and a First Place Literary Award from the Frontera Literary Review. She is the author of Naked Wanting, also published by the University of Arizona Press. She is of Jumano and Lipan Apache as well as Spanish Land Grant ancestry of South Texas and currently lives in Pullman, Washington.

Friday, November 9th at 7:00 p.m.

Antigone Books,
411 North 4th Avenue

520-792-3715

RAVEN EYE

Written from thirteen years of journals, psychic and earthly,
this poetry maps an uprising of a borderland
indigenous woman battling forces of racism
and sexual violence against Native women and children.
This lyric collection breaks new ground, skillfully
revealing an unseen narrative of resistance on the
Mexico–U.S. border. A powerful blend of the oral
and long poem, and speaking into the realm of global
movements, these poems explore environmental injustice,
sexualized violence, and indigenous women’s lives.
These complex and necessary themes are at the
heart of award-winning poet Margo Tamez’s second
book of poetry.

NAKED WANTING

Speaking with the voice of the cicada and the cricket,
the raven and the crane, Margo Tamez shows us that
the earth is a vibrant network of birth, death, and rebirth—
a sacred intertwining from which we as humans have
become disconnected. Through images that remind us
of Nature’s beauty and fragility, reflections on childbirth
and children, and warnings of environmental abuse,
she brings to her poetry the insight of someone
who has experienced firsthand what happens
when our land and water are compromised.

“Margo Tamez’s poetry works like a heartsong,
it makes us brave. Her alive response to what kills
makes us want to stand up with her and sing in
the face of the enemy. . . . They say that women
at war pose the most serious threat, and so it is
that Margo Tamez’s call to battle both instills
fear and thrills us.” —Heid E. Erdrich


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Juan Felipe Hererra offers a personal and illuminating perspective on this issue in his new book 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. He launches his "187 Express" at City Lights on Thursday, November 15th, 7pm, with music and spoken word, and is available for interview.

Herrera has enlisted a team of "word-callers" to join the festivities --

Emilio Robles Kirkpatrick, 12 year old wordsmith - MC
Ginny Lim, SF, Poet
Arlene Biala, Santa Clara, Poet
Margarita Robles, Fresno, Poet
Francis Wong, SF, Jazz musician
John Carlos Perea, SF, bassist
Yolanda Muñoz, San Diego, sculptor

The "Express" takes Herrera across the border states,
and up and down California in a series of
event/performances involving guest musicians and artists.

Raised in the fields of California in a family of migrant workers,
Herrera has blended art and activism for over 30 years
as a pioneer of the Chicano spoken word movement.
He has spent the last three and half decades
assembling the collection found in 187 Reasons –
at rallies, walkouts, under fire and on the run,
in cafés, under helicopters and in the midst of
thousands of marchers for civil rights and new
immigration policies. Some of the work is a result
of secret reconnaissance information given to him
by travelers in Central America as they documented
the atrocities of the military. There are sections
devoted to the first Chicano encounters and
journeys in the Mayan Indian ground of Chiapas,
now recognized globally. And there are spoofs
and sparks and lists of things that speak about
migrant Street Poets' experiences. Most provocative
is the photo album of Herrera’s family and his
journeys documenting close to a hundred
years of migrante life.

Juan Felipe Herrera is Professor of Creative Writing
at the University of California, Riverside.
Author of 23 books, he is a community arts leader
and a dynamic performer and actor.
He is the son of Mexican immigrants
and grew up in the migrant fields of California.

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NOVEMBER EVENTS AT
TIA CHUCHA'S CAFE CULTURAL

Children's Reading with Rene Colato

Instill the love of reading early on and bring your children,
nephews, nieces, or grandchildren to meet children's
author Rene Colato and play loteria. He will read
from his book "Playing Lotería / El juego de la lotería."

"PlayingLotería" is about a little boy who visits his
grandmother in Mexico, and with the help of la lotería,
learns a new language and how special the bond
between a boy and his grandmother can be.

SATURDAY, Nov. 3rd at 2 p.m.


Cine Sin Fin Screening

Cine Sin Fin will be screening films and videos by
aspiring independent Chicana/o filmmakers.
The purpose is to empower those who personify
and humanize the Chicana/o experience to
those who would otherwise not be familiar with it
and promote positive images of Chicanas/os in film.
There will be a panel discussions throughout the evening.

Featured Films:

Milagros
The Great Tamale War
Isabel
Tomoko's Kitchen
Compas
Search for the Chupacabra

Wednesday, Nov. 7th at 7 p.m.

10258 Foothill Blvd.
Lake View Terrace, CA 91342
(818) 896-1479
Fax: (818) 896-1489
info@tiachucha.com

Lisa Alvarado