Chicanonautica: Everybody’s Redrawing the Maps

 

by Ernest Hogan

Thank Tezcatlipoca, my crazy career has been demanding my attention lately, giving me a break from the political pendejada that has been sweeping across the planet. The stench of batshit is worse than that in certain Mayan pyramids. But the madness is too big to ignore.

And what madness. Not just a border emergency, shutting down the Southern border, but all kinds of emergencies we never dreamed of. 

I’m reminded of a scene in the old sci-fi film Enemy from Space, where a calm voice in a British accent said over a loudspeaker, “EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. SHOOT TO KILL. SHOOT TO KILL.” I was always disturbed by the fact that no instructions were given on exactly who to shoot.

What is the emergency? Every conspiracy theory. Who is the enemy? It looks like everybody is an “other,” even if you voted for this mess. 

The Felon-in-Chief is alienating–or should I say pissing off?--all our allies. Canada and Mexico are mad at us. 

Suddenly, the borders of the United State of America aren’t enough. The Felon wants Canada, Greenland, and is willing to hand half of the Ukraine to Putin and steal their resources. Imperialism is back. With a vengeance.

Proving that borders are imaginary–a hallucination that people choose to believe in–folks in Oregon want their border moved so they can be in Idaho, the same with some Illinois folks and Indiana. Shouldn’t be surprised. History books are full of maps showing how it all gets rearranged. With the exception of the U.S./Mexico border (Why? Hmm . . .), a lot of people want to redraw the maps again.

 

Borders are not only imaginary, they are largely unnatural, created by human beings through conflict and self-interest. Where you see a straight line on a map, there are unresolved conflicts bubbling away.

And now the bubbles are reaching the surface, getting ready to burst.

This is what happens when you choose to deal with diplomacy with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel.

Now the gargoyles have taken over the cathedral, as I heard Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison say and each attributing it to the other, back when the Watergate scandal broke. This time the gargoyles are uglier, meaner and stupider. Muy estupido.

And it’s looking like the beginning of a bloody mess. I hope to Izpopalotl, the Goddess of Nightmares, that it’s just my sci-fi imagination running amok, but what’s a Chicano scifiista to do?

These changes are already having an effect on culture. Hollywood and the media are going chickenshit, will publishing follow? 

Guess I have to go underground again, a cultural desperado, using creativity as a weapon and displaying in weird, new venues. When the going gets tough, the tough get creative. Look out, here comes a whole lot of guerrilla worldbuilding. 

We need to re-draw some maps, and transform the landscape.

Welcome to New Aztlán, cabrones!

Ernest Hogan will be teaching “Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style” via Zoom at Palabras del Pueblo Writing Workshop in June. The focus will be on aesthetic terrorism, creative blasphemy, and guerrilla worldbuilding. 

Chicanonautica: Otra Vez, The United States of Arizona

by Ernest Hogan

It was a weird, slow burn, festering away below the surface, and now it’s ready to burst open, unleashing a thick, sticky, toxic spray of poison all over the nation.

I consider one of my duties here to be La Bloga’s Arizona correspondent. I include politics in my beat, because whipping up paranoia about the Border and the Brown Menace is a perennial way to get elected here in the Grand Canyon State. And we’re seen as Norteamerica’s experimental laboratory for demented political ideas. Trump used the Border strategy to get into the White House, and other politicians across the land caught on.

There’s another, deadlier virus spreading. We are becoming the United States of Arizona. And it seems to be crossing borders. Another pandemic is coming.

This used to be a perverse kind of fun. And easy. All I had to do was report what was going on, and it was weird, funny, and I felt I was doing a needed public service.

Now it’s getting ugly, hideous, a bloody, pick and shovel self-defense job that I don’t dare quit.

As much as I hate to use an overused quote from Star Wars, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

In the old days the Republican hacks would start howling about it earlier. This time it was there, but not the main event. 

Then Trump got hit with the indictments and stumbled. Other predators, smelling blood in the water, moved into the murky power vacuum. 

The lawsuits over Arizona’s ex-governor Doug Ducey’s disastrous shipping container border wall have been dismissed, but the damage is still there. Texas governor Greg Abbott’s buoy barrier down the Rio Grande will stay in place thanks to a federal court. Then there’s Tom Horne, Superintendent of the Arizona Board of Education, doing his best to do away with bilingual education . . .

Meanwhile, more undocumented people are crossing border, triggering the usual hysteria, and giving me a flashback: A few elections ago (I have trouble sorting them out, and am disturbed that what was written long ago still rings true–things have only gotten worse) there was group of anti-immigrant speakers making the rounds at political rallies and getting lot of time on TV news. They had a token black, to prove that they weren’t racist. He ranted about how Mexicans were going to sneak across the Border, kill and eat Americans.

I wonder what he’s doing these days. Could he be running for office?

 

And while I don’t want to give election-denier Kari Lake any undue publicity as she keeps losing her lawsuits–I want her to become a bad joke and be forgotten, as she deserves–I can’t help noticing that she looks older in every photo I see of her. Politics does tend to cause rapid aging. You’d think an ex-cheerleader/news anchor would be doing something about it. If she doesn’t end up looking like a mummy soon, it could be because of an Elizabeth Bathory-type rejuvenation process.

Better watch out for reports of missing virgin’s blood . . .

And lately I’ve been having these visions of a convicted Trump back in the White House, wearing an ankle bracelet, issuing revenge by executive order.

So, stay tuned, gente, I’ll try to make it more coherent than this, but then maybe not. To misquote Star Trek, “I’m a sci-fi satirist, not a journalist.”

 

LAST MINUTE UPDATE: As I was getting ready to post this, the news about McCarthy ousting broke. ¡Chingao! It's worse than I thought . . .

Ernest Hogan’s Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus & Other Fictions is coming in 2024.

Playwrights' Arena presents the world premiere of my play, WAITING

By Daniel A. Olivas

In the summer of 2018, I wrote a New York Times opinion piece about my fictional response to Donald Trump’s election in the form of my 2017 dystopian short story “The Great Wall” where the President has finally constructed his long-promised southern border wall, and used the adjoining detention center to separate undocumented parents from their children. I argued that a year after creating this fictional, horrific world, my dystopian tale had essentially become a reality. In other words, for many immigrants and their children, the dystopia was here.

But it got worse. Trump flailed and sputtered—usually in late-night or early-morning Tweets—attacking anyone who opposed his policies and laying blame on others for failing to fulfill his promise to build the wall. He eventually unilaterally highjacked billions of dollars of the military budget to fund his wall. Even some Republicans were aghast at such self-help from an increasingly volatile president.

A year later, I believed that “dystopia” no longer fully described what we were witnessing. In my mind, the irrational hatred aimed at immigrants by Trump and his followers amounted to absurdity in its purest form. Merriam-Webster defines “absurd” as “having no rational or orderly relationship to human life: MEANINGLESS.” Under the Trump administration, we were certainly living in absurd times.

For over two decades, I had used fiction and poetry to depict and honor my Mexican American culture and experience all the while taking aim at the systematic bigotry my community has suffered for over two centuries in this country. But Trump took it to a new level. Don’t get me wrong: his thuggish, ignorant bigotry was nothing new. But to witness such unabashed hatred of immigrants—and anyone who looked like an immigrant—proclaimed and implemented as policy at the highest levels of our government in this day and age was flabbergasting.

So, in the summer of 2019, I was inspired to write my first play, Waiting for Godínez. Looking to Samuel Beckett’s iconic Godot play as the framing of my tale, Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, and Lucky were now embodied in my characters Jesús, Isabel, Piso, and Afortunada. In my play, Jesús is kidnapped each night by ICE and put into a cage. But the immigration agents forget to lock the cage, so Jesús escapes and makes his way back to Isabel as they wait for Godínez in a city park. It is a wholly different play, of course, but Mr. Beckett’s absurdist spirit runs through my work.

I wrote it almost in a fever—it was the literary equivalent of a primal scream. I immersed myself in Beckett’s text and watched many filmed versions of the Godot play available online. According to my journal, I started writing my play on July 23, 2019, with a working title of Waiting for Gómez. On August 3, I changed the title to Waiting for Godínez because, as I explained in my journal, it “fits better than ‘Gómez.’” The next day, I proclaimed in my notes: “Finished Waiting for Godínez!” In other words, I wrote the play in 13 days.

I then went about the business of submitting it to theatres and play competitions. I had never written a play before, and I do not have an MFA. So, I had to teach myself how to write a play and then figure out how to get someone to read it. In my research, Playwrights’ Arena looked like a potential home for what I was trying to do, so I submitted my play on August 7, 2019. The odds were stacked against me. But then remarkably, ten months later, I received an email invitation for my play to be included in Playwrights’ Arena 2020 Summer Series. I was suddenly a playwright.

That acceptance resulted in Waiting for Godínez being read on July 5, 2020, via Zoom, by professional actors and directed by Dr. Daphnie Sicre, a drama professor at Loyola Marymount University. I was bitten by the playwriting bug, and there was no turning back. I was invited the next month to submit a new draft of my play that addressed several notes made by Playwrights’ Arena’s artistic director, Jon Lawrence Rivera, and literary managers, Jaisey Bates and Zharia O’Neal. I quickly turned around a new draft and submitted it. But as I had learned from my research, there was no assurance that Playwrights’ Arena would make the commitment to fully stage my play. I was fine with that. My experience was already beyond anything I could have imagined, and I felt deeply gratified that my artistic challenge to our country’s anti-immigrant policies reached an audience, albeit a small one.

I started on a second play as part of a playwriting group sponsored by another local theatre. Then in November 2020, I received an email from Playwrights’ Arena asking for a Zoom meeting to discuss Waiting for Godínez. We were, at that point, well into the pandemic without widely available vaccines. In-person theatre was almost non-existent except for a few pandemic-friendly productions such as Playwrights’ Arena’s Garage Theatre where a small audience could watch a live play from the safety of their cars.

At the meeting, Jon gave me the wonderful news that Playwrights’ Arena wanted to produce Waiting for Godínez but I might have to wait a year or two for that to happen. Alternatively, I could rewrite it into a shorter, pandemic version—essentially trimming it by half—for a Garage Theatre-style production for the summer of 2021. After consulting with my director, Dr. Sicre, and my wife (not in that order), I decided to take on the challenge and rewrite my play for an earlier production.

The result is Waiting, which I like to call my pandemic remix of Waiting for Godínez. It is about half as long as the original, and the pandemic is now part of the storyline. In fact, the pandemic theme served an important role in helping me to trim and rewrite it into a shorter play that maintained the spirit of the original but that stood on its own as a separate and new theatrical work.

And as Playwrights’ Arena’s production of Waiting moves forward, we are still witnessing the residual violence done to immigrant families by the Trump administration. And the current administration—though eons better than the last—is still grappling with the harsh realities of a broken immigration system and the cruel politicization of the border.

Through absurdist humor, I hope that my play shines a bright light on the human rights tragedy suffered by immigrants while also humanizing that suffering. My goal is to give a voice and face to those members of our community who deserve to be respected and appreciated for their humanity. In other words, though I looked to Beckett’s absurdist theatre for inspiration, I actually do believe that there is something to be done. The alternative is too much for me to accept.

***

Waiting will have its world premiere on Saturday, July 24, and will run through August 15, 2021, at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039. For show times and ticket information, visit Playwrights’ Arena’s page for this play. Tickets are now available.

Chicanonautica: Across the Border with Roy, Cisco and Jorge

by Ernest Hogan

When I wrote about Disney’s The Three Caballeros a while back, Tom Miller, author of On the Border and Revenge of the Saguaro told me I should look into the Roy Rogers movie, Hands Across the Border. He didn’t know if the State Department had anything to do with it, but there was Chicanonautica material there.

I've always liked the Roy Rogers universe. It’s full of happy trails, and animals that are so intelligent you expect them to talk. It also takes place in time warp: stagecoaches coexist with trucks, jeeps, and atom bombs. It’s a kind of 20th century American dreamtime where the past is upgraded for the newfangled reality. And it often gets downright surreal.

Hands Across the Border is so surreal it should be considered a precursor to the acid western subgenre.

It begins with a song, “Easy Street.” Roy sings it while riding into the town of Buckaroo, as he passes signs saying: CHECK YOUR CARES HERE AT THE CITY LIMITS AND RIDE ON INTO PARADISE and BEWARE TRAMPS, MOUNTEBANKS, GAMBLERS, SCALLYWAGS AND THIEVES THERE IS ONLY ONE PLACE IN TOWN WHERE YOU ARE WELCOME OUR JAIL! All while the lyrics declare that he doesn’t need money, and “Have you ever seen a happy millionaire?”

Did Sheriff Joe Arpaio ever see this?

Roy’s a saddle bum, or migrant worker, looking to earn his keep by wrangling horses and singing. And he does a lot of both as he saunters into a plot that's mostly an excuse to lead into the songs. Trigger accidentally kills the owner of the ranch, then encourages Roy to convince the owner’s daughter to keep the ranch from getting into the hands of the Bad Guy. Animals often act as spirit guides in the Roy Rogers universe.

Like The Three Caballeros, the story doesn’t directly have a “We gotta make friends with Latinos to defeat the Nazis” theme. Duncan Renaldo -- later know as The Cisco Kid on television -- is the ranch foreman, who orders around the Anglo cowboys, but nothing is really made of it. If there was any guidance from the State Department, it’s in the musical numbers. This really kicks in at a fiesta in the Renaldo characters’ town -- they don’t mention which side of the border it’s on.

There are muchas señoritas at the fiesta. Or at least Hollywood starlets in the appropriate regalia -- at least one was platinum blonde. And here we find a serious connection to The Three Caballeros, one of the señoritas sing “Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes!” song by Manuel Esperón, with Spanish lyrics by Ernesto Cortázar Sr. that was originally released in a 1941 film of the same name starring Jorge Negrete. Hands Across the Border was released on January 5, 1944. On December 21, 1944, The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City, featuring Esperón’s music with English lyrics by Ray Gilbert, making it into “The Three Caballeros.” 

Cultural appropriation? The State Department in Hollywood? Or is this tune just that catchy?

The Mexicans in the town are supposed to help the ranch train the horses for a “government contract” in some way, buy it’s not shown. The military and the war aren’t mentioned. This is a spectacular race/torture test that the horses -- Trigger included -- are put through that includes explosions and a “simulated gas attack.”

I don’t think poison gas was used in the Second World War. What war are these horses going to be used in? We’re in the time warp again. Is this an alternate universe? On does it take place on a future, terraformed Mars?

This leads into an incredible finale. The opening song declares “We don’t have to flaunt our egos, amigos.” For about fifteen minutes there’s an all-singing, all-dancing recombocultural mashup of cowboy songs, Mexican Music (including an English translation of “Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes!”), and jazz on a stage with crossed Mexican and American flags, and a white line to represent the border. There’s also a violin and a female singer that sound like theremins. And three guys in dresses.

It’s as if Guillemo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra were doing a time travel gig in the Forties

With Latinos becoming the majority in California, and elections coming up, maybe double features of Hands Across the Border and The Three Caballeros should be encouraged.

Ernest Hogan had a Roy Rogers lunch pail in grade school. He lives in the Wild West, where life constantly reminds him that reality is stranger than science fiction.

Frontera NorteSur, Denver's Festival de Cine Mexicano, y un chiste

La Bloga readers have various reasons for coming here, not the least of which is news we share from the Spanish-speaking world--from Spain's Semana Negra to cultural news from all over the Southwest. Despite being primarily an arts/literary blog, real-world events necessarily affect our art and how we live in each of our niches.

The Internet, the WWW have provided us with floods of information--as countless as the over a billion Tweets or two hundred million blogs in existence (incl. Chinese). But the reliability of news and searches for "the truth" threaten to be buried by the staggering number of pieces out there. At the same time, mainstream sources of reliable journalism are declining. We the public, Chicano and otherwise, don't necessarily know as much as we once did.

For instance, how many know there have been at least ten suicides at Ft. Hood this year, an increase in domestic violence on-base and a rise in local crime? And who in the world of journalism is analyzing that for us and tying it to Obama's adding another 40,000 troops to "our" wars?

Information on Mexico and the shared border is important to us, not only because of our proximity or cultural ties, but the nature of that border is changing. Narco violence has crossed the river and no one can say how far north it will travel or how it might change our lives in Phoenix, San Antonio and even Denver.

None of this relates to you? Heading south of the border for an affordable vacation soon? Do you know which beaches are hygienically dangerous, unfit for swimming?

Are you an academic whose dissertation or published piece suffers because your pocho Spanish won't let you navigate la idioma journalistic waters?

Or are you in education and public service where you daily work with Mexican immigrants, but lack info about what it is that made them leave their mother country?

I speak only for myself when I say that my world revolves around the Southwest. I tend not to realize I need to encompass more to understand how and why things are transforming around me.

Luckily, years ago I found Frontera NorteSur. Their purpose: "FNS provides on-line news coverage of the US-Mexico border." They do this by analyzing and summarizing U.S., Mexican and other news agencies each week, providing sources at the end of each post.

Spend a few minutes on their website and you might come to realize how little the mainstream press tells us, how volatile conditions have become in Mexico, and how abruptly we might learn how intertwined our lives are with those who live on the border and southward.

You don't need to read many of their articles to understand this. Here's a sampling of headlines:

The Summer of Sewage?
Pollution Flows into the Rio Grande
Tomato Pickers Demand Bilingual Education
The Lost Daughters of the Rio Grande
Will Mexico Recuperate from the Tourism Crash?
From Narco War to War of Extermination

I include the letter below because it would be detrimental to an informed public to no longer have access to Frontera NorteSur's service. I leave it to La Bloga readers to decide for themselves how valuable a site this is.

Dear Esteemed Reader,

Although some declare the recession over now, tight budgets continue to be a reality for the foreseeable future. We know you appreciate receiving Frontera NorteSur, and we know you value journalism that provides an informed lens on critical stories, issues and personalities. In the case of the US-Mexico border, the issues are more important than ever. Immigration, the narco war in Ciudad Juarez and other places, economic challenges, and environmental crises are among the burning issues that will define the border region in the year to come and beyond.

Unfortunately, getting the information you need to know is not getting easier. In the El Paso-New Mexico region alone, a major Internet news service has recently suspended its service, while a Spanish-language newspaper has disappeared from the streets in recent months. Major international media like the New York Times continue to hemorrhage journalists, and news reporting in Mexico and many other places in the world remains a risky endeavor.

With our very limited resources, Frontera NorteSur does its modest part in helping fill the information gap. In previous years, reader donations assisted us in overcoming budgetary challenges and actually helping to expand this news service to some degree. In 2009, now more than ever, we are counting on you, the reader, to step up to the plate and help us into the new year. We know times are tough for everyone and really appreciate any donations that you can afford. After all, every little bit helps. Donations of $25, $50, $100 or more are especially appreciated.

Any contributions to Frontera NorteSur are tax-deductible.

We are also exploring a possibility of matching larger donations with a sizeable grant, which would lead to a much bigger expansion of Frontera NorteSur as a news service. If you know of any foundations or individuals willing to assist in this project, please contact Dr. Neil Harvey at nharvey@nmsu.edu

Again, thank you so much for your generous support and interest. We know you cannot afford not to be informed about US-Mexico border and related issues. If you would like to support us, please follow the instructions below for making a contribution.

Sincerely,
Dr. Neil Harvey, Director
Kent Paterson, Editor, Frontera NorteSur
Center for Latin American and Border Studies,
New Mexico State University

If you prefer to donate online, please go to the Foundation’s website.
Click on "Tell us how you want your gift applied" and the amount. Please insert “Frontera Norte Sur” in the box that opens below.

You can donate by sending a check or money order to:
NMSU Advancement
Attn: Nick Franklin, VP for University Advancement, Box 3590, Las Cruces, NM 88003

Checks and money orders should be made payable to: New Mexico State University Foundation Inc.
On the memo line of the check, in the bottom left hand corner, put: Frontera NorteSur
Include a brief cover letter with the check that states you are donating to Frontera Norte Sur, NMSU and includes your name, address, daytime phone and email address. Also please state if you graduated from NMSU (with year of graduation and degree if applicable).

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Festival de Cine Mexicano

The 32nd Starz Denver Film Festival will showcase many of Mexico's most recent and influential films. The festival began Thursday Nov. 12 and runs through Nov. 22, 2009.

From contemporary films such as Rudo y Cursi, Sin Nombre, Y Tu Mamá También, and numerous others, the Mexican film industry is making its cinematic presence known.

Norteado is a beautiful film and the director of La Ultima y Nos Vamos will be in attendance for her entertaining film following the lives of three friends in Mexico City. Below are films and times that will be presented as a part of the program:

Cruzando (Crossing) - When hapless Manuel, a janitor at a Mexican strip club, hears that his father is about to be executed in Texas, he embarks on a picaresque trek for the border with his pal Diego in a quirky road movie that is by turns comedy and tragedy.
Wed. Nov 18 6:45 pm
Thurs. Nov 19 9:15pm

Corazón del Tiempo (Heart of Time) In this political narrative styled as a documentary, a young woman in the volatile Mexican state of Chiapas brings the threat of chaos to her community when she breaks her engagement with a local boy in order to pursue her love for a Zapatista rebel.
Sun. Nov 15 6:45pm

Norteado (Northless) In Oaxacan-born director Rigoberto Perezcano's first feature, Andrés, a young farmer from the south of Mexico, has made several attempts to cross the border into the United States - all dashed by the danger of the desert. On the verge of giving up, he decides to try one last brilliant if surrealistic plan.
Sun. Nov 15 7:15pm
Mon. Nov 16 9:15pm

La Ultima y Nos Vamos (One for the Road) Three well-heeled young men looking for action in Mexico City and find it when they cross the boundaries that divide them from the city's working classes to discover an entirely new world. Director Eva López-Sánchez based her drama on the real-life experiences of her coauthor, Alfredo Mier y Terán.
Sun. Nov 15 9:30pm
Mon. Nov 16 6:45 pm

Rabioso Sol, Rabioso Cielo (Raging Sun, Raging Sky) In the experimental filmmaker Julián Hernández's mystical celebration of sexual desire, two young lovers are torn apart by circumstance and seek divine guidance to help bring them back together. On the brink of reunion, tragedy strikes again, but their passion is so pure that the gods immortalize them in myth.
Sun. Nov 15 12:30pm
Mon. Nov 16 6pm

El Arból (The Tree) Santiago, a Madrileño bartender, is trying to come to terms with the deteriorating circumstances of his life. Thrown out by his wife, barred from seeing his children, and fired from his job, he walks the streets searching for salvation - which he might just find on a high bridge in the middle of the city.
Tues Nov. 17 8:45pm
Wed. Nov. 18 5pm
Wed. Nov. 18 7pm

The Festival de Cine Mexicano program will also include a special presentation of the feature film, Up, in Spanish subtitles, as a part of the Saturday-at-the-Movies program Saturday, Nov. 21 at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

Sponsors of this program: Cinema Latino, Consulate General of Mexico in Denver, Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara, Idea Marketing, Mexican Cultural Center, Mezcal, Museo de las Americas, Que Bueno 1280AM, Tambien, Telefutura, University of Guadalajara and Univision Colorado.

To purchase tickets or for more information visit www.denverfilm.org

Nos vemos en los movies!

-------------------

Lover's advice, translated from the Spanish:

If your lover trembles when you embrace him,
If his body flames with desire at your touch,
And if he chokes up when you tell him you love him,
Get rid of the sucker--he's got H1N1.

RudyChG

Review: Literary El Paso; Notes 'n News

Literary El Paso. Marcia Hatfield Daudistel, ed. Ft Worth TX: 2009.

ISBN 978-0-87565-387-7

Michael Sedano

In an era of ebooks and Kindles, iPhones, Blackberries and all manner of text-delivering digital device, Literary El Paso seems a throwback to an earlier era and a substantial reminder why one enjoys reading printed books in a cozy chair. Undeniably, portability is one advantage electronic devices have over the printed page. Whip out that iPhone while waiting for the bus and read to your heart’s content. Your heart. Me, I’m sure if I haul around this volume I either will forget my reading anteojos at home, or remember the lentes but set the book down somewhere and forget it. They say the memory’s the second thing to go and I do not remember the first.

Texas Christian University Press printed Literary El Paso’s 572 pages, plus xxiv front material, on a 7” x 10” page, giving the volume a comfortable heft and a shape that opens just right to fit a reader’s lap. The serifed font-- is it “Centaur” so highly praised in Carl Hertzog’s essay on page 9?-- is uncomfortably tiny for my eyes, but the typesetter’s justification spreads out individual letters so none touch neighbors (except in a couple of spots), and generous line spacing spreads the text across and down the page creating ample white space for maximal legibility. Once you’ve gotten hands on your own copy of Daudistel’s collection, you’ll likely agree Literary El Paso qualifies as a Morris Chair book.

Upon scanning Literary El Paso’s table of contents and paging serendipitously through the volume, readers will discover the editor’s liberal sense of “literary” as encompassing a wide variety of writing, from poetry to journalism to footnoted historical writing to fiction to essay. Indeed, Daudistel observes in her Introduction that “all writing coming out of a region is, in fact, the literature of that region” and that's what she's included, a rich potpourri of flavors.

Given such a cafeteria plan, readers may elect to browse the collection, not read it at a sitting. Daudistel’s made that easy by assembling her material into three themes. It’s a sensible organization that lends itself to part-by-part enjoyment. Part I, “The Emergent City / La Ciudad Surge”, opens with a cowboy fragment and features historians and journalists. Part II, calls itself “The People, La Gente”, and features a preponderance of Latina Latino writers, and fiction. Part III, “This Favored Place / Lugar Favorecido”, features poets and essays. The collection includes unpublished works from John Rechy, Ray Gonzalez and Robert Seltzer.

Given the pedo that erupted last Tuesday in Sergio Troncoso’s essay, Is the Texas Library Association excluding Latino writers?, Seltzer’s apologia for his father, Chester Seltzer AKA “Amado Muro” constitutes a mixed bag of biography and sympathetic character assassination, but not a defense for Seltzer père’s cultural appropriation--perhaps “reverse assimilation”-- of a Mexicano identity and his subsequent lionizing as a Chicano writer. Literary El Paso is silent about the controversy—see Manuel Ramos’ 2005 column for a useful assessment--electing a less-than-neutral biographical paragraph featuring Seltzer’s “Muro” pseudonym, and publishing two selections from Seltzer/Muro’s collected work.

Any work of such beauty as Literary El Paso comes with a blemish or two. Of these, the anthology’s coverage of Ricardo Sánchez is the least forgivable. Daudistel pairs Ramón Rentería’s “Another Struggle, interview with Ricardo Sánchez” with two Sánchez poems, “fragrance petals its presence…” and “Fridays Belong to Friends, Sometimes”. The interview piece alludes to Sánchez’ code-switching work, quoting Bobby Byrd saying “It’s a real pleasure to read his work not only for the meaning but also for the sound and the word play and the joy he has playing with both languages”. Oddly, neither of Sánchez’ two poems display such code-switching play. There’s an epigraph in “fragrance” placing the writing on “June 30, 1977 L. Chukosburgo, Te(de)jaslum cabulat/sufiteotls” but it’s an otherwise puro Inglés piece about sex. Ditto the second poem, about a “trío de locos” cruising Juárez cantinas.

Happily, Literary El Paso presents the writers’ language as originally writ, sans italics, absent forced appositional translation, diacritics in place, and misspellings. Allurista? Avelardo Delgado? (Rentería). All this makes for a pleasant reading experience that allows one’s eyes to follow across the page free of interruptions and distractions. Finally, Daudistel’s included a helpful Index alphabetized by both authors and titles, and for the latter, adding the author’s name just so you’re sure to find what you’re looking for. In fact, readers will find a lot of what they’re looking for in a book of this ilk, and ultimately Literary El Paso provides what anyone looks for in such an extensive and varied collection: a montón of fun.

Noted and Calendared: Cano Book Launch

Daniel Cano's beautiful historical novel, Death and the American Dream, is featured in a fundraiser for veteranos (no de las calles but the US military) on Saturday, November 14 at the Pete Valdez Sr. AMVETS Post II.

Sponsored by the AMVETS post & United States Veterans' Artist Alliance, together with the Westside Association of Mexican American Educators, the event features a special performance by Chicano Secret Service, in addition to Mr. Cano reading from his novel.

I'll be there to join the discussion of his timely novel of Mexican/Chicano journalism, starting at 7 p.m. 10858 Culver Blvd, Culver City. Click here for a printable PDF poster to share with your reading friends and friends of US Military Veterans.

Noted and Calendared: Obregon / Medal of Honor Monument

Saturday, December 5 culminates the beginning of the end of lengthy organizing efforts led by William Lansford (the only Chicano interviewed in the Ken Burns WWII PBS program) to erect a monument to those selfless men and one woman (to date) who have earned the nation's highest honor for military valor, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Los Angeles mayor Villaraigosa and City Councilperson Huizar, along with numerous special guests, will unveil the first element of the planned Obregon monument, the Wall of Honor, naming each of the individuals honored for their valor, many posthumously. Eugene Obregon, a Los Angeles Chicano, died on the streets of Seoul, Korea, shielding from machine gun fire with his own body, a wounded comrade.

Click here for a printable PDF poster of the event. I hope you'll share this with all, but especially anyone you know who's ever worn the uniform. My great uncle's name is on the wall. Maybe you have a friend or relative's name on the wall, too. Ni modo. Join in to acknowledge what these soldiers, sailors, and marines have done in our name. I'll be there for sure, with an extra hope that we'll soon see an end to Obama's wars and bring the troops home alive. No more heroes, Obama. Please.

News Note: Call for Papers re: Octavio Paz

La Bloga friend Roberto Cantú from CSULA invites participation in the following.

The 2010 Conference on Octavio Paz will be devoted to his poetry, poetics, and essays that examine world civilizations and modernity. The conference organizers invite papers on the following topics:

1. Octavio Paz and his writings on Mesoamerica: art, history, and religion.
2. Essays by Octavio Paz on art, poetry and culture of Colonial Mexico.
3. Octavio Paz and art criticism.
4. Studies on Octavio Paz’s autobiographical writings: poetry and essays;
5. Octavio Paz’s translations in Versiones y diversiones, including his theoretical reflections on translation.
6. Poetry and essays by Octavio Paz on China, India, or Japan.
7. Octavio Paz and collective poetry: from Renga (1969) to Hijos del aire (1979).
8. Octavio Paz and the Hermetic Tradition.
9. Octavio Paz’s historical critique of sex, love and eroticism in Western civilization, from Plato and Petrarch to Sade and Bataille.
10. Octavio Paz, Mallarmé, and Breton: Poetry and Poetics.
11. Octavio Paz, the Avant-Garde and Structuralism: from Marcel Duchamp to Claude Lévi-Strauss.
12. Octavio Paz and the modern legacy of world religions and civilizations: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Ancient Mexico, among others.
13. Octavio Paz and theatre: La hija de Rappaccinni.
14. Octavio Paz’s critical writings on colonialism, modernization, and totalitarianism in the 20th century.
15. Octavio Paz and the 1910 Mexican Revolution: Critical Essays.

The deadline for a one-page abstract of conference papers is March 31, 2010. Click here to review a PDF of the entire Call.

That's 2/5 of November's Tuesdays, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga. Wednesday November 11 brings us Veterans Day. To all the soldiers, sailors, marines on duty today, I salute you. To my comrades past, damn, brothers, we were soldiers, weren't we?

mvs

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Soldadera - a memoir

Unknown Soldaderas - Mexican Revolution

Porfirio Dias was Mexico’s president for 30 years following centuries of occupation, colonization, uprisings, invasions by Spain and France, and war with the United States. Dias’ autocratic regime gave rise to a new, industrialized Mexico, made possible by exploiting the majority of the people, stripping them of human rights while Dias built political power and personal wealth. Those who suffered most were the poor, the laborers, indios and women. In 1895, civil code was passed which severely restricted Mexican women to a life of serving their husbands, their families, and the Catholic Church.

The country was divided on these and other issues and Mexico fell into a ten-year period of chaos, with back-to-back political coups and foreign intervention. But, through the shifts in power, peasants gathered together to create a land that could serve all of Mexico’s people, including her women.This presented a conflict between traditional women who enjoyed their more domestic, subservient roles and an emerging feminism completely unknown in Mexico before. It became one of the underlying principles of the Mexican Revolution and the subject of one of the great reforms to arise from this period.

The women who stood up for higher ideals and demanded change were extraordinary, particularly given their social position and their time in history. They joined the Revolution, demanding reform across a country in disarray. Some became political voices, journalists who wrote articles opposing the tyranny of the ruling class. Some became nurses treating wounded revolutionary soldiers. Others served as spies or procured provisions for the small bands of peasants who continued fighting for freedom from 1910 until well after 1920. A few picked up weapons and joined forces, with Zapata in the south or Villa in the north, to fight along side the men. They became known as las soldaderas.

My mother, now in her late eighties, recalled the stories from her childhood in Mexico of a mysterious woman her Mama hated, a woman who came to their house to see the son she had left behind. Her name was Soledad.

For years, Soledad was described by my grandmother as a reckless harlot who irresponsibly left her child in the care of others so she could follow the revolutionary soldiers. To my grandmother, who could only view the events through the lens of her traditional upbringing, it was disgraceful. And, for more than a lifetime, only one side of the story was told. Finally, decades later, when my mother researched Mexican history, another story, long forgotten, materialized. This is my mother, Gloria's, recollection.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was born in 1921 but I can remember from about the age of 4, our life in Mexico. Papa’s name was Juan. He was born in Linares, Mexico, located about 130 km from Monterrey City in the State of Nuevo Leon.

Juan

He was orphaned in early childhood and sent to the seminary where he got an education. He was a newspaper reporter, book binder and writer. He was also an amateur ‘novillero,’ a novice bullfighter who fights young bulls. He had a younger sister, Soledad.

My parents settled in Monterrey once they were married. Mama was quite young, about 13. In the early years of the marriage, Mama – still a child herself, loved dressing up in beautiful clothes - taffeta dresses in popular styles of the time, fur coats and gold jewelry. She wore them on Sunday outings. Papa was very active in social clubs, sports and celebrations around town. Mama, beautiful and proud, saw her life as sophisticated and special, the life she was born to live.

We had 2 maids- one to care for us children, the other to cook and clean. Our house was always spotless and it seemed very grand. There was a pond with fine little pebbles inside the house, and here I could play for hours as a child. In the back yard was a beautiful garden. We seldom interacted with Mama but rather with my Nana, because proper women of class did not bother with domestic chores. When I was bathed by my Nana, dried with clean sheets, dressed in a hand- embroidered slip, I felt like a princess.
Gloria, age 4

The few memories of going out with Mama were of going to the tailor for new clothes of fine materials, fur trim, and adornments. Mama always wore jewels and lace and very delicate clothing. We children always had to be dressed up as well. We were like her little dolls.

The biggest problem in Mama’s life was her sister-in-law, Soledad. At the age of about 17, Soledad had become a ‘Villista,’ one of the volunteers supporting Pancho Villa in the Revolution. This was a great embarrassment to Mama. To make matters worse, Soledad fell in love with a French soldier and bore their son, Alfonso. But, instead of coming home and managing her responsibilities, Soledad continued fighting the war. Alfonso lived with us.

Between battles, Soledad nursed the wounded or went begging for food and supplies, not seeing her son for months. They say that that she would sneak to our house at night, all filthy and hungry, and want to see Alfonso. She didn’t bring money or food, and even asked for provisions to take back with her. Mama hated her for this.

Mama was not political. She enjoyed her role, surrounded by domestic affluence and security. What did she care about women’s rights? To Mama, Soledad’s uncivilized behavior represented everything coarse and disgusting in a woman. She was deeply offended by the excitement that Soledad caused when she came to the house. Finally, sick from an epidemic and malnutrition and exhaustion, Soledad’s tiny body gave out. She died and, much to Mama’s anger, her son Alfonso became Mama’s irrevocable responsibility.

Mama did not see her sister-in-law as heroic, although Soledad had fought for ten years in the harsh terrain of Mexico, ill equipped and out manned, unpaid and driven only by the shredded dream of freedom. Mama only saw the additional burden of the child she would now have to raise with her own.

Daily, Mama expressed her frustration to Alfonso, berating his mother and her foolish choices. She called his mother a whore who lived like a gypsy, bedding any soldier who would tell her she was pretty. He was lucky, Mama would say, that his mother had died. Her jealousy of the romantic and heroic woman masked for all of Alfonso’s life the courage and spirit of the mother he never knew.

A few years later, one of Papa’s cousins, who already lived and worked in the US, insisted that we come right away to take part in the opportunities and wealth just north of the border. With the pressure of our growing family, including Alfonso, it seemed the right thing to do. So, Papa took Alfonso and came to Texas first to see if it was as fantastic as it was described. And it was, in every way. Six months later, Papa came for us.

As if on a splendid adventure, we crossed the border, dressed in all our finery. It was Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1926. I remember entering the city of Laredo, Texas like I was walking in a dream. There were fireworks everywhere and flags and people celebrating in the streets, so beautiful and exciting. I was nearly five years old.

The family settled in San Antonio where Papa was working as a newspaper reporter and started a printing and bookbinding business. And, even after a problem with our documents caused us to be temporarily repatriated, we finally established roots in South Texas and Mama believed that her life of luxury was about to become even better. And it did . . . for almost three years.

Then, the Depression came and everything crashed overnight. The stock market and jobs, businesses - everything just crumbled. There was no time to plan or adjust- it seemed like the prosperous life everyone was enjoying burst like a water pipe and everyone’s dreams just gushed out into the street.

After that, things became very difficult for Mexican people. With no jobs for the men and many mouths to feed, my Mama was forced to work beneath her class in order to survive. She learned to raise chickens so the family could eat. She made liquor to sell during prohibition. She cooked for the parish priest or made garments for women who could afford new clothes. She became a maid, cleaning Anglo women’s homes. She gave birth to 13 children but only six survived. Through it all, Mama maintained an air of the life she once had, the elegance she still dreamed of.

Many years later, I found some research on the soldaderas. I started collecting it for Alfonso because I wanted him to know that he should be proud of his mother. I wanted to tell him that Soledad was fighting against discrimination and injustice. The soldaderas had helped the revolution stay alive. They were heroes. But he died before I could talk to him about it. I don’t think he ever knew.

Alfonso 1950 My mother, Gloria 1940

My mother went on to earn a college education, in spite of her Mama’s objection. She taught school for 33 years in Texas and taught her three daughters to be independent thinkers, self- sufficient and proud of our Mexican heritage. In only two generations, women of our family were transformed from both traditionalist women of leisure and zealous freedom fighters into penniless immigrants, and finally, into progressive American women of conviction and purpose.

I dream that there’s a little of Soledad in each of us. Whether she was a silly girl following the camps or a woman of grit who heard freedom’s call to arms, we will never know. I prefer to think that she was a little of both . . . dutiful to her cause and yet romantically in love with the idea that she would spill her blood to wash away injustice.

1915 My Grandparents 1960

About The Author...
Annette Leal Mattern
During her long career in technology, Annette held numerous corporate leadership positions with Fortune 100 companies where she championed development of minorities for upper management. She received the National Women of Color Technology Award for Enlightenment for her diversity achievements and was recognized by Latina Style and Vice President Gore as one of the most influential Latinas in American business. In 2000, she left her corporate work to devote herself to women's cancer causes. She published her first book, Outside The Lines of love, life, and cancer, to help others cope with the disease. She has also been published in Hispanic Engineer and several other media. Annette serves on the board of directors of the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance and founded the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Arizona, for which she serves as president. Annette also writes for http://www.empowher.com/. She and her husband, Rich, live in Scottsdale AZ.