Chicanonautica: Días de los Muertos, Halloween, Dead Daze

 

 by Ernest Hogan

When this goes up, I’ll be traveling in the wilds of Trumptopia 2.0 in the season of Halloween and Día de Los Muertos. America (Norte-, United States of) is always interesting this time of year. Decorations pop up. Strange entities manifest in yards, storefronts, advertising. Some are from pop cultures, others from various folklores and mythologies. Some for Halloween. 

Some for the Días de los Muertos, causing interesting friction.

Cultural appropriation or rasquache? Is a person in full Catrina regalia—hat, candy-skull makeup, hoop skirt, and parasol, improper? Can you dress up like a Hollywood monster for a Mexican-style picnic in the graveyard? What would José Guadalupe Posada think? Could it be the Global Barrio expanding?

I keep seeing the candy-skull as further and further north, even close to the Canadian border. It’s often a big part of the decor of Mexican restaurants, though a few decades ago it would have been considered bad taste. 

In Mexico, the skeletons were mostly an urban phenomenon. The Días as we know them today are a 21st century mutation.

Time causes changes as borders break down. 

The first Halloween I remember was in the Fifties in East L.A. I wore a Superman costume that my mother made for me. I didn’t find out about the Días until the Seventies.

No wonder I came up with the concept of Dead Daze for my novel Smoking Mirror Blues.   It makes the Día de Los Angelitos, Día de Los Muertos, and Halloween into a three-day fiesta. We will probably see it happen someday. 

I believe we can keep traditions while embracing new situations. 

All we have to do is fight to keep it all from becoming corporate franchises. 

Imagine Amazon, Apple, or Disney bargaining for the rights to la Llorona, la Catrina, la Virgen de Guadalupe, or even Coatlique? 

What would Tezcalipoca have to say? Is that his laughter I hear?

Ever notice that multinational corporations have trouble with la Cultura? We don’t seem to get this assimilation thing down . . .

I’ve never been much of a Chicano separatist. I was pocho from the day I landed on this planet, in East L.A. I’m an impurist, a proud mongrel.

After all, there ain’t no such thing as puro Mexicano. The modern nation of Mexico is only 202 years old. The only reason the Aztecs/Mexica were defeated was because all the other tribes didn’t like having their temples burned down and paying tribute. Diversity was the way from before Teotihuacán. 

We are rasquache.

I’m overusing that word, but I guess I have too.

I’m wondering if I’ll be crossing paths with the National Guard, Border Patrol, or ICE soon. What will I do? How will it go?

We celebrate all these cultures, and the way they mix and match and create new worlds.

Why can’t we all get along? Aren’t we all skeletons under the skin?

Or should I say calaveras?

Or calacas?

Ernest Hogan, Father of Chicano Science Fiction, is amok. Buy Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex I, too (Codex II will be out in February with his new Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars story, “A Wild and Wooly Road Trip on Mars”).

 

My Heart, Mis Muertas. Poems to Honor My Ancestors

Melinda Palacio

Next Saturday, I have the honor or reading matriarchal poems, honoring my grandmother and mother, at the C.D. Wright Women's Conference in Conway, Arkansas. I've never been to Arkansas or to this conference. I will have more to report on after next week. Since today is a Día de Los Muertos celebration, I'm happy to share three poems: the title poem of my first full-length poetry book and two short prose poems also in How Fire Is a Story, Waiting. It took me a long time to achieve the kind of peace I have regarding the early death of my mother and more recent death of my grandmother.


Matriarchs in Triptych and across Cultures (Creative Reading)
(Gina Ferrara, Julie Kane, and Melinda Palacio)
Location: Baum Gallery, McCastlain Hall
Anne Sexton famously wrote, "A woman is her mother. That's the main thing." Female poets have a long tradition of presenting mothers in their poetry. How does the frequent presence and recollection of mothers define who we are? Across cultures, specifically Hispanic, Irish, and Sicilian, what similarities do mothers share and what differences? Must daughters look back at their matriarchal predecessors before crossing any kind of threshold? This reading will respond to these questions in triptych, via three cultures.  

How Fire Is a Story, Waiting

(title poem from the 2012 book published by Tia Chucha Press)

My grandmother caught the flame in her thick hands.

Curled fingers made nimble by kaleidoscope embers.

Fire burns hot and cold if you know where to touch it, she said.

I watched the red glow spit and wiggle as it

snaked down the thin timber, a striptease, 

born out of the festive sound of a half-filled matchbox.

Through orange windows framed by obsidian eyes, I saw the child she once was. 

A little girl who raised herself because her mother had a coughing disease.

Blood on her mother’s handkerchief didn’t stop her from dreaming.

Maria Victoria was going to be a singer with her deep, cinnamon stick voice. 

She watched novelas in the kitchen while waiting for dough to rise.

Her body, heavy with worry for two families and three lifetimes.  She tucked

Mariachi dreams under her girdle. Lullabies escaped on mornings 

warmed by her song falling into gas burners turned on high.

The flame on a stove was never the same.  It had a bad hangover,

didn’t remember the many matches lit when its starter broke down.

My grandmother rolled paper into a funnel, 

stole fire from the pilot to light the stubborn burner on the right.  

Crimson burned blue on the white paper, its folded edges 

curled black like a lace ruffle on a skirt.

The finicky flame can’t comment on its magic.

The thousands of tortillas and pancakes cooked over the years.

How I burned myself roasting a hot dog campfire style.

How a melted pencil smudged under my sister’s eyelid makes her beautiful.

My grandmother noticed the time, almost noon.

She needed to make three dozen tortillas to feed her family of thirteen.

The show over, she blew the match into a swirl of gray squiggles,

snuffed before it had a chance to burn hot on her finger.

Laughter

The story of my mother touches the wind and rattles me off balance, raises the small hairs on my forearms, my skin no longer feels my own. I long to be cradled by a cloud, suspended and sheltered. I listen to the words of the Grandmother Spirit. My elder says look beneath your skin and you’ll the see the loneliness in your veins. I hear drumming, a familiar wail of pain. The drums stop. The story of my mother is as ordinary as once upon a time there was a happy woman who lived a short life before dying, leaving behind a daughter. The pages between the beginning and the end are filled with laugher. A girl with wild hair the color of the Río Grande sinks her feet into the muddy river and says, you laugh like my grandmother. I laugh harder because the wild woman is my mother.

Choosing a Coffin

We arrive at the cemetery you can see from the freeway. Rolling, green hills, naked statues that make Ama laugh and blush. Walk into a white office. Meet the nice white lady with the white jacket. Sit in her white chairs, stare at the pictures on the white walls. We are here to choose a coffin. I am her mother. I am her daughter. I am her brother. I am her uncle. I am her friend. Our voices fill in blank spaces. I see a plain pine box. That one, I say, because it’s simple, like the coffin chosen for Cesar Chavez, a man my mother admired  tirelessly. No grapes, I remember. Don’t be cheap, Melinda, my uncle says. Don’t worry about the money, my mother’s friend says. My grandmother decides on the white coffin that looks like a Cadillac with pink roses on each corner, lined in pink satin for a luxurious sleep. I knew you’d pick that one, says the nice lady with perfect plastic Pompadour hair like Elvis. It’s our finest she says, taking in the shades of bewildered brown faces.

Funny, how fire is a story, waiting.

Chicanonautica: Not Ready for Dead Daze 2017

by Ernest Hogan 

So here we are, hurtling toward the end of October in the Year of the Alien God 2017.

It’s also the first year of Trumptopia--wonder if we’ll eventually get a new calendar for that, or will mutilating the old one be all we have do? 

Mutilation . . .Transformation . . . The new realities always come with pain.

Sacrifices must be made.

Anyway, Dead Daze is just around the corner, and I’m not ready.

For those of you are wondering, “What the hell is Dead Daze?” It’s a stringing together of Halloween and the Days of the Dead (yes, that’s plural, there are two Dias de Los Muertos, cabrones!)  into a three-day celebration. It hasn't caught on yet, but sometimes these things take time.

There are those who don’t want to see electric jack-o-lanterns and plastic sugar skulls together, but for me Halloween has always been a Mexican kind of thing. One of my fondest East L.A. memories is of my first Halloween, back in the antediluvian nineteen fifties, with me in a Superman costume that my mother made, and the streets full Chicanos and Chicanas, towering over me, dressed as all kinds of monsters.

I introduced Dead Daze in my novel Smoking Mirror Blues. If you haven’t read it, Strange Particle Press has started work on a new edition. If you can't wait, copies of the first edition from Wordcraft of Oregon can still be had. My self-published ebook will also be available for a while.

It’s also the end of Hispanic/Latino culture month. The only thing I “did” was see copies of Latin@Rising used in a display in the library where I work. But then I celebrate and participate in La Culture every month of the year.

Like the story I’m finishing up where Aztlán has seceded from the U.S.A.--not that I think it should happen, but the thought experiment may stir up the sort of thinking that should come in handy as we build the future. El Presidente is trying to build his vision of a walled tomorrow, so why not suggest some alternatives?

It’s for a new Latinx SF/F anthology. Yes, another one.

No wonder I’m so busy. Recombocultural futurism is breaking out all over. Ideas are returning to science fiction, even in TV shows. Amid the global turmoil, new cultures are manifesting.

It's a lot better than back when the Book of Revelations and the zombie apocalypse were America's most popular visions of the future.

There's a lot for a humble Chicano sci-fi writer to do.

I don't have time to celebrate holidays. Or even remember them.

So there's no ofrendas for dead loved ones at my house. I'll have to remember them as my wife and I watch our favorite horror movies . . . if we can find the time.

Ernest Hogan wrote Smoking Mirror Blues after Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec warrior/trickster god, whispered the idea into his ear. Has Tezcatlipoca been whispering into El Presidente's ear?

2014 Halloween / Día de los Muertos

Denver's dead trick-n-treatin'. Students dead/Mexico rising from the dead? Not-voting suicide. Latino/a Rising will live.

The two holiday observances ironically portray death from two opposing perspectives, as Flo Hernandez-Ramos explained yesterday. Today's post relates to different news bits about "death." It ends with good news.

Denver's dead trick-n-treatin'

We're such a nation of scared sheep, I'm not surprised. For over a month the Colorado press and media, politicians, police and fear-mongers have been sensationalizing a Non-threat: "Denver Police Warn Parents About Pot-Laced Candy During Trick-or-Treat Season." Give me a break, with more than a Snickers.

We're a richly self-medicated nation, abusing a lot of prescription drugs. For decades we've had bathroom shelves of Oxycodone and Hydrocodone, given out for pain, so much that some is usually left over. Those are cheap compared to what THC spray costs. Were warnings issued every year about codone-laced candy?

When Denverites complained about the police's fear-mongering, the cops made a video posted on Facebook! They got slammed for that, too, but it was too late. At least in some Denver neighborhoods, on a Halloween night warmer than many previous, we had the lowest turnout ever. I'm guessing why. People in other areas report similar low turnouts, though not everywhere.

What will we hear next year to make us keep kids "safe" and inside and not walk the neighborhoods? ISIS terrorist sympathizers giving out hand-grenade treats! Disgruntled African immigrants giving out Ebola-licked gummy bears! Listen in to your fave shock-brained radio jock to find out. And be scared. It's as American as apple pie laced with GMOs. Oh, that's right--that's a real threat.

43 Students dead / Mexico rising from the dead?

U.S. drug habits and drug laws, gun mania and shipments into Mexico are now responsible for the likely murders of 43 students from Ayotzinapa Normal teacher-training school, missing since Sept. 26th. Big deal. Drugs, drug lords, killings, kidnappings, decapitations, "disappearings", cartel-bribed politicians, police and soldiers are always in the news. That's the Mexico the U.S. helped create and we're not surprised to hear more. However, this time, more than mierda has hit the fan.

Here's what one U.S. correspondent based in Mexico wrote:

"Most of the students were in their teens, in their first semester, and from impoverished communities that a majority of Mexicans identify with. The voids in Mexico’s government are all too obvious now. The country seems to be trembling at the edge of a terrible cataclysm or, for the hopeful, an inspiring transformation.

Mexico City rally for the 43

"There will be a march in Mexico City on Oct. 31st, coinciding with the Day of the Dead, and a “mega march” is scheduled for Nov. 5th, the day Mexico’s universities and colleges are planning a national strike. How many universities, colleges, and institutes will stick with it, and for how long? Will it spread to other areas of society, to the high schools, for example, as recent student strikes in Chile did, bringing about significant changes in the country? When masses of students boycott classes, it fills a country with an air of emergency and danger.

"What many Mexicans have been telling me is this: It’s either now or never."

Chicanos, mexicanos, latinos from the U.S. will no doubt support as they can whatever arises from the probable deaths of the 43. A new Revolución, across the river from El Paso, San Diego and Brownsville? It wouldn't be sci-fi or fantasy to imagine how our government, politicians and military would react to that. Or the gun lobby and industry, anti-immigrant racists and radio shock-jocks. I can hear them now. But for the rest of the country, it would be a true gauge of a "commitment" to democracy. Maybe they'd be spared the agony of having to decide. Yo espero que no.

Not-voting suicide

Earlier this year, I was among those advocating NOT voting. I was wrong. "We" are not united enough for that to have an effect. A discussion about when that time might come doesn't matter at the moment.

In the meantime, I'm voting because the Koch brothers, the anti-science crazies, the pro-oil conglomerates and the anti-immigrant racists are trying to elect their kind. They're even going after judgeships so justifiable claims against corporations will be more frequently overturned by "their" judges in the future.

Wherever I look on the Internet, TV or the press, and whoever I talk to, I could almost believe Armageddon is here, and Dystopia is our only future. Many people (including me) are negative, bitter, even reverting to political hermits. For that reason, I have been Facebooking the points below--one per day--trying to answer typical reasons you hear about why somebody won't vote next week. Use them, elaborate and improve them, if you want.

Many idiots, but make sure they're yours

#1 - Why you don't have to vote: Because you don't believe in the lesser of 2 evils.

What! Satan's not worse than a demon?

Frostbitten's not worse than shivering?

The 1% has robbed us of plenty. Did they steal your vote yet?

#2 - Why you don't have to vote: Because you think corporate ads already bought yours.

What! You think the 1% can control and even predict the future?

Hiding your head in the sand is smarter than sticking it in a voting booth?

Yes, the 1% has bribed most politicians. But you go alone into the voting booth.

#3 - Why you don't have to vote: Because the polls already canceled out your vote.

What! You think pulling one lever matters less than 1,000 opinions?

Ask the condemned man who he fears more--the hangman or the mob out front.

No, you might not have much to pick from. But which end of the rope do you prefer?

#4 - Why you don't have to vote:  Because there's only a few hours left, and you've got too much to do.

What! You don't want to spend a few minutes to avoid years of suffering?

Only terminal cancer patients (my apologies) could say voting does them no good.

No, you never have enough time. But voting could make the future, worth living.

#5 - Why you DON'T have to vote: Because you only care about who the President is, not a bunch of politicians.

What! You think if your President is elected, he/she will take care of everything?

Congress or your state legislature make the laws. The Prez and governors sign them, or not.

Your vote next week adds or detracts from the next President's or governor's power; that's the math.

Latino/a Rising will live!

I apologize to everyone who this week received too many bits from me about funding and supporting the anthology, Latino/a Rising, the first collection of U.S. Latino/a science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres. I do believe it is worth supporting and buying copies of once it's published. And I did have a personal stake in it, since a story of mine might be included. Even if it's not, I expect it to be a precursor of latino contributions to come. Echando más salsa en la literature Americana.

The good news is that the Kickstarter campaign surpassed its $10,000 goal but there's still time, until midnight, for you to kick in and get some cool perks, like autographed copies, T-shirts and swag.

I was just one of many who participated in reaching that goal. At times, I felt ambivalent: Why do we Latinos have to ask for money for a first-ever anthology when so many are produced in the U.S. every year? That's a because that I won't get into. What made me feel better were the non-latinos who responded, sometimes directly, letting me know they had contributed. It made me remember that we're not alone. There are some progressive Anglos, and others, out there. We just need to re-educate more of them.

Es todo, hoy, ni un treat más,

RudyG, a.k.a. Rudy Ch. Garcia, Chicano spec author with too much left-over candy

Chicanonautica: The Evolution of La Catrina

by Ernest Hogan

It’s the end of October, and it’s happening on a weekend: Halloween and Los Días De Los Muertos, that I modestly proposed be made into a three-day fiesta in my novel Smoking Mirror Blues. 

And we see her, popping up on the interwebs, and coming to your barrio soon -- La Catrina, the skull-faced lady with the fancy hat.

She first showed up in a zinc etching by José Guadalupe Posada somewhere around 1910, 1913-ish -- ¡LA REVOLUÇIÓN! Posada intended her as a caricature of the rich, catrina, in spanish meaning well-dressed, rich, fop, dandy.

The etching, and image, without the benefit of an internet or social media, struck a cord with Mexican culture, and became a popular icon.

Diego Rivera modernized her between 1947 and 1948, providing her with dress and feathered serpent boa in his mural Sueno de un Tarde Dominical en La Alameda Central -- originally in the Hotel del Prado on Alameda Park, but moved after the building was damaged in the earthquake of 1985 and torn down. It’s now in the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Mexico City, Tenochtitlán, La Capital Azteca. Rivera also made her an avatar of Aztec Mother Godess Coatlicue, adding another layer to her idenity.

Since then, she’s evolved. Today’s Catrina wears the sugar skull face make up, and is glamorous -- taking us back to the 18th century Scots meaning, enchantment, magic, and the fact that the word is an alteration of grammar, which in the Middle Ages refered to occult parctices associated with learning -- and sexy in ways not yet franchised by Hollywood and the fashion industry. It’s a different, subversive concept of beauty, similar to that of the Goths, whose style is being toned down and absorbed by nerd culture, that is in danger of becoming another corporate marketing strategy.

I keep hoping the nerds will see beyond the suburban bubble that they are kept in, get inspired, go wild, and scare the crap out of those who are trying to control them. Encounters with La Catrina can help with this, because no one can control La Catrina. She’s a goddess -- like her sister Santa Muerte -- the return of an ancient, elemental thing that cannot be tamed.

Have a weird and wonderful Dead Daze!

Ernest Hogan’s Dead Daze novel, Smoking Mirror Blues is still available in the original trade paperback edition, and as ebooks through Kindle and Smashwords. A new Kindle version of his first novel Cortez on Jupiter has just become available. 

Mi Familia Calaca/ My Skeleton Family

Review by Ariadna Sánchez

Día de los Muertos or Day of the Death is approaching. In preparation for this amazing festivity, reading Mi Familia Calaca/ My Skeleton Family by Cynthia Weill in collaboration with Oaxacan paper mache artisan Jesús Canseco Zárate is a great way to start the celebration.

Weill’s latest bilingual book gives a glance of the vast Mexican art. Anita is a young calaca girl, who introduces each member of her skeleton family.  With short and catching sentences in English and Spanish, each character reveals its beauty to the young readers. Each page shows a colorful encounter starting with Anita’s brother Miguel (el travieso/the brat), followed by her cute baby brother Juanito, then her stylish mother, next her handsome father, as well as her adorable grandparents, and last but not least her cat and dog. 

The astonishing art created by Canseco Zárate pops-out automatically like jack-in-the-box. The wonderful sculptures in paper mache are a pleasure for the senses.

Mi Familia Calaca/ My Skeleton Family is a must read for the season. Reading gives you wings. Visit your local library to check out more exciting stories.

For additional information about Cynthia Weill’s books and artisan Jesús Canseco Zárate’s calacas click on the following links:

http://www.cynthiaweill.net/

http://jesuscansecozarateblog.wordpress.com/

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Latino/a Rising is the first collection of U.S. Latino/a science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.

There is a growing movement of people who are interested in the incredible U.S. Latino/a writers and artists who have turned to science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres. Latino/a Rising: An Anthology of U.S. Latino/a Speculative Fictionwill introduce the public to the work of these writers and artists.

With the exception of Edward James Olmos’ Bladerunner and Battlestar Galactica, positive U.S. Latino/a characters have been largely absent from mainstream speculative fiction novels and films. Films such as Men in Black and Alien Nation, and shows such as X-Files, express the anxiety that the mainstream has concerning Latinos/as and recent immigrants.  Latino/a Rising will contest this trend, showing how Latino/a writers and artists are transforming the genres.

Please support this project  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2019038492/latino-a-rising