Chicanonautica: Exploring Unknown Mexico

by Ernest Hogan

Most Chicanos – pochos – don't know Mexico. Our blood connections to native tribes was cut off and forgotten long ago, for various reasons, not the least of which is the painful process of learning how to get along in the U.S.A. It's hard to trace your roots while you're being watched by folks who think you're going to suddenly start raping, stabbing and dealing drugs.

Chicano Studies helps, but often gets all tangled up in its own issues. I personally, find myself compelled to read, travel and otherwise search for my roots. It's an obsession that has me writing Neo-Aztecan Chicano Sci-Fi, and other anomalies.

Now and then I find a book that helps. One is Unknown Mexico: A Record of Five Years' Exploration Among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre; In the Tierra Caliente of the Tepic and Jalisco; Among the Tarascos of Michoacan by Carl Lumholtz, M.A., member of the Society of Sciences of Norway, Associé Étranger de la Société de l'Anthropolgie de Paris.

Sí, sí, it's a five-year mission – from March, 1894 to March, 1897 -- to seek out new life, and new civilizations . . . in Mexico.

Not just a great book about Mexico, it's a good source for what a Jules Verne/steampunk scientific expedition would be like, with lots of psychedelic western material – some of the earliest, first hand accounts of the effects of peyote among the Tarahumara, the Huichol, and other tribes. The myths, monsters and superstitions reminded me of my family.

Lumholtz, whose life's work was “the study of savage and barbaric races,” is a good “alien” observer. He lacks an American's preconceived notions about Mexico and Mexicans. But this isn't just keen, high-resolution scientific reportage – because of the subject matter, things often are like magic realism: he has to fight rumors that he is a traveling cannibal, and that his camera is a demon.

And there are lines like, “Every shaman has a tame rattlesnake in his house . . .”

Also, after years of living among “savage and barbaric” people, Lumholtz, concludes that, “Primitive people as they are they taught me a new philosophy of life, for their ignorance is nearer to the truth than our prejudice.”

Volume 1, as an illustrated ebook, is available from Gutenberg. I could only find Volume 2 on Internet Archive, as an unedited scan, but I was hooked, and read and enjoyed it anyway. Physical editions are available, and I'm lusting after both volumes. This book not only helps with the Great Chicano Identity Crisis, but is a gold mine of material to a writer of fantastic fiction.

Not to mention the rasquache joie de weird that is part of it all.

Ernest Hogan's NeoAztecan Chicano Sci-Fi classic High Aztech will be out in a new edition soon. Also watch for his “Chicanonautica Manifesto” in Aztlán.

Every last Secret and Every Wonderful Word -------- Guest Post by Lisa Alvarado

Linda Rodriguez has published one novel, Every Last Secret (Minotaur Books), winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, two books of poetry, Heart’s Migration (Thorpe Menn Award; finalist, Eric Hoffer Book Award) and Skin Hunger, and a cookbook, The “I Don’t Know How To Cook” Book: Mexican. She received the Midwest Voices & Visions Award, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, KCArtsFund Inspiration Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Rodriguez is a member of the Latino Writers Collective, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime.

Linda Rodriguez

Her website: www.LindaRodriguezWrites.blogspot.com

As someone who is proud to call Linda friend, my less-official praise poem is this: She is tireless--as a writer, a community organizer, a critical thinker about her craft and the body politic. Both in her poetry and prose is a deep rooted sense of personal justice, of infinite care and a strong belief in the need to do good, be good and walk in beauty. This is our conversation about writing, and her book, Every Last Secret.

When did you begin writing? Why?

I had a childhood that made Mommie, Dearest look like a fairytale, and reading and writing helped me survive it. So I started writing when I was quite young—poetry and stories that I wanted to think of as novels—but I really began in earnest when I was a young, college-drop-out mother and wife. At various times in my life, poetry has taken precedence over novels and vice versa, usually because of time constraints. Novels, I have found, require a longer chunk of writing each day and over a longer period of time. Poetry takes as much work—one poem may go through twenty or more revisions—but that work can be done in shorter bits of time with longer absences from the work in-between.

You began as a poet. When and why did you begin writing mysteries?

I’ve always read mysteries (and science fiction/fantasy), along with the literary stuff. I’m an omnivore when it comes to reading. When I came up with this character, Skeet Bannion, she seemed to belong in a mystery.

I like the premise of the modern mystery, which is focused less on locked rooms and impossible methods of murder and more on relationships among the characters and emotional fallout from those relationships as motive.The great mystery is always “What goes on within the heart of this person to make him/her capable of killing another?”

Do you still write poetry? How do the two genres affect each other?

Yes, I still write poetry. I have a new manuscript I’m about to send out, and I’ve been noodling around with poems to begin another. One impact on my poetry of writing mysteries is that I tend to think in terms of books of poetry focused on a theme or narrative pole rather than individual poems tossed off here and there and gathered into a book later.

I think poetry helps me make my novels tighter and stronger. When I had to cut a lot of words from the manuscript, I treated it like one humongous poem and went over and over, honing the language as I would with a poem.

Tell us about your book and explain the basic idea for your series.

Half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest ranking woman on the Kansas City Police Department, a jealous cop ex-husband who didn’t want to let go, and a disgraced alcoholic ex-cop father. Moving to a small town to be chief of the campus police force, she builds a life outside ofpolice work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief.

All of this is threatened when the student editor of the college newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university. In the midst of her investigation, Skeet takes up responsibility for a vulnerable teenager as her ex-husband and seriously ailing father wind up back on her hands. Time is running out, and college administrators demand she conceal all college involvement in the murder, but Skeet will not stop until she's unraveled every last secret.

It’s the first in a series with Skeet Bannion as the protagonist. Skeet, like most of us, has some internal issues she has to learn to deal with. Each book is a complete mystery novel in itself, but I see theentire series as a kind of meta-novel following Skeet’s growth as a person. I like Julia Spencer-Fleming’s categorization of “traditional mystery-thriller”as a description. Every Last Secret is, indeed, a traditional mystery set in a small town, but the small town is right outside a big, dangerous city, and there’s a darker edge to this character, this book, and the series as a whole.

Has your work or life experiences affected your writing?

I spent many years running a university women’s center, and that has translated directly for this series of books into background knowledgeof the university setting and campus politics and procedures. It has translated also in a more general way throughout all my work into a concern for women’sissues and an option for and understanding of strong female characters.

I spent a good deal of time in my childhood with my Cherokee grandmother and aunt, whose influence on me shows daily in how I live my life and in almost everything I write, especially in this series of novels. And of course, I have Latino characters who play major and minor roles in the books, some of whom are new immigrants and some of whom are successful professionals and entrepreneurs. For example, Skeet’s chief investigator, on whom she relies with complete confidence, is Gil Mendez, a detective with an accounting degree, as well as one in criminal justice.

How have you found it to be published? Share that experience.

I’m very fortunate to be with St. Martin’s Press and their imprints, Minotaur Books and Thomas Dunne Books. They value good writing, and writers with a literary background, who might be at a disadvantage elsewhere, are appreciated. I’ve been treated extremely well by St. Martin’s. And I have a wonderful editor, Toni Margarita Plummer, one of the rare Latina editors at a major trade publisher. (I don’t know. She might be the only one right now.)

However, publishing today is very different from what it was in years past in terms of promotion expectations. It’s a balancing act to do all that you need to do to promote your books and write the books at the same time. Even long-established authors are battling that one.

How would you evaluate the separation of "literary" v. "genre" fiction, i.e. -quality of story, audience, etc?

The whole genre categorization—and yes, literary is a genre—is a marketing ploy and a successful one. The current version is Amazon’s “Readers who bought this also bought that” algorithm. In general, I’ve found many writers in crime fiction and in fantasy/science fiction who write extremely well, often much better than many published in the literary genre. And certainly genre writers, especially in crime fiction, are writing more ambitious books that examine segments of society that literary fiction seldom, if ever, touches. As a genre, literary fiction has built its platform by turning inward and excluding much of the reading public.

What are your thoughts concerning the burgeoning interest/contribution of Latino writers to the crime genre?

Latino writers have a long history of writing for la gente and not just for the academy. Many have said, while writing literary fiction or poetry, that we wanted to make our writings accessible to those we loved and knew while growing up and people like them. Latino writers have also had a long history of being politically involved and speaking truth about the corruption and desperation that have combined to fill so many prisons with our own in this broken system we live in. So it seems to me natural that Latino writers would gravitate toward the crime genre, where there is a real blossoming now. We are in a second Golden Age of crime fiction, and writers of color of all sorts are helping to make it shine.

What’s next?

I have another mystery series I want to write that would be centered in the Kansas City Latino, specifically Chicano, community. This is an old community going back a century, which has experienced an influx from not only Mexico but Central and South America in past decades. It has a rich history and culture and a real dichotomy between the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the gente who first settled and the newcomers—graduate degrees versus ESL classes. I envision this series solidly centered in urban Midwestern Chicano culture and food and the struggle between assimilation and la cultura and the many ways people negotiate that.

Review: Indian Country Noir. Call for Poets Arizona. Unapologetic Mexican.

Michael Sedano

Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez, eds. Indian Country Noir. NY: Akashic Books, 2010.
ISBN: 9781936070053 (pbk.) & 1936070057 (pbk.)

Isn't that a marvelous cover? It shouts out loud, "Indian Country!" New Mexico's magnificent Ship Rock outlined against towering thunderclouds. I looked at the cover and thought, Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn, House Made of Dawn. Ira Hayes, maybe.

As the adage goes, do not judge a book by its cover. Because anyone looking at the cover art of Akashic's Indian Country Noir and thinking Southwestern United States has misled themselves. Indeed, in what comes as a pleasant surprise, most of the tales selected by editors Sarah Cortez and Liz Martinez take place in a broader conception of America as indian country--the entire northern continent, in fact.

Tony Hillerman isn't even an afterthought, nor are N. Scott Momaday nor Sherman Alexie. True to the noir series convention, the current iteration of Akashic's run of outstanding titles features fourteen writers--seven women, seven men--you may not yet have come across, and a few you have, but in other contexts. The pleasure, mostly, is all yours, in this case.

The most-published, and perhaps best known, writer in the collection is Lawrence Block. He's no Indian, attesting to the editors' decision to include stories featuring North American Indians in one way or another, rather than adding a stricture that the writer also must be an Indian.

That's a tough break for some India Indio writer looking for some ink by breaking into an "Indian" anthology. But then, some writers' or stories' conecta to Indiohood are tenuous. There's Mistina Bates, who declares herself the "great-great-grand-daughter of a full-blooded" Cherokee who served as a Texas Ranger. I bet family reunions were interesting in that familia. Then there's Block's story, "Getting Lucky," the oddest, most inappropriate selection in the anthology. It's a sex story featuring a con woman posing as a Yupper Indian who suckers a lucky gambler into an orgiastic tryst before scalping him alive. Plenty noir, but not at all "Indian." Tough break for that hungry writer whose place Block takes. Maybe it's a deliberate irony, the phony India and the usurping Anglo writer.

One of the more touching stories introduces Ira Hayes, as the old song goes, fighting drunken Ira Hayes. The Mt. Suribachi flag-raiser is on a war bonds tour in Chicago, in Liz Martínez' account near the close of the book. Hayes feels comfortable only when he hits the bar. The military has assigned a minder to ensure Hayes gets his drinks and stays out of too much trouble. And that's what goes down, until Hayes, in a drunken stupor has a flashback to hand-to-hand combat back on Iwo Jima. Unfortunately, his enemy is a Chicago cop, who ends up shot dead, along with an innocent bystander. It's a perfect crime.

A couple of other stories stand out for tension or noirish wit. There's David Cole's "JaneJohnDoe.com" set in Tucson, Arizona. A narcotraficante on the lam from the latest crack down on smuggler murderers kidnaps a woman whose specialty is creating phony identities. The narca, a lusty woman, gets hers in the end with a faked identity that would pass muster from even the most racist Arizona cop's "reasonable suspicion" that the narca is in the country illegally. The noir twist in the ending, where the victim gets the one-up on the villain, is the fun part. Not all is ideal with Cole, however. In a gaffe, his bio at the back of the collection claims he writes about "illegal immigrants." That's not noirspeak, thats puro offensive talk, no matter Cole wrote it well in advance of the current fascist pedo in Arizona.

Reed Farrel Coleman's "Another Role" has its roman à clef moments and a delicious comeuppance for the bad guys. Harry Garson looks muy Indio but he doesn't have a clue what kind. Ni modo, he's made a grand living playing chiefs and warriors in a string of western movies, in roles Iron Eyes Cody doesn't land. Garson's big break came years ago as Chief Smells Like Bearstein, in the teevee farce "Crazy Cavalry." Now Garson's down on his luck hitting the bottle too hard.

Readers will enjoy how Coleman has lots of fun playing against Hollywood stereotypy. Coleman gives down-on-his luck Garson one final Indio role, one that brings a hit man after him. In a heart-warming twist, the Indio gets to discover his tribal identity, using it to turn the table on the crooks who hired him. When the hit man stares down at Garson's body, he has a flash of celebrity recognition, a "cute meet" in reverse. "Bearstein!" the hit man whispers, "Sorry, chief."

One of my dad's favorite family stories is about his two uncles, footloose boys in Redlands, an orange-picking town east of Berdoo. The local cop didn't care for Mexicans nor Indians, and made it his business to kidnap the boys for transport to Riverside's Sherman Institute, a boarding school for Indians. Every time the cop took my great uncles to Riverside they'd show up back in Redlands in a day or two. Finally the cop gave up and the family remained together.

Few Unitedstatesians realize that Indians invented forced busing when the government kidnaped Indio kids and shipped them off to Indian Schools like Sherman Institute or the well-known Carlisle school where Pop Warner coached football and where Charley Bear, AKA Indian Charley, was housed until he ran off. Charley is Joseph Bruchac's character in "Helper," the anthology's opening story. It's a good choice for Indian Country Noir, replete with humor, depravity, revenge, and justice.

Carlisle may be familiar to sports fans and movie goers as the place where Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe begins his fabled athletic career. The school for Charley Bear is an ugly place that sends kids into slavery and sexual exploitation on local farms. Charley Bear gets a small measure of revenge on a family of monsters, an act that comes back to threaten him decades later. Bruchac loads his story with the Indian obbligato of war heroism, exploitation, a friendly white man, closeness to mother earth. Despite these commonplaces, from the opening lines readers will recognize a masterful writer who'll keep you reading despite the stereotypy: "The one with the missing front teeth. He's the one who shot me. Before his teeth were missing."

Akashic Books has not failed me yet with its noir series. While I haven't read every title in the series--I wish I could--each one that I've read has been a genuine pleasure that fulfills expectations for mystery, detection, suspense, humor, in a word, noir. The occasional gaffe borne of thoughtless bio shorthand, or the persistent image of drunken Indios, are a couple of those irritations one unwillingly suspends in pursuit of story and fun, and, in this case, enlarging one's acknowledgment of America as Indian country.

Arizona Institutionalizes Hate. Call for Poets.

Recent legislation by Arizona law-passers has the country in furor. Breathing while brown and walking while brown join the de facto crime of driving while brown, under Arizona legislation requiring law enforcement to demand papieren from anyone who looks like they are in the state without proper immigration documentation. I'm sure refugees from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano are quaking in their boots, along with the state's Indians and Mexican origin gente, and habitués of tanning salons.

Is ability to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull reasonable suspicion for arrest?

Francisco Alarcón, joined by Alma Luz Villanueva and Antoinette Nora Claypoole, have issued a Call for Poets to write about Arizona's current status. La Bloga Tuesday will publish selected submissions beginning next Tuesday, May 4 and continuing. Alarcón, Villanueva, and Claypoole are investigating turning the submissions into a hard copy anthology.

Submit work by posting a Note to Facebook at Poets Responding to SB 1070.

The Unapologetic Mexican

When I was a kid, the cultural praxis related to ethnicity enforced a fantasy history that called Chicanas Chicanos "Spanish" or "American of Mexican Descent," or plain old "American." Among courteous people, it was impolite to accuse someone of being "Mexican." Among the pigs and haters, "Mexican" was, at best, a slur, akin to such counterparts as "White asshole", "Okie", "Arkie", "white trash." Among la palomilla, we called ourselves Mexicans or Chicanos, and the anglos were Americans, or Anglos. Lurking silently in the background was that etiquette of self-denial. Not even el movimiento erases all of that.

Meet The Unapologetic Mexican. It's a web presence as well as the persona of its author, Nezua. Make that personae. Nezua has taken his persona through at least two iterations. The earliest presence offered puro confrontational art; intellectual, reasoned, informed, distinctly nationalistic Xicanismo. A few years later, the site morphed into a self-consciously higher tech version. Since that opening of Act II, the UMX has become El Machete that sees its responsibility to provide information with a "Latino-Centric" perspective. As such, the site merits your attention and recognition as, if not an antidote to "mainstream" media's blowhard portavozes for hate, at least a worthwhile counterstatement to all that crap.

I find interesting the four year history of the site as a time-compressed mirror of the movimiento. Chest-pounding, fire-breathing indictments of every racist xenophobe exact a price in personal exhaustion. Xicanismo is not free. And after a while that stuff grows old. I'm reminded of Cicero's insight in De Senectute, that bitter old men are not bitter because they are old but because they were bitter young men. I'm not sure some veteranos of el movimiento ever learned that. But it seems something of this dawned, if obliquely, on the Unapologetic Mexican. I see this in the quiet, controlled delivery of Nezua's most recent video. I like this approach--though as an old public speaking teacher I'd like to see more engagement from the speaker--and will look with interest to see how the Unapologetic Mexican handles the pedo from Arizona. Click the various links in the above and take your own tour of Nezua's endeavor, and please leave a comment on what you think.

Book Give-Away Winners, News & Notes Reminder

Last Tuesday La Bloga posted a quiz that produced two 100% correct answers to 100% of the questions. In return for their perfection, Hachette Book Group mailed a free copy of Iris Gomez' Try to Remember to:

1. Linda Rodriguez of Kansas City MO

2. Mariana Marin of Carmichael CA

Here's the quiz and the correct answers:

1. The Los Angeles Theatre Center current season is called _East of Broadway_.

2. Dan Olivas' reading technique is notable because _he stands away from the lectern.

3. The La Bloga columnist who is an oral communication teacher and "read your own stuff" coach is named _Michael Sedano_.

4. Juanita Salazar Lamb writes mystery stories featuring a character named __Sara Garcia_.

5. The title and author of the book you'll receive if you're among the first three to answer all these questions correctly are _Try to Remember_ by __Iris Gomez_.

Congratulations to winners Linda and Mariana. I'm crossing my fingers one or both of you winning La Bloga readers will contribute a guest review. A ver.

CSULA Selects May 14-15 for Annual Octavio Paz Conference

La Bloga friend Roberto Cantú invites scholars, students, and people interested in the Mexican nobel laureate to the 2010 edition of the school's annual celebration of the writer's career. The 2010 meeting, titled, World Civilizations, Modernity, and Octavio Paz: A Plurality of Pasts and Futures opens in the Golden Eagle Ballroom on the El Sereno campus near East LA. The event is free, although conference organizers warn that campus cops enforce parking regulations 24/7.

For information on the conference, visit the Paz blog or contact Dr. Roberto Cantú at the Department of Chicano Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032. (323) 343-2195. rcantu@calstatela.edu.

That's the final Tuesday of April, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga. Over half a million people have visited La Bloga since we started counting. That was a year or more after RudyG, Manuel Ramos and I launched La Bloga.

Thank you for reading. Nos wachamos next week in the month of May.

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and all columns. Click the comments counter below to add your observations. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you have a book review, an extended commentary on something you've read here at La Bloga, a literary, arts or cultural event to report, or something from your writer's notebook, click here to discuss being our guest.

New American Music

Just in case we might like the same kinds of music, here are a few new selections that have earned time on the ole' turntable.


PISTOLERA - EN ESTE CAMINO
Luchadora
The second CD from this New York-based group does not have a weak spot in any of the twelve tracks. From Nuevos Ojos to Arena the songs are tight, full-bore Latino progressive, including the rendition of Bob Marley's War (Guerra). The group consists of Sandra Lilia Velásquez on vocals and guitar, Maria Elena on accordion and piano, Inca B. Saiz on bajo, and Ani Cordero on drums and vocals. These four musicians manage to produce a powerful and very danceable sound. There is a lot going on here, from the selection of song formats and instruments to the politically-charged lyrics - check out Extranjero and Policía for examples. As I did my best to keep up to the music, I heard a little banda, a little tejano, a bit more of ranchera, a dose of indie-pop, and a great deal of something else that this band brings all on its own. Go here for a video interview with the entire band as part of its selection as the Clandestino Artist of the Month for Go TV Networks. The band's website is here.


CALEXICO - CARRIED TO DUST
Quarterstick Records
Tuscon residents Joey Burns and John Convertino (and several guest musicians, some of whom are now members of the band) have been recording as Calexico since 1996. Their latest effort, Carried to Dust, is a pleasing combination of musicianship, lyrical free expression, and a soaring, almost romantic ambiance. There's a country style to the music, but somehow jazz plays a part. According to the record label website, this collection is a concept piece about a Los Angeles writer, the 2007 writer's strike, and a mind-bending tour of stops along the inspirational highway. I confess I haven't got that deep into the CD yet, but the song Writer's Minor Holiday sure is in that territory. You can watch Burns and Convertino perform Two Silver Trees. Amparo Sanchez and Jacob Valenzuela carry the vocals on the beautiful and intriguing Inspiración. The video does not do justice to the CD version, but you can watch the full Calexico band perform Inspiración here at this link.


LOS FABULOCOS FEATURING KID RAMOS - LOS FABULOCOS
Delta Grove
I confess. I'm an old timer. I dig oldies, roots music, blues, conjunto, a little country. Give me some rockabilly or a speeding accordion, and it's all good. Through in some Tex-Mex and a soul cover, a few catchy lyrics, and it's even better. And there you have Los Fabulocos. Veteran Southern California musicians Jesus Cuevas (vocals and accordion), Mike Molina (drums), and James Barrios (bass and background vocals) have teamed up with blues star Kid Ramos (vocals, guitar, bajo sexto, Spanish guitar) to form a high-energy, kick-ass party band that challenges you to stay in your seat once they get started. Hey, this CD has Un Mojado Sin Licencia (the guy just wanted to see his Chencha) from Flaco Jimenez's playlist, the zydeco classic You Ain't Nothin' But Fine, and Cornelia Reyna's Como Un Perro. Included are bangin' versions of Lloyd Price's Just Because (one of the all-time pachuco broken-hearted tunes) and Dr. Loco's Mexico Americano. See what I mean? How can this be anything but great. And the original material is just as solid: If You Know, Day After Day, and You Keep Drinkin' . This CD gets my highest recommendation. There's plenty of video of these guys already on the Internet. Here's one.

CD release party on September, 12 2008, 9:00 PM, at The Doll Hut with guests The 44’s - 107 Adams Avenue, Anaheim, California. (714)533-1286.

AND ...
I've heard only samples of the new Indigenous effort, Broken Lands, but it's getting good press. Need to get my hands on a full copy. Los Lonely Boys have struck again with another winner, Forgiven. Accordion giant Steve Jordan produced this gig. And for something different - Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson? It works. Contrary to the CD's title, Two Men with the Blues, this is not downbeat. Stardust is splendid.


A BIT AND A PIECE
Rigoberto González reviews Manuel Peña's Where The Ox Does Not Plow (University of New Mexico Press) in the El Paso Times, which you can read here. González says that "Peña's memoir is an insightful study of one man's journey toward political and social consciousness, and of his discovery that value is not in wages and class comforts, but in self-respect and the appreciation for his imperfect family and community. Education, he tells us, is not limited to the confines of the classroom."


Finally, I had some fun with Elmore Leonard and his Ten Rules For Writing in a piece I did for the Colorado Authors' League. You can read it here. As my grandson says, "Just kidding."

Later.

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

MARCH/Abrazo Press

This column is devoted to a hub of Chicano literary life here in Chicago. MARCH/Abrazo Press, an independent small press and publisher, has promoted literature by and about Latinos and Native Americans for nearly 30 years. It is is the publishing arm of March, Inc. also known as el Movimiento Artistico Chicano. The MARCH, Inc. organization was incorporated in Illinois in 1975 as a not-for-profit cultural arts organization.

Since its inception, MARCH/Abrazo Press has published numerous poetry books, anthologies, annotated bibliographies and analyses which feature writings by acclaimed poets such as Sandra Cisneros, Trinidad Sanchez, Carlos Cumpián, Carlos Cortez and other talented Midwestern writers.

Their goal is to promote Latino/Native American literary and visual arts expression with an emphasis on the Midwest and Chicago. Many of their books are published in a bilingual English and Spanish format in order to span many audiences.

Take a look at some of these joyas literarias and you won't be able to resist...In layman's terms, BUY THE BOOK! And make sure you read next week's review of MARCH/Abrazo Press' newest release, Book of Mornings by Raúl Niño.

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Between the Heart and the Land / Entre el corazón y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest Edited by Brenda Cárdenas & Johanny Vázquez Paz

"...While the literary voices of U.S. Puerto Rican poets and fiction writers and of their Chicano/a counterparts on the West Coast and in the Southwest have been anthologized, duly canonized and even mainstreamed by the Anglo literary market, very little is heard about the Latino/a writers and poets from the Midwest... Between the heart and the Land / Entre el corazón y la tierra encompasses a rich array of women of various national origins—Dominican, Cuban, Costa Rican, Bolivian, Salvadorian, Columbian, Argentinian, Mexican, Chicana, and Puerto Rican—as well as of diverse socioeconomic and work experiences, sexuality, sexual identities, age, and generational experiences…"
--- from the forward by Frances Aparicio, Ph.D. Latin American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Between the heart and the Land / Entre el corazón y la tierra is a poetic and bold testament of the undeniable Latina presence in the heartland of the United States." --- Ana Castillo

ISBN 1-877636-18-5





Serpent Underfoot by Frank Varela

"A Boricua poet now rooted in the Puerto Rican diaspora. These are poems that pay homage, to Crazy Willie, to the doomed Paulina, to his Korean War veteran uncle, in the language of real, lived experience. This is a poet who wants to send Willie Colon and his salsa into outer space, who tells us of forgotten African gods and the 'spics banished to Chicago' for forgetting. For his passion and his clarity, his humor and his memory, I welcome Frank Varela." --- Martín Espada, author of The Republic of Poetry

"I enjoy Varela most when he drops below street-level into the dark earth, which is something of the city's subconscious, the flip side of the urban experience. His poems about laboring with soil, rooting up growing things, are thoughtful and touching, redolent with the fragrant costs of mortality." --- Sesshu Foster, author of Angry Days

"Varela has accomplished a poet's fundamental objective: the creation of beautiful word paintings that convey personal, intimate, and yet, universal messages." --- Manuel Ramos, author of the Ballad of Rocky Ruiz

ISBN 1-877636-11-8




de KANSAS a CALIFAS & back to Chicago by Carlos Cortez

Chicagoan Carlos Cortez was one of the U.S.A.'s leading Chicano artists and poets before his death in January 2005. In this collection of poems and scratchboard drawings by the author, Cortez shares his love and concern for the land of his mestizo and Yaqui ancestors. Cortez's art and words help us see with ''bicultural eyes" the history of the California (Califas) with a landscape alive with condors, cougars, tall saguaros, and even giant cloud formations.

Cortez's poems peak in the persona of Koyokuikatl (Coyote Song), who places his strong clear verse in defense of the natural world and its threatened inhabitants. In addition, he embodies the nostalgic traveler who is capable of "Beat" haikus or the wisdom of the Chicano working class.

If you trusted Edward Abbey not to steer you wrong, you'll be glad to know he enjoyed Cortez's ecologically and socially charged poetry--out there, west of the Mississippi.

ISBN 1-877636-09-6


Akewa is a Woman by Beatriz Badikian

"Everything is political, Beatriz said to me once and on several occasions. Love. Sorrow. Myth. Nostalgia. And the poems validate this. Badikian's poems tell stories, of Athens, Buenos Aires, Chicago. Yet the voice does not belong to any one city, any one country. Rather, Badikian admits she will write and 'name everyone/tell their story/our story.' Through this collective voice, everything in Badikian's world 'nos corresponde a todos, igualmente, socialmente, democraticamente.' Here then is a new voice that draws to it all things, little and large, with child-like charm -- sky, cloud, guitar, one lonely flute. Naive elements. Yet without blinking an eye, they tell you who and what they are fighting for. Just like that. As if to be so honest were easy."
--- Sandra Cisneros, poet and fiction writer

Out of print, facsimile available

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No profile of the MARCH/Abrazo would be complete without celebrating its heart and soul, Carlos Cumpián. A veteran Chicano writer, Cumpián examines American realities absent from mainstream poetry. Although he hails from San Antonio, Texaztlan, Cumpián has planted firm roots in the Midwest.

Cumpián was named among the Chicago Public Library's "Top Ten" most requested poets and his poetry has been published by some of the country's spirited small press magazines as well as in numerous anthologies. He has taught at Columbia College in Chicago and has offered many workshops on poetry and small press management. His other books Latino Rainbow (Grolier/Children's Press) and Armadillo Charm (Tia Chucha Press) have received positive reviews for its contribution to Chicano literature.


To order books published by MARCH/Abrazo Press, go to Small Press Distribution at www.spdbooks.org ; Click on "Advanced Search" and search for "March/Abrazo" under "Publishers" in the drop down search window.

For out-of-print book facsimiles, please send a check (plus $3.00 media mail shipping per order) made payable to MARCH/Abrazo Press, PO Box 2890, Chicago, IL, 60690




Lisa Alvarado

Naked Wanting, Raven Eye, and Her Sacred Body

Here's my review of both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye. If you're looking for spun sugar literary confection, and easy comfort, move on. But if you want to encounter poetry that disturbs you in the best possible way, keeps you up at night, demands that you respond with your heart and your mind, read these books.

Margo Tamez is a poet whose work is not easy, clearly born of experience raw and real, making the reader touch that place of pain, of personal wounding far, far, away from the romance of the Southwest and the stereotype of the "stoic noble" on the rez. Her writing forces us to look where the bodies are buried, when we want to turn a blind eye to the violence wreaked upon the individual and environment. Both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye gave me that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, the tight, clenched first buried in the chest. Bless her for that.

And bless her, too, for somehow still weaving threads of redemption and reemergence in the face of soul breaking sorrow, for offering real mythos and confronting false spirituality. But to put a finer point on it, read what others have written about this singular poet.

This book is a challenging cartography of colonialism, poverty, and issues of Native identity and demonstrates these as threats to the environment, both ecological and social, in the borderlands. Each poem is crafted as if it were a minute prayer, dense with compassion and unerring optimism. But the hope that Tamez serves is not blind. In poem after poem, she draws us into a space ruled by mythic symbolism and the ebb and flow of the landscape—a place where comfort is compromised and where we must work to relearn the nature of existence and the value of life. —Norman Dubie

Margo Tamez’s poetry is an emotional journey, and I find myself softly invoking a line from her book: ‘may the way be in peace.’ Read it; you’ll know what I mean! —Simon J. Ortiz

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. She shows how hard it is to fight oppression and reminds us what is at stake: living beauty. . . Margo Tamez’s call to battle both instills fear and thrills us. —Heidi E. Erdrich

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In Naked Wanting, Tamez' lens tightly frames the direct links between miscarriages among indigenous women in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands and environmental racism, when damage inflicted on the environment by herbicides comes back to haunt us all at the level of women's reproduction. These are the bombs ticking within these astute and subtle lyrical narratives rendering the pierce of "the chemical cocktail seeping into the air ducts."

This poet speaks as someone who has experienced first-hand the body, literally re-structured by chemical invasions in air, water, soil and food, exposes the consequences and implications when our land and water are compromised.

For Margo Tamez, earth, food, and community are the essentials of life, our deepest wants, beyond human 'rights'--our responsibilities. She brings all of them together in these cautionary and lyrical poems that inspire us to move through compassion and, more concretely, to actions for a more sure footing on earth. Below is a sample that beautifully illustrates just that.

My Mother Returns to Calaboz

"The Lower Rio Grande, known as the Seno Mexicano (the Mexican hollow or Recess), was a refuge for rebellious Indians from the Spanish presidios, who preferred outlawry to life under Spanish rule." -- Americo Paredes, With Pistol in his Hand

The fragmented jawbones
and comblike teeth of seagulls
sometimes wash up from the gulf
to the levee of the river
and gather straited along the berms
where my grandfather irrigated sugarcane.

My mother, returned after forty years
working away from Calaboz,
walks there often now,
hassled by INS agents
when she jogs by the river
where her ancestors planted, hunted,
prayed and resisted invasions.

The INS think she runs away from them,
that she is an 'illegal', a 'savage'
'trespassing' from Mexico.

Used to the invasion,
she asks them how they assume,
how exactly do they know
if she came from here, or there?
When she tells me this story
she exaggeratedly points to the spot
she stands on (here) and the land
I stand on (there) which means:
you idiot...we indigenous don't recognize
your violent settler borders

I am an an indigenous woman,
born in El Calaboz, you understand?
she says loudly, in mixed Spanish and Lipan-Nahuatl,
and they tear out,
the truck wheels spinning furiously,
sand sprayed into the humid air.

When I was a girl walking on the levee with my grandfather,
I thought I saw gull teeth
chomping at the soil wall.
The air was dank steam,
the scent of sand, roots,
and something alive beneath the soil,
deeper and older than memory.
when I immersed my hand inside
the cloudy water,
it became a fluid form,
soft, something becoming,
something ancient.

The air is still heavy with heat and damp,
and smells like diesel and herbicides.
the scent reminds me of failed gestations.
My reproduction, the plants', and the water's,
each struggling in the same web of resistance
and survival.

When I was a girl, my grandfather taught me
to put a small clump of soil in my mouth,
and to swallow it. I watched him.
Then I did.
I used to watch the gliding and swerves
of uprooted reeds in the river's unhurried flow
to the Gulf.
I reached with all my body,
stomach on the bank of the levee,
hands and arms stretched out like an acrobat
to touch and grasp their slender stems.
Once, my feet pressed into the soupy bog,
and stepping up was heavy, yet with the sound of gurgles,
puckering, a mouth opening,
like seaweed and millennium of soil, my ancestors and water breathing.

Now, I think I'd like to be,
that I will be
running with my mother
when she tells of la migra.
Listen to the bubbling duet of water and plant life,
listen to the sound of grandmothers and grandfathers
closely.
Again and again.

This is a visceral longing for home, for groundedness in the deepest and most literal sense. It reflects an abiding love for la tierra, but not the convenient, fantasy laden Southwest. It is a personal, damaged homeland, smelling of chemicals, shot through with run-off that is still somehow, unquestionably sacred. Tamez writes of border dwellers unbowed, unabsorbed, defiant, and ultimately triumphant---not noble, but stubbornly flawed and human.

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In her second collection, Raven Eye, Tamez explores desire and the construction of indigenous identity, while imploring readers to unite against oppression in all its forms.

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.


Ceremony of Peyote

A snakebird sinuous dim form silhouetted
On the porchroof of the hogan--

Comes out of a monsoon sky
Banded thickly red and flint

Snakebird in me curves slowly
Over my bed

the sinew of what can't be said

Nine months full of ocean and yolk
Scents of beautifully made starmatter

A smell of tongue and lip
Of moisture a scent of Snaketown's Gila clay

I'm a brown and black puddle a scent I know

____

You spent hours in the heat of midday fidgeting with rage
I'm unpredictable not the kind of Indian you can present to

Men all wrapped up behind panIndian shawls eagle fans
Who never bring their women to pray
Whose diabetic eyes devour
My pregnant belly
Full of a bird boy raven boy
Ripe with beautiful worlds

Corn meat and berries
You say the order
Morning food for the relatives always like that you say
The look in your eyes don't mess up don't embarrass me
don't talk too long when you pray for the water

Can't risk my prayers to the morning star
Risk what I can say about
This medicine a Mexican Indian woman brought
North got Christianized by subjugated men

My morning prayers only suitable
For waterbirds
Anhingas and herons
Not men or women
In shawls
Fanning and chanting
In chorus of what they deny

My body
The yolks of my body
Stories we must tell to undo
What has been done

There is no easy, pro forma way to reconnect, no perfect prayer that can be prayed. Colonialism and racism have taken their tolls both in daily life and spiritual practice. But this poem reclaims and reframes ritual with a frank, and unvarnished fervor. Tamez refuses to shirk from the distorted in herself, or in her people. But in the boldest move, Tamez' poetry reveals that Spirit still lives, lives deeply for her in the body, in the process of birth and renewal and in the threads of communion that emerge despite everything.

Naked Wanting ISBN-10: 0816522480
Raven Eye ISBN-10: 081652565X


My own words seem pale as I try to end this piece. Let me use last words of her interview last week -- gonya'a' golkizhzhi' (it has come a colorful place)

Margo, for truth's sake, in Her Name, thank you.

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In the "It's so good it bears repeating" department, I was able to attend the Victor Hernandez Cruz reading last week, and was also lucky enough to be part of a intimate welcoming dinner just before the event, hosted by Palabra Pura.

A memorable gathering, with Francisco Aragón, Mike Puican, Mary Hawley, and Ellen Wadey pulling together a salon-like experience for a small group of local poets and writers. We broke bread, exchanged ideas and met with Victor in a relaxed, vibrant atmosphere. And on a personal note, Hernández himself could not have been more open and engaging, talking with us about all things poetry, the love of good food, and his time spent between both Puerto Rico and Morocco.

Things just got better with the reading at HotHouse. Introduced by nationally known writer, Achy Obejas, we were treated to poetry brimming with musicality, resonant imagery and a lyrical sensibility. In a set that contained both material from the beginning of his career and his new book, The Mountain in the Sea, Hernández spoke eloquently to issues of Puerto Rican identity, the Afro Caribbean diaspora and urban culture. Achy also held a brief Q & A for the audience, where a larger group could also connect, discuss, and exchange ideas with a seminal poet and his work. Bravo to Palabra Pura!

And for those who are unfamiliar, Palabra Pura features Chicano and Latino poets reading work in Spanish, English and a combination of the two languages. The series offers Chicago’s large Spanish-speaking population, the third largest in the United States, a venue to read their poetry as originally composed and helps audiences learn more about the strong tradition of poetry in Spanish. A special emphasis is placed on poets who have recently published books or won recognition for their work.

Palabra Pura is a collaborative project between the Guild Complex, Letra Latinas of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Latino Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Arena Cultural and contratiempo. Co-sponsors for this special presentation are The Poetry Foundation and HotHouse, the center for International Performance & Exhibition. This series is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council.

And to further entice you, The Poetry Foundation's website posted an interview conducted by Francisco Aragón with Victor Hernández Cruz, plus five poems with commentary by local poets.

Get a glimpse of this spare and evocative poetry:
5 poets comment on 5 Victor Hernández Cruz poems
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/feature.
onpoets.html?id=179552

Francisco Aragóninterviews VHC:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/feature.
onpoets.html?id=179553

Lisa Alvarado