INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN D. GUTIERREZ

Stephen D. Gutierrez was born in Montebello, California, and grew up in nearby City of Commerce just outside the City of Los Angeles. He earned his BA from Cal State Chico and MFA from Cornell. His first book, Elements (Fiction Collective 2), won the Charles H. and N. Mildred Nilon Excellence in Minority Fiction Award. Gutierrez has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his writing has appeared in many literary journals. He is a professor of English at Cal State East Bay where he serves as Director of Creative Writing. Gutierrez is married with one son.

His new book, Live from Fresno y Los: Stories (paperback, $16.00), will be released on June 1st by Bear Star Press and distributed by the press and SPD. Of this collection, Virgil Suárez says: "If you read one book of stories this year, make it this one. Live from Fresno y Los kicks out the jams, and takes no prisoners. Enjoy, and tell a friend."

Jim Krusoe offers this assessment: "There is an ineradicable sweetness to these stories, accompanied by the crisp and happy bemusement of a genuine voice -- the sound of one person speaking directly to another, and not from the head, but from that most mysterious of mouths, the human heart."

And this from Lamar Herrin: "Stunning. Really, a lovely and loving collection of stories, nicely balanced between the vernacular and the literarily eloquent."

I’ve had the opportunity to read an advance copy of Live from Fresno y Los and I fully agree with Suárez, Krusoe and Herrin. Gutierrez kindly agreed to sit down with La Bloga and answer a few questions in honor of his new book’s publication:

DANIEL OLIVAS: Whether set in Fresno or Los Angeles, you capture the awkwardness and yearnings of puberty so perfectly that some of your stories made me break out into a cold sweat. How did you feel as you revisited that time through your fiction?

STEPHEN GUTIERREZ: I felt emotionally drawn into the times of those stories, not necessarily painfully, but fully aware that I had somehow come to grips with whatever inspired the stories by writing about them somewhat (I hope) artistically -- that is to say, with the detachment necessary to shape raw emotions into something meaningful. "Catharsis" is an overused and ill-understood term -- not even the experts understand it completely -- but in the sense of confronting past horrors with a measure of calm I felt relieved writing them, maybe even happy. Writing makes me happy, is the bottom line, however hard it may be to get to a place I'm satisfied with.

OLIVAS: "The Barbershop" is one of my favorite stories in the collection concerning an aging father's last days and his family's attempts to cope. The particular beauty and poignancy of the story grows out of the very simple attempt by the father to get a haircut and maintain some dignity. What was the inspiration for this story?

GUTIERREZ: This story is pretty much autobiographical. My father suffered from a horrendous form of early-onset Alzheimer's complicated by other neuro-degenerative maladies. One day I saw him take what I already knew to be a heroic walk up to the front door of his regular barbershop for his last haircut. The image of him setting off down the sidewalk stayed with me, and I tried to make something out of it.

OLIVAS: In "Harold, All American," you write about the racial and ethnic tensions among East L.A. teenagers: Chicanos vs. "Okies" vs. "wetbacks." It gets pretty brutal as the teens try to find their place on the pecking order. Does it change much when we grow up? Are we better equipped for adulthood by surviving such an environment?

GUTIERREZ: I think it does change. The famous tension between Okies (sometimes called "surfers," though none that I knew rode the waves, 25 miles inland from any beach worth surfing) and Mexicans (be they Chicanos or Mexican-Mexicans) and less so between Chicanos and Mexicans eases with time. Everybody grows up, matures, laughs about it, how stupid one was as an adolescent, how commonly adolescent one was after all, how narrow-minded and protective of one's own fragile identity against everyone else. But there are some who refuse to grow up and carry hate into their adult lives, how sad; or at the very least never completely rid themselves of old prejudices, recipe for stagnation. I think surviving any adolescence steels you for adulthood. The problem is that adolescence never completely ends in the quandaries it poses about selfhood. It's just a primer for the agonies of life, almost self-contained but not quite. It gives you useful tools though, like the awareness that time will pass, and change is inevitable, even if that current pimple in your life seems fixed.

OLIVAS: Your stories remind me so much of the community I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s near downtown Los Angeles in a predominantly Mexican/Chicano neighborhood. Do you ever get concerned that you're writing to a particular audience (someone like me) or do you see your fiction as being "universal"? Do you even worry about this?

GUTIERREZ: I'm happy to have any reader, one reader, two or three who enjoy my work. No, seriously, I give it some thought but not major. I think all writing is geared toward a particular audience; the suburban novel is going to bore stiff the urban reader. But let me amend that: most writing, by default, is particularized and necessarily appealing to a smaller audience than intended. That's because "universal" writing is less common than the reviewers of major book reviews with their biases in place would have us believe (or know themselves). I think my writing transcends its locale, if that's what you're asking. If you'll permit me one immodesty, I think it's universal, and I'm glad for that. I wouldn't want to just appeal to "my people," whoever they are at this point -- I know in the end I'm a member of the human race, and my stories reflect that. I hope my characters are deeply recognizable from whatever background you have -- they are people caught in the crux of life, facing their own demons.

The Border, the flu, the immigration, the violence – whose fault is it, anyway? - Part 2

(to see Part 1, go here.)

Guerrillas, Narcos, Washington, & the Ghosts of 1910
FNS Special Report

A new twist with unpredictable political consequences has emerged amid the shifting battle fronts of Mexico’s narco war. Sometime last weekend and somewhere in the mountains of southern Guerrero state, a group of at least 20 armed men presenting themselves as a column of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) appeared before Mexican reporters.

Uniformed and armed with AK-47 rifles, the group was led by Comandante Ramiro, or Omar Guerrero Solis, one of the most wanted men in Mexico and an almost folkloric figure who escaped from a prison outside Acapulco more than six years ago and wasn’t publicly seen again until last weekend’s secret press conference.

In comments to reporters, Comandante Ramiro accused the Calderon administration of not only staging the fight against drug trafficking, but of also protecting the interests of alleged drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The masked guerrilla commander charged Guerrero Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected with the backing of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and social sectors sympathetic with the guerrilla movement, with also protecting Chapo Guzman and an alleged associate, Rogaciano Alba.

A former head of the Guerrero Regional Cattlemen’s Association, Alba also served as the mayor of the Guerrero town of Petatlan for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Gunmen associated with Alba are responsible for about 60 murders in the conflictive Tierra Caliente and Costa Grande regions of Guerrero, Comandante Ramiro said.

“The strategy of combating the narco is phony,” Comandante Ramiro charged. “Here in Guerrero, for example, the narcos participate in meetings that the army and state government hold to strike at one cartel and protect another, but essentially they are the same, because they murder, kidnap and torture,” he asserted. “Here the cartel of Chapo Guzman is serving the army, and vice-versa..”

The fugitive rebel leader likewise accused Erit Montufar, director of the Guerrero state ministerial police, of involvement in criminal activities in the Tierra Caliente region of the state.

Comandante Ramiro said narco-fueled violence was inspiring young people to join the ERPI’s ranks, which had successfully expelled Alba’s men from some mountain zones. The ERPI, he said, is engaged in active armed self-defense, “striking” and “dismantling” paramilitary groups connected to Alba and the state government.

The guerrilla leader said his troops try to avoid confrontations with Mexican soldiers, whom he called “sons of the people” welcome to join the revolutionary movement.

The ERPI first emerged in 1998 as a splinter faction of the leftist Popular Democratic Revolutionary Party/Popular Revolutionary Army (PDPR-EPR). Two top ERPI leaders, Jacobo Silva and Gloria Arenas, were captured by the Mexican army in 1999, but the guerrilla group survived and reorganized.

The EPR, as well as other spin-offs, remains active. As the 15th anniversary of the founding of the organization’s armed wing neared this month, the PDPR-EPR issued a new communique.

In its message, the underground organization addressed the recent flu epidemic, deficiencies in the Mexican healthcare system, human rights, political scandals, labor movements, the suffering of the mothers of Ciudad Juarez femicide victims, and more.

The group also said its members were reviewing the next step to take in its campaign to force a clarification of the fate of two high-ranking leaders, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sanchez, who were allegedly disappeared by the Mexican government in May 2007.

Subsequently, the EPR waged a sabotage campaign against gas pipelines to force the appearance of its two leaders. The guerrillas later declared a truce, and a mediation commission was established between the EPR and Calderon administration. The commission, however, recently broke down, with no word on the fates of Cruz and Amaya.

Now 33 years old, the ERPI’s Comandante Ramiro told Mexican media he first joined the Poor People’s Party, a predecessor group of the PDPR-EPR which was founded by the late legendary rebel leader Lucio Cabanas in the late 1960s, when he was fourteen years of age.

According to Comandante Ramiro, the ERPI is organized like Cabanas’ old Campesino Justice Brigade, with units going up and down in size. Claiming his organization enjoys broad popular support in the Guerrero countryside, Comandante Ramiro said he spent the last four years year in the mountains, adding with a half-smile, “without a vacation.” Addressing reporters, he personally challenged President Calderon and Defense Secretary Galvan to come fight against him if they had a beef and stop sending “innocents” to die.

Replies to Comandante Ramiro

Reaction to the rebel leader’s bravado was slow in coming from Calderon administration officials and Governor Torreblanca, but other state officials and well-known political figures in Guerrero had quick words of response.

Dismissing Comandante Ramiro’s allegations, State Ministerial Police Director Montufar contended the fugitive was using the name of the ERPI to cover for crimes including cattle rustling, robbery and rape.

“How is it possible that someone who escaped from the Acapulco penitentiary, a delinquent of that level, assumes the mantle of defender of social causes?” Montufar responded.

Armando Chavarria, coordinator of the PRD group in the Guerrero State Congress and a former state interior minister under Torreblanca, urged the governor to initiate a dialogue with the ERPI.

“Personally, I don’t justify the armed struggle,” Chavarria said, “but I understand it.” The veteran politician said the ERPI’s public reemergence, arising from a grinding poverty trapping hundreds of thousands of people in the state, “makes the situation graver in Guerrero.”

After news of the EPRI’s reappearance hit the press, residents reported stepped-up Mexican military movements, especially in the Tierra Caliente.

While Mexican guerrillas engaged the media this past week, presumed narcos mounted their own publicity campaign by hanging more so-called “narco-banners” in Guerrero, Morelos, Tabasco, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua. Directed at President Felipe Calderon, Federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna and other top law enforcement officials, the latest messages were strikingly frank, with the banner signers acknowledging they were not members of a Boy Scout troop but nevertheless protesting alleged Calderon administration retaliations against family members of accused narcos. According the anonymous authors, the global code of conduct mandates that the family “should be respected.”

A New Game for Washington?

Locally, the EPRI column led by Comandante Ramiro adds another explosive element to a multi-faceted conflict underway in Guerrero involving several rival drug cartels, the Mexican armed forces and different police agencies, which often back different crime groups and battle one another. Last month, a fierce battle in the mountains between the army and suspected gunmen from the Beltran-Leyva cartel left at least 15 gunmen and one soldier dead. Along with large-caliber weapons and grenades, 13 suspects were seized by the army.

Politically, the persistence and even growth of the ERPI further signals the collapse of the broad-based political movement spearheaded by Zeferino Torreblanca that swept into power in early 2005 based on promises of change and end to decades of corruption and misrule by the PRI party.

The ERPI’s ability to attract young recruits shows how the guerrilla in Guerrero, like the narco, has become part of the trans-generational landscape. Comandante Ramiro’s column represents at least the third generation of Mexicans to take up arms since the late 1960s.

The existence of a guerrilla group in the heart of the narco conflict zone has national and international ramifications, especially at a time when the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress is considering a $470 million security funding request for the Mexican government, including money for more helicopters, advanced technology and training for the Mexican armed forces. The modern military equipment could used to fight guerrillas as well as narcos.

On May 7, the House Appropriations Committee approved the military assistance package and sent it on for further action. In an action bearing perhaps more than just passing political symbolism, the Mexico aid was approved as part of a larger security outlay for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, even as the new Obama administration retunes its military strategy in Central Asia, Washington could be poised to become more deeply involved in a Mexican civil conflict that has centuries of deep political, social and historical roots.

On the eve of the House committee vote, scores of prominent Mexican human rights organizations wrote the US Congress opposing new military aid. The signatories of a May 6 letter noted that allegations of human rights abuses against Mexican soldiers mainly deployed in anti-drug operations soared 600 percent from 2006 to 2008, reaching 1,230 cases filed with the official National Human Rights Commission last year. In both Guerrero and neighboring Michoacan, complaints against soldiers are on the upswing in 2009.

Juan Alarcon, longtime president of the official Guerrero State Human Rights Commission, said his agency saw an unprecedented 85 complaints against soldiers from last December to the first three weeks of April. The majority of accusations, encompassing alleged violations of search and seizure, arrest and other laws, “have nothing to do with drug trafficking or organized crime,” Alarcon insisted.

Ghosts of 1910

In some respects, the situation in Guerrero and other parts of the Mexican countryside, both south and north, resembles the era before the 1910 Mexican Revolution when armed bands, heavy-handed government forces and insurgent political forces all rose to the occasion. Then, as now, foreign companies commanded key sectors of the economy.

Ironically, the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, which witnessed one of the historic, runner-up battles to the 1910 revolt, has been the scene of a mounting conflict during the last two years between the mineworkers union led by exiled leader Napoleon Gomez on one side and the Calderon administration and owners Grupo Mexico on the other. Internationally, Gomez’s group has received important backing from the United Steel Workers and other labor organizations.

The Cananea strike almost erupted into a bloody showdown just as US President Barack Obama was preparing to visit Mexico last month. Attempting to break the strike, Grupo Mexico announced the firing of more than 1,000 workers. Hundreds of federal police then began saturating the area around the mine defended by miners and a women’s defense force.

In solidarity with the Sonora strikers, mine and metal industry workers blockaded shipments of containers scheduled for export from the Pacific Coast port of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, near the border with Guerrero.

Back in Sonora, miners took over a highway toll booth. At one demonstration, the Cananea strikers cried out: “If there is no solution, there will be revolution!”

As the Cananea strike approached its second anniversary, Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours appealed to the federal government to find a solution amicable to all parties.

This article originally appeared on May 14, 2009, reprinted here with permission from FNS.

© Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news, Center for Latin American and Border Studies, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email
fnsnews@nmsu.edu

ficción rápida

Copyright 2009 by Manuel Ramos. All rights reserved.

Exercising the writing muscle ...

Leaving

Olga forgot the reason she left the house as soon as she crossed the street. Wayne worried later that night but she had been mad at him when he went to work and he guessed she was staying at her bitch sister’s place, paying him back.

Olga slept in the park and then in an alley and then it didn’t matter where she slept.

A year later, as she sprawled on the sidewalk, Wayne almost stepped on Olga but he didn’t recognize her. She still couldn’t remember why she left the house.

Saturday Afternoon

“One more beer for me and my friend here.”

“I told you, I ain’t your friend and I don’t want your beer.”

“What a joker. Why you acting like this? Let me get the next round.”

“You keep messin’ with me and I’m gonna hurt you.”

“You drink this beer or I’ll cut you again.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You can’t handle it. You get mean. Hell. Give me the beer.”

Trial

The defendant leaned over to his attorney and whispered, “This isn’t going the way you said it would. That jury’s not buying any of it. You’re not getting paid if you can’t pull this off. What else you got?”

The lawyer stood up.

“Go ahead with your closing argument,” the judge said.

The attorney coughed. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My client just told me that he wants to change his plea. He admits that he shot Mr. Martínez, but he was crazy with jealousy when he did it. I know we can’t be changing horses this late in the game, but I thought you should know how mixed up my client is.”

The defendant jumped on his attorney and beat him with his fists until the bailiff pulled him off.

“Court’s in recess,” the judge said to the jurors. “You are excused. I’m declaring a mistrial. We have to do this all over again with a new jury.”

The bloody lawyer stumbled from the courtroom. He dabbed at his swollen lip with a handkerchief. He felt like smiling but he held back.

Artist

Flash finished his latest masterpiece with a final puff of yellow. He took a deep breath. Paint fumes and downtown smells filled his lungs. He wanted to say that he had created a fantasy of love and rebellion on the warehouse wall but there was no one to say it to. He added his tag. This is good, he thought. I nailed it.

He packed up his spray cans and rags.

Flash walked away from the wall and his painting. A tune popped in his head and he whistled. What song was that?

He realized he was hungry. He had been at it for more than three hours. Endings made him sad.

He sprayed paint into a rag and covered his nose.

Patient

“I think it’s the H1N1 influenza.”

“Swine flu? You think? Don’t you know?”

“The lab has to confirm it, but, yeah, you got it. You need to rest, drink fluids. We’ll see about a treatment plan after I get the confirmation.”

“I could die.”

“Not likely. We haven’t seen the serious cases, like in Mexico. You have to take care of yourself, though. It could get really bad. You have to wait here, in isolation, until we know for sure.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

The doctor had a mask across his mouth. The patient coughed into the air and spit on the floor.

Runner

He ran at 6:30 every morning. At least thirty minutes. Several blocks around his neighborhood; winter, summer, spring, fall. He ran into the rising sun or the cold wind. His face soaked up sunshine or dripped raindrops or melted snow. As he ran, his heavy breath roughed up his throat and ignited his lungs. The pavement beat his legs and twisted his knees. Unaccountable pain dotted his muscles. The first few months he sweated off pounds that had been hanging on his body for decades. When he had no extra weight to lose, he exposed ribs and cheek bones. His clothes swirled around his body like blankets in the wind. He ate less food. He drank less alcohol. He slept fewer hours. His friends worried.

“I’ve never felt better,” he said. “But then, I’m a poet.”

____________________________________________________

Well, that was fun.

Please join Mario Acevedo and me at the Tattered Cover, 2526 East Colfax at Elizabeth, Denver, on May 21 at 7:30 p.m. Mario and I will read from our stories, and a few others, in the new anthology Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery. This crime fiction collection has something for everyone, from traditional to hard-boiled mystery stories. Stop by and join in the fun.

Later.

Poeta de Colombia y Wisconsin

Maurice Kilwein Guevara and Poema

Gente: About two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to read for Paul Martinez Pompa (Pepper Spray/Momotombo Press) at Triton College in River Grovee, IL. I was paired with Maurice, and loved his sly, insightful, lyrical, muscular writing. Below is a brief description of who Maurice is, and below that, samples of the poetry that made me laugh and stirred my soul.

BIO:

Maurice Kilwein Guevara was born in Belencito, Colombia in 1961 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, where he teaches in the MA and PhD Programs in Creative Writing as well as in the Latino Studies Program. Previously, he has taught at Vermont College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Universidad de las Américas (Mexico), and Universidad del Norte and Universidad Javeriana (Colombia).

His first book of poetry, entitled Postmortem (U. of GA Press), won the National Contemporary Poetry Series Competition and was published in 1994. His second volume, Poems of the River Spirit, was published in the Pitt Poetry Series in 1996. Autobiography of So-and-so: Poems in Prose came out in 2001 with New Issues Press. POEMA, his fourth collection, was released in 2009 by the University of Arizona Press.

A dynamic presenter of his own work, Kilwein Guevara has given poetry performances and workshops in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, Cuba and throughout the United States. His work has appeared in Poetry, Parnassus, Ploughshares, Exquisite Corpse, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. His poetry has been anthologized in Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance (Anchor/Doubleday), American Poetry: the Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), The New American Poets: a Bread Loaf Anthology (U. Press of New England), and No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets (Tupelo Press), among others.

In 2009, he will be a Senior Research Grantee with La Comisión Fulbright en Ecuador, doing background research for a novel and a play. .He has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and was the first Latino to be elected as its President. He is married to the poet Janet Jennerjohn; they have two sons and live in Milwaukee.

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Hector the Colombian Who Butchered the Hair of Juan Ramón

You don’t know him? Oh, I figured cause he’s Colombian too.
I don’t get my hair cut from him no more. Used to.
Used to sit down with him in his shop over on
Lincoln Avenue, and he cut my hair, I guess he cut my hair
like maybe twenty twenty-five times, you know for least ten years,
y fueron cortes de pelo de calidad buena.
See the thing is Hector the Colombian he can bullshit so much
you need waders after a while, him talking about his village in the Andes,
and his mother who wears a crown of thorns cause she’s a
super-duper Catholic lady and sees angels in the Tupperware,
and his bother that’s a narcoleptic mechanic, and his six sisters in Colombia who is so beautiful they still ain’t married, and he says that’s the difference between Colombia and every other country in the planet is how beautiful the Colombian women is, etcetera. But the last time I got my hair cut by Hector he looked terrible like he ain’t slept in a week, and I can smell the aguardiente through the cheap cologne and gold chains. Snip snip clip clip he starts up again on how perfect like an emerald ripped out of the belly of the mountain the Colombian women is clip clip. Now he starts crying saying God the Almighty and/or Jesus Christ and even the Holy Mother is jealous of Colombia because the Colombian women is so beautiful like gold shimmering in the sunshine, and God’s jealousy is the reason why Colombia has earthquakes and mudslides and more blood than a butcher shop clip clip clip when out of the blue he says Who am I kidding? She left me porque yo soy un verdadero pendejo and I drink too much and I’m a mess and a bad person clip clip, and I start feeling the hot tears falling on my head and neck drip clip, and I give a quick peek at the mirror and it’s a mess. He’s fucking up big time, cutting big ugly bald shapes into my scalp like I got a dog disease, and it’s all uneven clip drip with drops of blood. The problem, Juan Ramón, is I am afraid I am too democratic and love all the women equal, but for some reason they don’t feel the same way about democracy as I do clip clip. But I say, Hector look man my head’s all fucked up, chingado, you fucked up my head man check it out, and he wipes his eyes, puts the scissors and comb down by his side, and I say I ain’t paying for that shit. That’s a shit-job you done, and he says in a low, empty voice: You’re right, Juan Ramón. You look the way I feel. This one is on me, totalmente gratis.




Poema cubano con cara vieja

La red
Pared
Pared
La red
Poema cubano
Con cara café
Face note
Net of creases
Come come
Comes
Comes out
Crops up
A stogie
Sprouts
A brown stump
Faces out
Pores
Cinnamon
Time-net a brown face
Pores
Becomes
De la pared
Un puro
Comes out
A brown face
Crops up
Out of the white
Outcomes
Out of the white plaster
A leathered rolling
Cheekbones slope of forehead
Looks down
And comes a brown face
You
A brown face comes out of the white
You
Out of the wall
Brown pores
A galaxy
Damp old puro
Eyes hooded
Looking down
A brown face comes out of the white plaster, stump of puro in his mouth

POEMA, University of Arizona Press (2009) 978-0-8165-2725-

Lisa Alvarado

Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué Rico!

By Pat Mora
Illustrated by Rafael Lopez

Smear nutty butter,
then jelly. Gooey party,
my sandwich and me.

*Reading level: Ages 4-8
* Hardcover: 32 pages
* Publisher: Lee & Low Books
* ISBN-10: 1584302712
* ISBN-13: 978-1584302711

From the publisher:

From acclaimed Latina poet and author Pat Mora comes a delightful collection of haiku focused on some of the most familiar (and a few unfamiliar) foods that are native to the Americas. Blueberries, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and more, these poems capture the enduring appeal of foods that have been part of the diverse cuisines of the Americas for centuries. Each haiku is accompanied by information about the food’s origins, and some fun facts about its history and current uses. With joyous illustrations that practically jump off the page, artist Rafael López captures the essence of each haiku and brings these delicious poems to life.

To read a booktalk with author Pat Mora visit http://www.leeandlow.com/p/morayum.mhtml

Review: Fidel's Last Days. Lydia redux. CSULA Meso American Conference Reminder.

Michael Sedano

Roland Merullo. Fidel's Last Days. NY: Random House, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-4159-6120-9 (1-4159-6120-4)

Imagine Fidel Castro lying on his death bed, holding onto life’s last breath with a stubbornness that infuriates those enemies who fervently wish Castro dead at the hands of an assassin, not the respite of natural causes. “Oye, pendejo,” Fidel might think--were he a bit of a Chicano--“if you want me killed, write a pinche novel, ‘cause it ain’t happening any other way.” Which is what Roland Merullo has done. Write a novel, Fidel’s Last Days.

Fidel’s Last Days plays intrigue against intrigue. A Miami-based Cubano organization, fabulously wealthy and clandestinely professional, will infiltrate an agent, Carolina, onto the island. She will deliver a weapon to kill Fidel. There’s a traitor in The Orchid, but he’s known to its top men. Cynically feeding misinformation and partial information back to Cuba's security directorate puts Carolina and other agents at risk, sacrificial lambs to the cold-blooded goals of “Project Havana”. The top henchasshole is Carolina’s beloved tio, but ni modo on that. His plan heaps danger upon risk, depending on precise timing and movement, something’s bound to go wrong. Poor Carolina. There’s her desperate escape, but into Olochon’s cruel hands, just as Carlos himself falls into the delighted Olochon’s grasp.

Merullo’s writing ethos speaks with the most virulently anti-Castro, anti-Cuba voice you will read, whether from non-Cubano writers or Cubana Cubano novelists. For the former, Martin Cruz Smith, Havana Bay, or Daniel Chavarria, Tango For a Torturer and Adios Muchachos, Cuba provides local color, the background that frames everyday struggles to eat, get laid, pull off a crime. Cuba-origin writers like Achy Obejas, Ruins, Roberto Arellano, Havana Lunar, Leonardo Padura, Havana Gold and Adios Hemingway, Jose LaTour, Comrades in Miami, sharpen their axes with varying degrees of edginess sans obsession. In these, Fidel’s rotten presence looms at the edge of teenage prostitution, slow starvation, shortages of everything except unrelenting woeful suffering. Except for Jesus Diaz, The Initials of the Earth, with its sympathetic meeting with Fidel in a sugar mill. Across most novels, Cuba’s good and noble gente endure their suffering or find a way to get out, even if floating off for Florida in an inner tube, shark bait.

Not that shortages, economic folly, latent racism, repression, and political opportunism are not facts of Cuban society. Such flaws are inescapable caca heaped on the island, thanks to the US blockade. But some novelists use these conditions as material to grow a plot; for Merullo, these are the plot. For example, Achy Obejas’ character makes pragmatic advantage of regularly collapsing apartment houses; finding value in ruin, he scavenges valuable salvage and converts it to dollars. Merullo’s character sees these as part of a litany of metaphors that describe the rotten heart of Carlos' homeland, thus justification for an elaborate assassination plot and coup d’etat. When life gives you lemons, kill Fidel.

Not that Merullo hides his bloodlust motive in crafting a generally successful, suspenseful plot. And, perhaps, Merullo is not a blind hater, but merely a literary opportunist, an outsider much like Martin Cruz Smith, informed by locals with their own axes a-grinding. I’d love to learn who steered Merullo in the direction he leads the reader. Jose LaTour advised Smith, creating a beautiful novel with a flavor of authenticity, then wrote a parallel novel.

As in Havana Lunar, Fidel’s Last Days occur against a background of Cuban medicine. This isn’t the healing science of a recent rabble-rousing film but the medicine of shortage. Havana Lunar features a medical clinic lacking even aspirin to treat sick children, owing to the clinic’s location in a politically unreliable neighborhood where folks don’t rat out each other’s political shortcomings. Merullo is not as hard on his poor barrio clinics, such as Elena’s: “Although the shelves were not stocked with more than a week’s supply of the essentials—zylocaine, penicillin, aspirin, hydrogen peroxide—the nurses called on the patients in fair order, and, it seemed to Carlos, treated them capably, efficiently.”

Carlos happens to be Cuba’s Minister of Health, Castro’s personal physician, and a crony of all the good old boys. Carlos had been with el Comandante from near the beginning. But Carlos is not immune from political suspicion. Castro’s longer-tenured comrade, the quintessentially evil Olochon, heads D-7, internal security. Olochon relishes his job and his nickname, The Dentist, earned from his technique of pulling teeth with a “plumber’s wrench.” Ferreting out traitors to the state occupies Olochon’s days and nights, except when he’s got some traitor hanging in a cell waiting, wishing, for a coup de grace. At one point, Carlos expresses his belief to Fidel that Olochon goes too far sometimes. Fidel thinks Olochon is doing a fine job.

Olochon’s suspicious mien reflects, if not causes, the disheartening mistrust and political snitching that characterizes personal relationships witnessed in other novels, too. Carlos and Elena matter deeply to one another, yet Carlos fears letting her in on his role in the plot. “To protect her, he told himself. To protect her, and others. But, in fact, he was not truly sure of Elena’s political leanings. At times, quietly, she voiced criticisms—never of Fidel personally, but of the way things were done. And then, other times, he’d see her watching a television program that was pure propaganda, and there would be tears in her eyes for the great experiment that was Cuba.” For her part, Elena recognizes if Carlos is taken, Olochon will come for Elena and her family simply owing to her Carlos conecta. The limits of Cuban love begin at the ligature around one's throat.

Merullo wants readers to recognize a difference between Carlos’ contemporaries and everyday, less jaded Cubanos, like Elena. Olochon provides a focal point: “his anger had been like an ugly brother to Fidel’s, his ego like a twisted reflection of a twisted reflection. … there were those who claimed Batista had fled the country, not because of Castro or the sentiments of the Cuban people, but because of the boy who enjoyed killing. Olochon….the name was a sharp hot spike through the groin

Carlos’ view of Elena and her adult son, illustrates the depth of Olochon’s type of suspicion and the vast gap between lost potential and present decay. “Julio and his mother were real revolutionaries, real communists. They were, Carlos thought, what he had been at the beginning.” Earlier in the novel, a similar feeling intrudes on the hate fest for all things Castro, and for oneself. “The Revolution had been built on a concern for the pain of others. In the beginning the revolutionaries had killed, of course—without that killing they would still be slaves—but always in the name of a glorious future. Now, however, it seemed to him more and more that they killed in the name of a mediocre present, a status quo that kept so many Cubans wanting food, while a few, like him and Olochon, lived well. They had become the men they had once cursed.”

This conflict of past and present sets off a logic grown from Merullo’s depiction of Castro as an out of touch blowhard. Castro sits in the cabinet meeting and drones on and on, but only after each of the cabinet ministers have droned their glowing reports of fabricated progress, each minister quietly admiring the lying ability of a compañero. Does Fidel have to go, or should the assassin aim at Olochon’s evil? Ridding Cuba of el Comandante will destabilize the island, but killing Olochon will remove an evil blot on the island’s health. Fidel will die some day, but what if the director of D-7 ascends the throne?

It must have been a pleasure for Merullo to write Fidel’s death in the penultimate chapter. Without giving away the twisty ending from the final chapter, the Fidel-hater reader will re-read that paragraph with cascading frissons of glee. Ding dong and all that.

Sadly, a few small but glaring errors mar the otherwise involving suspense. There’s that matter of The Dentist’s yanking teeth one by one with a plumber’s wrench. I think not. A plier, a vise grip, a dental instrument of course, would do. But a plumber’s wrench is designed with one-way teeth that grasp a pipe across the circumference to exert counterclockwise force on a tube with ample clearance. Being somewhat of a handyman myself—I’m a regular carpintonto, in fact—I know my plumbing tools with an intimacy Merullo lacks.

Likewise, Merullo’s confusion of Cuban with Mexican comida. What happened to his local informant on this, quién sabe, but when Carlos takes Elena to dinner, they go to a restaurant whose fare illustrates not only run-of-the-mill privation but also an egregiously uninformed writer: “they turned down an alley, past a woman and small child begging and a man playing the Peruvian flute, then ducked into the large, noisy, popular Café Castro, where you could sometimes get a little chicken or fish with your beans and rice and tortillas”.

¡Hijole! That menu cries out for an editor or a fact-checker.


Artful News from Chicago



Hi All,

My studio building is having its annual Spring "OPEN STUDIO WALK" weekend on May 15-16, 2009. If you are in or near Chicago I hope you'll drop in and have a glass of wine and see some wonderful art. Art will be for sale!

More details and directions can be found on the Artists of Eastbank website - www.artistsoftheeastbank.com

J u d i t h e H e r n á n d e z
◘ Website: www.jhnartestudio.com
◘ Studio: 1200 West 35th Street, #35000, Chicago, IL 60609

Meso American Reminder

In Los Angeles, Cal State LA hosts the 2009 Conference on Mesoamerica. Continuity and Change in Mesoamerican History From the Pre-Classic to the Colonial Era. Click here for a PDF of this interesting event.

Lydia Considered and Re-Considered.

La Bloga enthused at the beauty, power, and pure drama of Lydia at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum.

Denver's John Keubler has an interesting answer to the question of how Octavio Solis' masterful teatro experience changed from its Denver debut to its exceptional El Lay staging. Click here (then press Esc when the site demands an email password) to enjoy Keubler's take on this wondrous play, including an LA Times critic's accusation Lydia is like a telenovela. Wha? Among descriptions I would hope critics studiously avoid is equating fluffy stuff like telenovelas with so fine an example of Chicano belles-lettres.

Now the play has found its way west to Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where critical reception, perhaps because of all the hype, has been mixed. Los Angles Times theater critic Charles McNulty calls it “magical realism meets telenovela.”

I do not watch telenovelas, and I wonder how many telenovelas McNulty consumes along with a hot botana or two? For me, this sounds like beans rice and tortillas served at a Havana café, suspiciously uninformed. Ni modo. You'll enjoy Keubler's essay.

What's the word of the day? Catarro. May you not comprehend what this means, leastways, not as convincingly as I do right now. Damn.  Here's trusting my twice daily botana of Ciprofloxacin and Tamiflu are doing the trick, this second Tuesday of May. A Tuesday like any day, except you are here. Be well, gente. See you next week.

ate,

mvs

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Click the Comments counter below to add your notes to this, or any column. Be mindful that La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. When you have a counter view of something you read at La Bloga, or your own review of a book or arts event, click here to share your intentions to be our guest.

The Bully

A children's story by Álvaro Huerta
Illustrated by Andrew Huerta

Tomás wasn't born a bully. He simply made bad choices.

When his mother dropped Tomás off on the first day of school at Murchison Elementary, he cried uncontrollably. When the teacher wasn't looking, he walked home all by himself.

"Why aren't you at school?" his mother asked, puzzled to see him.

"I'm scared," said the 5-year-old, chubby kid. "I don't want to go to school. I want to stay with you, Mommy."

"Why can't you be tough like your older sister?" his mother responded. "Remember, you're a Gomez and we don't cry."

Not saying a word, Tomás shrugged his shoulders and went straight to the TV to watch his favorite Nickelodeon cartoons.

While most kids in East Los Angeles' Ramona Gardens Housing Project had a nickname, like Peanut Butter, Smiley and Fat Ritchie, no one bothered to give one to Tomás.

Since Tomás cried almost every day in kindergarten, he could've easily been nicknamed Cry Baby, Big Baby or Mommy's Boy. But he came from a family of bullies and the kids were afraid. No one dared to make fun of him.

He had a hard time with his reading at school. His first-grade teacher told his mother he had a learning disability, but he had to get on a waiting list for special help since his overcrowded school didn't have enough therapists.

One day, while in the fourth grade, a new kid at Murchison made fun of Tomás during reading aloud time.

"Hey, Tomás," said the kid, "you sound like a giant robot. Didn't you learn to read in third grade?"

Although Tomás was bigger than the other kid, he started to cry. Before he knew it, the entire class laughed in unison. Not saying a word, Tomás ran home.

His dad laughed at him too. Then he gave him a lecture he would never forget. "You need to defend yourself. If you don't, they're going to keep making fun of you," his dad told him with a stern look.

"Yes," said Tomás, feeling ashamed. Something happened inside of Tomás that day. He felt anger welling up inside of him. Anger he didn't understand.

The next day, he went on a rampage, taking lunch tickets from the other kids at school, making kids fight against each other and taking away the big, red handball from the girls during recess. All of a sudden, Tomás became the kid who controlled the playground.

He also told the kids in the neighborhood what to do. While he wasn't good in sports, he always wanted to be the pitcher in baseball, the quarterback in football and the point guard in basketball. It got to the point that the kids would stop playing when he showed up.

Deep down inside he was lonely. He was confused. At first the kids didn't respect him because he cried a lot, now they feared him because he told them what to do.

Not knowing what to do one day, Tomás locked himself in his mother's room and cried all alone while watching his favorite Saturday morning cartoons.

Concerned about Tomás' mood, his mother offered him his favorite cereal, Frosted Flakes, until he eventually opened the door.

"What's the matter, Tomás?" his mother asked. "Did someone hit you?"

"No," he responded.

"Did someone call you a name?" she asked.

"No," he responded, again.

"Then why are you crying?" she asked with a look of worry.

"Because no one wants to be my friend," he said.

"Well," she said, "maybe you should think about why nobody wants to play with you."

"The kids start to run when they see me just because I tell them what to do," he responded.

"Well, how would you like it if another kid bossed you around?" she asked him.

"I don't know," he said, feeling a little confused. "But Dad said that I needed to be tough and protect myself."

"Protecting yourself and being a bully are two different things," she clarified. "You should never take advantage of other kids."

"Maybe it's not cool to be a bully, after all," he said to his mother.

***

Guest writer Álvaro Huerta is a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, and a doctoral student in city and urban planning at UC Berkeley. His story, "Los Dos Smileys," is featured in Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, 2008). "The Bully" first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

◙ On March 23, La Bloga ran an interview with Daniel Alarcón who co-edited with Diego Trelles Paz a special Latin American issue of Zoetrope: All-Story. If you haven’t purchased it yet, you must. The stories are wonderfully strange and beautiful, brutal and honest, on the cutting edge of contemporary short-story writing. You may learn more about Zoetrope: All-Story including the authors featured in the special Latin American issue, subscription rates, and submission guidelines by visiting here. Well, the New Yorker has just posted an interview with Alarcón about this special issue. Here’s a little taste of that interview:

NEW YORKER: All the writers you chose for this issue were born after the publication of “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a point you mention in your introduction. Do you think there are barriers standing between young Latin American writers and a larger, more international audience?

DANIEL ALARCÓN: To be clear, the problem is not García Márquez — Diego [Trelles Paz] and I noted the publication of that book simply because it is so iconic, so well-known that at times it seems that’s the only Latin American novel many in the United States have bothered read. And, of course, it’s one of those books everyone absolutely should read, a perfect, transcendent novel, but an unfortunate consequence of its critical and commercial success, especially in the American literary marketplace, has been to spawn dozens of imitators, who by sheer numbers crowd out other significant and original voices.

Honestly, I don’t understand why these books keep getting published. For years we’ve seen bookstore shelves lined with warmed-over copies of Gabo, formulaic representations of a continent that doesn’t exist anymore. If Americans are still picturing Macondo when they think of Latin America, they will misunderstand a great deal of what is happening now. The demographic shifts of the last forty years have been stark, and naturally the literature reflects those changes. The frustrating thing about it is that in Latin America, the literary conversation has long since moved beyond magical realism—it’s only in the U.S. that the dialogue hasn’t progressed. And this isn’t just a literary problem—it’s a political, cultural, and economic issue as well.

You may read the entire New Yorker interview here.

◙ Over at The Rumpus, Ellisa Bassist happily allows herself to get transfixed by the phobias in Roberto Bolaño’s masterwork, 2666 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

◙ Rigoberto González, an award-winning writer living in New York City, reviews Maurice Kilwein Guevara's newest collection, Poema (University of Arizona Press), for the El Paso Times. He observes, in part:

History books about the 20th century will highlight the key players in wars, politics, science and economics. The poets -- those who express their view of the world through art -- might end up mere footnotes.

But writers receive their due in Maurice Kilwein Guevara's newest collection, Poema (University of Arizona Press, $15.95 paperback).

"I'm greedy for the entire Pacific Ocean and whales," admits the speaker in the opening poem. "I cross the border for roasted iguana and onion. Tremors at Momotombo. Where are you?" he asks, invoking Eunice Odio, the Costa Rican poet.

That poem is closely followed by a portrait of Catalonian visual poet Joan Brossa as the "Emerald Moth Discharging Energy." Next comes Elizabeth Bishop weeding the garden in a sienna blouse and John Berryman putting a fire out with his foot.

Each poem embeds a poet into life's everyday urgencies, because the world must have poetry to survive. Without it, "ours would be a history of chronic needs."

To read the entire review, go here.

◙ Abelardo de la Peña, Jr., editor of LatinoLA, lets us know about a few of the many new stories now available for your reading pleasure:

How Manny Broke Every Dominican's Heart by Claudio E. Cabrera

News from the Brown Side of Town, May 7 by Frankie Firme, Contributing Editor

Eviscerating Immigrant=Criminal Logic by Roberto Lovato

Letter to Mamita by Edie J. Adler, Contributing Writer

Prejudice and Ignorance are Nothing to Sneeze At by Andy Porras

A Latina Supreme Court Judge? by Gebe Martinez

A Soldier's Father by Abelardo de la Pena Jr.

Latinos on a Star Trek

Hispanic PR Association Announces 2009 Scholarships by Anai Ibarra

Summer Paid Internships at Tia Chuchas

◙ TWO EXCITING LITERARY OPPORTUNITIES FROM LIBRERÍA MARTINEZ:

May 26th - Librería Martinez presents Creative Writing Workshop taught by Reyna Grande. Through in-class exercises, weekly assignments, group interaction, and peer and instructor feedback, Reyna will motivate and cultivate the writer within you in a fun and supportive environment. Topics include the ABCs of the elements of fiction and the 123s of publication.

Location: Librería Martinez (Lynwood Location) at 11221 Long Beach Blvd., Lynwood, CA 90262

Time: Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m.

To register, contact Reyna Grande or call Librería Martinez at 310-637-9484.

May 28th - Librería Martinez presents its new BOOK CLUB. Join us for a meet-and-greet hosted by Reyna Grande. There will be beverages and snacks provided and the first book club selection will be revealed.

Location: Libreria Martinez (Lynwood Location) at 11221 Long Beach Blvd., Lynwood, CA 90262

Time: 7:00 p.m.

[NOTE: Photo of Reyna Grande is by Ibarionex R. Perello. He was a 2003 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow. His first published piece of fiction is entitled "1952" and appeared in the Boston Review in 2005. It will form a part of his novel, Memories of Flesh and Bone.]

◙ Every so often a wonderful writerly gift comes my way that just makes me smile. I recently found out that one of my stories was selected for the forthcoming Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America (W. W. Norton, March 2010). There are several things that make this particularly nice. First, I didn’t have to submit, my story was chosen by the editors. Second, as an English major, it is a dream to be included in a Norton anthology. Third, I am honored to be in some pretty remarkable literary company (if you're a La Bloga reader and also will appear in this anthology, drop a comment below and let us know the good news). And finally, I am pleased to see sudden fiction anthologies continue to be published. In any event, here’s what Norton says about Sudden Fiction Latino:

For readers who love great short-short stories, this bountiful anthology is the best of Latin American and U.S. Latino writers. Following on the success of the Flash Fiction and Sudden Fiction series, Robert Shapard and James Thomas join with Ray Gonzalez in selecting works that each present a complete story in less than 1,500 words. Luisa Valenzuela, one of Latin America’s most lauded writers, provides the introduction. Readers will delight in finding stars such as Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, and Roberto Bolaño alongside recognized masters like Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, and Jorge Luis Borges. They will discover work from Andrea Saenz, Daniel Alarcón, and Alicita Rodriguez, as well as other writers on the rise.

In Julio Ortega’s “Migrations,” a Peruvian writer explores how immigrant speech and ethnic origins are a force of meaning that evolves beyond language. In “Hair,” by Hilma Contreras, a Caribbean pharmacist is driven mad by a young woman’s luxuriant tresses. These stories stretch from gritty reality to the fantastical in a mix that is moving, challenging, humorous, artful, sometimes political, and altogether spectacular.

◙ That’s all for now. So, in the meantime, enjoy the intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!