King Kong: great Chicano parody

by RudyG

I know even less about reviewing movies than I do about reviewing books--casi nada--but now that Felix the Cat Ramos is out of town, I thought I'd play at critiquing one.

Like most old Chicanos, my wife and I don't see the newest flicks until they get to the $3-theater; but at least they're new to us, no matter how much our kids make fun of our ways. Anyway, we had to go to the 4:00 showing since King Kong is over 3 hours long and if we'd gone at 7:00, I'd have watched the last half by myself, trying to hear the dialogue over somebody's snoring.

It was fokkin' great, eses! It's the best Chicano flick done by a gringo I've ever seen.

It starts out during the Depression in the U.S., so the opening scenes about gringo poverty and destitution look a lot like most U.S. cities today. Soup-lines, unemployment, evictions: the real post Enron/George Bush America.

The best I could understand the plot, this pollero producer-type hires a European pollero--almost everybody on the boat is 3rd World--to go back to Mexico to capture something never heard of in the U.S., the black, super giant gorilla-worker King Kong. They cross the Rio Grande, which is depicted as an ocean, as wide as some English-only people really wish it was.

It's easy to imagine why they want this Mexican gorilla. He could wash all the dishes in NY in 5 minutes and could construct two houses at a time, one with each hand. That way he'd replace a whole bunch of illegal, regular-sized mexicanos.

They find Kong behind the kind of futuristic wall George Dubbya wants to build on the border, in a typical Central American jungle, living like a butt-naked animal in places with dirt floors, giant cucarachas, gigantic mosquitoes that look like vampire bats--the sort of stereotype some gringos have about Latino homelands.

The natives who live just on this side of the frontera wall, the ones who linger at the border, are a riot: they are so black, they make negroes look like they could use a tan! Their eyes are all red (probably from all the cocaine they smuggle in), they're half naked, they got dread-locks and things hanging from their bodies, you can barely make out that they're human, so they're the immigrant stereotype gringos have always imagined. And you can't even understand their Spanish!

They take all kinds of automatic weapons, one thing we still make here that sometimes work, and lure the poor gorilla with a gringa blonde, so it's believable, because you know how easily machos fall for those.

King Kong and the blonde hit it off, just as "deeply" as American college coeds hit it off with their Cancun snorkeling instructor during summer break. He takes her to his place, but all the X-rated scenes were deleted, I guess for the sake of those coeds' parents. Eventually, her gringo boyfriend shows up, she comes to her senses, and they escape to the boat. Pobre pendejo Kong chases them, of course, and gets caught by the polleros who take him back across the Rio Bravo Ocean.

Now we're at the big NY theater where all these rich people, restaurant and construction company owners, are all decked out waiting for the producer to show off this bracero gorilla who's gonna save them from having to hire all those little mexicano workers.

When the curtain rises, Kong is all pedo from another American product that works, more or less--drugs. They got him chained to these huge posts, just like an old negro slave auction. Everybody can hardly wait for the bidding to begin.

When they put another blonde in front of him, Kong can't tell one blonde from another and thinks it's that coed from his Cancun; he wakes up and realizes that every Latino's dream about crossing the border is a sham. So, he's pissed.

He goes tearing through NY, just like the anti-immigrant fanatics imagine illegals are doing to this country. Kong keeps picking up blondes and throwing them away when he figures out they don't in fact all look alike. She finally shows up, regretting what her weekend in that Cancun did to the poor Latino, and they both head to the Empire State Bldg.

Now the movie gets contemporary. Think: Twin Towers, airplanes, disaster. Except, in this version, the military plays a role and helps save the gringos of NY, although it's really the blonde who does that when she stands on top and gets the planes to stop attacking the Tower. Ironic, qué no?

In the end, the blonde and her boyfriend are safe in their no-jobs/no-pensions America, but they don't care because they have each other. The producer gets ruined because now he's got to pay for replacing the theater and a whole bunch of cars, subway trains, and blondes. The rich restaurant and construction company owners are going to have to make do hiring a lot of regular immigrants.

But not all the movie is negative. The blonde started out as an aspiring artist, an actress no less, and in the end she refuses to have anything with auctioning off Kong, goes back to true theater, and regrets her part in screwing up Kong's life. Her boyfriend is a playwright, and he sticks to his art and cuts himself out of selling Kong, too.

So maybe the moral to the movie is that in the economic and foreign policy disasters of today's America, stay faithful to your art and you will survive. Don't try to make millions like the producer or rely on a miracle King Kong to save your business: you're gonna have to make do with all those little mexicanos.

I recommend you see this great Chicano flick. Just be careful when you're eating that burrito you snuck in because even the owners of the $3 theaters won't let you stay to watch the next one if they catch you.

Rudy Ch. Garcia

César Estrada Chávez

March 31, 1927–April 23, 1993

From One Poet Laureate To Another

Manuel Ramos


When Abelardo Lalo Delgado passed away in 2004, Mayor John Hickenlooper announced that he was creating the post of Denver Poet Laureate and that Lalo was the first poet to be so honored, albeit posthumously. It was a nice gesture appreciated by Lalo's family, friends, and fans.

Lalo's successor as poet laureate, Chris Ransick, recently was treated to a public reception at the Denver Public Library where he was warmly greeted by his own fans as well as the family, friends and fans of Lalo.

The highlight of that evening was Ransick's reading of his tribute to Lalo, a poem he entitled Lalo's Notebooks. One of the people who heard that reading described it as "truly special. I don't think there was a dry eye in the room."

Chris has given me permission to reprint his poem on La Bloga, and so here it is.

Lalo’s Notebooks
Chris Ransick
all rights reserved


She handed me the blue canvas bag, said
These are from his family; it weighed as much
as a life lived, a big soul full of roses and the
other blooms, the unnamed ones,
laid on the graves of broken workers and
women who would feed their children more
if there were more to eat. How could I
open such a bag. I carried it down the street
and my hands ached, not with pain
but with love for the poet I’d never met
and the words that were really flames
of ancient fires, hot enough still to give light
in this dark time. I took those notebooks
home and when I opened them el gallo
crowed and woke the babies sleeping in
our future, the old men and women
resting from long labors, and the young man
in the photograph, standing atop a toolbox
amid defiant faces, bright sun & hard shadows,
pointing in outrage at the lie and naming it.
I found Lalo on every page, filled
by his own hands with fruits he pulled
from the stems of witnessing. And there were
bawdy poems, fingers dipped in love,
the grandfather’s caress, the wise fool
who sees what others can’t and dances
and wears bright feathers, his motley made
from the parrot and the jaguar’s pelt.

And Lalo said,

Launch your attack with love
and do battle as if
all about you was water
and your soul was on fire.

All morning I wandered in Lalo’s notebooks,
walked arm and arm with a brother poet,
whose voice was soft but impossible to ignore,
singing out over the path to Aztlan,
and we crossed through migrant camps
and were offered coffee and bread, a seat
by the campfire, and we crossed through a tenement
at Oregon and Fifth, El Paso, where children
burned and the people wailed, and we crossed
through the field where César Chávez stood
and raised his voice in truth, and raised us all.
I walked with Lalo and learned, I walked
and went to a place from which I will never
return. So I say here, in his words,

I call on
my brothers and sisters
to do battle in the name of love.

________________________________________

I'll be absent from La Bloga next week - look for a something special from one of the other bloguistas, or not.

Later.

Half Million Immigrant Readers, Voters, Mass in LA

Photos ©2006 Michael Sedano

Saturday, March 25, 2006, I joined 499,999--heck, maybe there were a million of us-- other gente in the area around Los Angeles' City Hall. Our massive reaffirmation of the US Constitution was one of many such manifestations of community, and concern that the nation's growing repression of people like us requires critical attention.

From Milwaukee to Chicago to Phoenix to LA, one peaceful protest followed another. Friday afternoon, I happened across a high school walkout in Huntington Park, which was a warm-up for the next day's elation. Undoubtedly, you've seen the images in the papers; I hope you'll enjoy these two QuickTime movies I made of the HP and LA gatherings.

How many Chicana Chicano novels address immigration, per se? Not many, to the best of my recollection, and I'm not having another bout of CNS Syndrome. I think. Not many novels, if any, can say, like Gregory Nava's wonderful 1984 film El Norte, "this is a work about immigration and immigrants". So many writers choose not to deal with roots in the first place. In a preponderance of Chicana Chicano novels, Mexico may loom in the background of a plot--or not at all.

Several works make the act of immigrating part of the plot. For instance, there's Richard Vasquez' Chicano, a family saga that begins in the Mexican desert then plots its way through California's rural farmworker colonias, culminating in tragedy and despair in 1950s East Los Angeles (reviewed by both Daniel Olivas and me, shortly after the novel was reissued after a 30 year absence).

Then there's Victor Villaseñor's family saga that spreads across Rain of Gold and Wild Steps of Heaven, relating less to immigration than the family's motivations to come North. Immigration is a crucial fact of the characters in Demetria Martinez' Mother Tongue, and Hector Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier. But for the most part--and I hope La Bloga readers will expand on this notion--Chicanas and Chicanos write about immigrants' lives and deaths after they've immigrated and are learning to deal with what they have, here, al este lado. For example, Helen Viramontes' Under the Feet of Jesus recounts the lives--and one boy's miserable death from pesticides--of migrant farmworkers. More often, a novelist who ventures into familial history just plops down gente in the US after a few chapters depicting their former lives, and uses that past to illuminate the present. For example, Graciela Limon's The Day of the Moon, where the characters' Mexican and Rarámuri past helps a woman unravel a family secret.

Somewhere in this perplex may lie the germ of an answer to that most enduring of questions, "What is Chicana Chicano Literature"? However one approaches the answer, why should immigration play any role at all? I, for example, am the third generation of my family in this country, a son of US-born parents (and one grandmother born in this country back in the 19th century). Then again, I remember being asked time after time, "What are you?" American. "No, I mean, where are you from?" Here. "No, I mean, where was your father from?" Here. "You know what I mean!" Or, the time my primos (also 3d generation) and I were cavorting home from a movie in San Bernardino when a white Chrysler Imperial pulled to the gutter, the window rolled down, and an Anglo woman leaned over to scream at us, "You filthy little Mexicans!" Then she drove away, leaving us squealing in laughter and delight. Of course we were!

Abelardo Delgado, from 25 Pieces of a Chicano Mind. n.p., n.p., n.d.

EL INMIGRANTE

golondrinas cortando betabel,
americanos de papel,
este Mexico-Americano
o nomás mejicano
que migra con toy familia
a los campos de colorado,
illinois, califa, y michigan
se me hace que no es más que puro gitano.
salmones en el desaije
con un ojo a las colonias
a las cuales muy pronto volverán,
no les voy
a decir porqué lo hacen
porque la verdad ni ellos saben,
quizá el cariño a la tierra
mamado de una chichi prieta,
quizá el corazón libre
que dicta la jornada,
aunque el carro esté muy viejo
y la gasolina cara.
turistas sin un centavo
de vacaciones en nebraska,
aun alabama
es un descanso de tejas.
bumerangas que la mano de dios
por este mundo tiró,
gente buena,
gente honesta,
gente víctima de su necesidad de migrar,
la lechuga o la justicia es lo que van a sembrar.

Saben que, that's Tuesday, March 28, a day like any other day, except, you
are here.

Hay les wachamos, or, as we filthy little Mexicans say, Read!
Raza.

mvs

CON TINTA CELEBRATION A HUGE SUCCESS!

Monday’s post from Daniel Olivas…

From our friend, Richard Yañez, comes this report (with photos taken by Emmy Pérez):

On March 9, over 100 people packed Dona Emilia's in Austin, TX. They were there to embrace Con Tinta as an organization working for Chicano/Latino writer-activists.

The evening featured award presentations to two of our veterano writers, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith and raúlrsalinas; The Quetzal Quill Reading Series featured Diana Marie Delgado, Brenda Cardenas, and Paul Martinez Pompa; and Richard Yañez and Rigoberto Gonzalez were the co-hosts for the evening. (Lorna Dee Cervantes was unable to read during this event, but she did read from an amazing essay the next afternoon.)

Those in attendance included a who's who of Chicana&Chicano letters: Kathleen Alcala, Norma Cantu, Oscar Casares, Eduardo Corral, Lisa D. Chavez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Christine Granados, Dagoberto Gilb, Maria Melendez, Carolina Monsivais, Manuel Munoz, Michelle Otero, Emmy Perez, David Rice, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Rene Saldana, Trinidad Sanchez, Jose Skinner, Sergio Troncoso, and Helena Maria Viramontes.

Allies in attendance included Joy Harjo, representatives from Kundiman, Nuestra Palabra, Resistencia Bookstore, BorderSenses, Momotombo Press, the University of Arizona Press, Arte Publico Press, and Wings Press.

Con Tinta’s first-ever event coincided with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Annual Conference. Next year’s annual conference will take place on February 28-March 3 in Atlanta, Georgia. Deadline for presentation proposals is May 1, 2006.

A very special thanks to Emmy Pérez for documenting the evening in photographs and to Zoë Samora from the Institute of Latino Studies for designing our beautiful program. (If you would like to receive a copy of the program, send your name and snail mail address to the email address below.)

Con Tinta’s mission is to create awareness through the cultivation of emerging talent, through the promotion and presentation of artistic expression, and through the collective voice of support to our members, our communities, and our allies. If you would like more information, please contact Richard Yañez, Con Tinta Advisory Circle member, at theclica@hotmail.com or at 915-830-2630.

(Pictured in top photo: panelists Rigoberto Gonzalez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Benjamin Alire Saez, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Helena Maria Viramontes; middle photo: Liana Lopez, Eduardo Corral, Francisco Aragon and Manuel Muñoz; bottom photo: raulsalinas and Diana Marie Delgado.)

PUBLICATION ALERT: This week, Frederick Luis Aldama’s Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Writers and Artists, will be released by the University of Texas Press. The featured writers and artists are: Francisco X. Alarcón, Alfred Arteaga, Ricardo Bracho, Denise Chávez, Lucha Corpi, Dagoberto Gilb, Jaime Hernandez (of Los Bros Hernandez), Juan Felipe Herrera, Richard Montoya (of Culture Clash), Pat Mora, Cherríe Moraga, Alejandro Morales, Michael Nava, Daniel Olivas, Cecile Pineda, Lourdes Portillo, Luis J. Rodríguez, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Luis Alberto Urrea, Alfredo Véa Jr. and Alma Luz Villanueva.

And Monday, April 3, sees the release of the paperback edition of Luis Alberto Urrea’s magnificent novel of last year, The Hummingbird’s Daughter. La Bloga reviewed it recently and I reviewed it for The Elegant Variation last year followed by my interview of Urrea.

A TINY TOOT OF MY HORN: My story, "Hit" (which first appeared in Outsider Ink), is a finalist for the storySouth's Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2005. Go here for a complete list of finalists. Dan Wickett's Emerging Writers Network is doing an analysis of some of the finalists. Wickett's treatment of my story is here.

OPPOSITION TO H.R. 4437: The following is a petition opposing an attempt to criminalize undocumented immigrants. If you agree with it and wish to sign, go to this website and sign. Here is the petition:

To: The U.S. Senate

We The Undersigned urge to oppose the Act of Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, introduced by the representative James Sensebrenner (R_WI) and approved by the House of representatives. This project of the law H.R.4437 seeks to criminalize over 11 million of undocumented immigrants that live in the United States of America and punish U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents that are in contact with them. I request that you VOTE NO to the H.R.4437.

Those who are in favor or against the immigration repeatedly say that the immigration system is broken. Now the radical anti-immigrant group of the House of Representatives has approved the bill H.R.4437 by incarcerating, detaining, deporting, and criminalizing a whole generation of immigrants under the pretext of national security. The H.R.4437 of Sensenbrenner only seeks to make the laws more “enforce”, militarizing the borders, treating the undocumented immigrants as aggravated felons, and creating more judicial restrictions against them.

The past two decades repress against the people that enter in the United States illegally have failed. From 1986 to 2002, the border patrol budget has increased from 151 million to 6.1 billion dollars and the hours agents spent patrolling the border has increased eightfold. Yet the number of undocumented immigrants has doubled from 4.5 million to 9.3 million from 1993 to 2004. More importantly these anti-immigrant politicians have forgotten that the undocumented are NOT CRIMINALS, they are immigrants that work hard, they pay taxes and contribute immeasurably to the grown and prosperity of our nation.

Our current system of immigration is failing all of us. A real immigration reform requires a comprehensive solution that will broaden the legal channels for immigrants to enter the country to work, reunite with their families, and contribute to our society. Comprehensive immigration reform will bring immigrants out of their shadows and contribute to our nation’s prosperity.

California is proud for her great number of immigrants. No doubt it has been immigrants that has sustained and enriched this state. We seek that our leaders defeat this negative shortsighted, and draconian bill, that you consider to reform our immigration laws. I urge that you oppose H.R.4437.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

All done. So, until next Monday, enjoy the intervening posts from my compadres y comadre at La Bloga. ¡Lea un libro!

Pedazos

Manuel Ramos

ANA CASTILLO AND THE AVON WALK FOR BREAST CANCER, CHICAGO
June 2-4, 2006 - Ana Castillo has committed herself to walk the full 39.3 miles. To donate a pledge in her name, please click here to visit her personal walk page . You can use a credit card or debit card, donate a one time gift or make a pledge over time. You can also send a check to:
Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, P.O. Box 408680, Chicago, IL 60640

Castillo currently (March 23 - 25) is participating in the International Writers Conference at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, as part of El Otro Lado: A Celebration of Work by Contemporary Latina and Chicana Writers. Other writers in this program include Alvina Quintana, Helena Viramontes, and Loida Maritza Perez.

LORNA DEE'S LIST
What does a poet/blogger do when she's not writing poetry/blogging? Read other poetic bloggers, of course. Lorna Dee Cervantes recently compiled her List of Top 30 Excellent Po' Bloggers Discovered This Year. Here's a fix for you poetry junkies - thirty times over. Lorna Dee explains that her list does not include "old po' pals", poets whose work she is already familiar with, or former students. Gracias, Lorna Dee.

MEXICAN COPS READ TO SUCCEED
Some time back I posted about an initiative in the Mexican town of Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl ("Neza") that required the city's cops to read at least one book a month. Angel Gurria-Quintana in an article posted at the Financial Times website, Words On The Street, gives more detail about this project.

Here are some quotes from the article:
"To begin with, a list of 'suggested books' was circulated. It included Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century classic, Don Quixote de la Mancha, as well as 20th-century Mexican novels such as Juan Rulfo’s unsurpassable Pedro Paramo and Carlos Fuentes’ gothic novella, Aura; it listed such highbrow texts as Nobel laureate Octavio Paz’s essay on Mexican culture, The Labyrinth of Solitude, alongside modern classics including One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Among other 'recommended authors' were Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mexican detective fiction writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II.

In April, Neza’s municipal government published a volume of short stories to be distributed for free among its police officers. The stories, selected by Neza-born writer Juan Hernandez Luna, revolve around the topic of justice. They include two American authors, Howard Fast and Raymond Carver; Brazilian ex-policeman Ruben Fonseca; Germany’s Bertolt Brecht; and three Mexican writers - Edmundo Valades, Juan Villoro and Eduardo Antonio Parra.

The volume is the first of six to be published specifically for Neza’s police force (the next will be a short novel by pulp author Jim Thompson). To complement their readings, officers are encouraged to join fortnightly workshops where they discuss the stories with a specialist. Attendance is not compulsory, but is taken into account when considering promotions. So far, the program has met with apparent success."

That's quite a reading list. If we had a similar project in the U.S., which books and authors would you suggest for a "must-read" list for policemen?

ANAYA'S SHORT STORIES
I just got my copy of The Man Who Could Fly (University of Oklahoma Press), the collected short stories of Rudolfo Anaya. I've whipped through the first two stories and should finish this book this weekend. So far, great. The two stories I have read, The Road to Platero and Children of the Desert, are quirky, very close to supernatural. As always, the landscape and place are crucial to the stories but, above all, the wounded humanity of the characters is striking.

DA VINCI
With the success and hype of The Da Vinci Code, it comes as no surprise that a Spanish author, Javier Sierra, has written an "historical thriller" with Leonardo Da Vinci as a main character. The Secret Supper (Atria) was published in the U.S. in March.

MORE WRITERS DOING GOOD THINGS
I just received this message, which I will pass on verbatim.

Denver SCORES, a literacy through poetry program for kids in urban neighborhoods will be hosting a really exciting event on April 27th at the Paramount Theatre in Denver.

After a three year absence, The Rock Bottom Remainders will be returning to Denver. This entertaining and amusing event features a group of famous authors including Dave Barry, Scott Turow, Amy Tan and many others making a go at being "Rock-Stars". Their tour stops in only three cities this spring and Denver is one of them; it's sure to be a fun-filled evening! Mayor Hickenlooper will even be playing a few numbers with the band.

VIP tickets are available for $200 which includes a reception with the band and there are also general admission tickets available for $29.00 which includes parking. Tickets can be purchased through our office 303-832-5879, on our website denverscores.org, through ticketmaster or the Paramount box office.

COLORADO SPRING

Ice And Snow, Molly French photographer

Later.

El Guajito

By Gina MarySol Ruiz

Once upon a time, in ancient Mexico, there was a small village where everything grew and life was wonderful. Flowers were brighter and sweeter-smelling than in any other village, the hunting was good, and animals grew fat and fed the people who lived there. The river ran clear, and the village was green.

Watching over the village was a tall mountain from which a cool waterfall fed the river. No one had ever been to the top of the mountain, but it was said the gods lived there. The people in the village were a little afraid of the top of the mountain, and many frightening stories were told of the terrible gods who lived there.

Every spring, the children would gather flowers and dance. They would dress in their special trajes, and wear the brightest, most beautiful bird feathers on their heads. Conchas would blow, flutes would play, and the musicians would play the butterfly cocoons, teponaztlis, huehuetl drums and rattles. The most delectable and perfect foods would be served. All would celebrate the spring, the new life that came to their village. More babies were born during this time than at any other. But, no one ever thanked the mountain that fed their river. No one ever thought to climb to the top and invite the spirits that lived there to their celebration of spring.

One year the waterfall dried up. The people were afraid, and they wondered what would happen to them. They took it as a bad omen. They had never seen such an event. They ran to the village elders, but no one could remember hearing any stories of such a thing. Day by day went by with no rain and no waterfall. The river line fell lower and lower. Flowers died, animals grew thin, and the people grew skinny, for they were starving. The birds stopped singing and left the village for a land far away that could feed them and quench their thirst. No one danced. No one sang. They were hungry and thirsty. The people were dying. The sun shone brighter and brighter, and still, no water came.

One day a little boy, whom the people called El Guajito because he always carried a little guaje on his belt, asked a village elder, “Why doesn’t someone climb to the top of the mountain and ask the spirits that live there why they have stopped the waterfall?”

The elders and the people were shocked! Go to the top of the evil mountain? Who was strong enough? The people were weak and hungry. Who was brave enough? No one dared to try. Finally, Guajito said, “I will go to the mountaintop and speak with the spirits. I will beg them for water to save us. I am not afraid.”

The people laughed. El Guajito was a very small boy. They did not believe that he was not afraid.

Guajito slipped away and began his climb up the mountain, carrying his little guaje. It was a very steep mountain and very tall, especially for such a small boy. As he climbed, he began to hum the sound of the huehuetl drum to pass the time. Pa dah dum dum pah da dum dum pad da dum dum dum! Over and over he heard the sound of the drum in his head, and it helped to strengthen him on his way to the top of the mountain. It kept him from thinking of how tired he was, how hungry, and how scared. The drumbeat in his head strengthened his heart. El Guajito didn’t know that the spirits that lived at the top of the mountain were watching him climbing steadily and humming a drumbeat. They didn’t quite know what to make of him.

Morning turned to sunset and still El Guajito climbed as the stars rose and the moon came out to play in the darkness of the night. Finally El Guajito reached the top of the mountain. He looked around expecting to see the terrible beings that he had heard about all of his short life, but no one was there. El Guajito knelt and prayed. He said, “O great guardians of the mountain, why have you stopped the waterfall? Why will you let my people die?” El Guajito cried and prayed and called to the spirits all through the night and on into the morning, but no one answered. The mountain remained still and quiet. Finally El Guajito stood and shouted at the top of his little lungs, “Great spirits of the mountain, please help me to save my people. I love them so much I will do anything, make any sacrifice to save them. Let me save my people. Please help me to save them. Listen to me! I will stay here
on your mountain shouting at you forever if you do not listen to me!“ El Guajito began to cry, and the great spirits on the mountain were moved to look down on the tired, tiny, brave, little boy with such a strong heart. They were impressed by his devotion and by his love.

“Guajito,” came a deep, rumbling voice from the mountain face, “Guajito.”

“Yes,” stammered Guajito, who was trembling in fear.

“Guajito, is it true you love your people and wish to save them?”

“Yes! I love them, and I would save them at any cost!” yelled Guajito.

“We do not believe that is true, Guajito. We have been here for many centuries, and every year we send the water to the selfish people, and never once have they invited us to their ceremonies of celebration. We are never prayed to or loved or sung to. No one dances for us, Guajito. We do not believe there exists an unselfish person in this village. For that reason, we have stopped the water.”

“I will save them!" shouted Guajito. "I will save them. I must. If I can save them, then I will make sure that they are grateful, that they include you in the celebrations, that they give you honor and love, and that they dance for you. We will make a special dance just for you, great spirits of the mountain. This I promise on my honor. Please let me save my people," the boy cried.

“Very well, Guajito, if it is true that you are unselfish and will sacrifice to save your people, then this is what you must do." At that moment the ground began to bubble and up came a beautiful spring of the coldest, sweetest water in all the world. “You must fill your guaje with this water and carry it down to the people. It is magic water and will soon fill the river.

Once the river is full, the waterfall will begin again, and the rain will
fall. It will take you many, many trips up here to fill the river, but you cannot stop. If you stop, the river will cease to fill and no rain or waterfall will come. You may only stop once the river is full and your task is complete.

Do you agree to this, Guajito?”

“I agree,” said El Guajito. “I will take the water to the people. “

And so El Guajito filled his guaje, and he carried it down the mountain to the river and his beloved people. He poured water into the river and began his way back up the mountain, all the time humming his Guajito drumbeat song.

Many times, day and night, he made his trips up and down the mountain. The river began to fill with water, and the people were revived. They came out of their homes and ran to the river, never noticing Guajito. They bathed in the cool water of the river, they splashed, and they played. They scooped water in their hands and poured it over their heads. They sang the drum beat of the dance, "Guadalajara", for that was the name of the village. Meanwhile,
Guajito climbed up and down and up and down the mountain. Hungry and weary, he never stopped humming his drumbeat or climbing up and down to fill the river.

Finally, he reached the river with his last guaje full, and, as he poured it, the rain began to fall, and the waterfall began its rumbling roar, and the people were amazed. They ran to Guajito, who had fallen by the river, but they could not save him. The days and nights of climbing up and down the mountain had taken Guajito’s strength. He lay dying by the river, and he remembered to say to the people, “You must honor the spirits of the mountain who have given you new life. You must invite them to the spring ceremonies and dance for them. You must feed them, give them honor and love, for they have saved this village.” With that, little Guajito died.

The people were sad. They cried for Guajito so hard that the spirits of the mountain came down to see. They took pity on the people who loved this brave, little boy. They told the people that El Guajito would never die. They took his spirit and made it a bright shiny constellation in the sky to watch over the people. They made El Guajito into a spirit like themselves and called him Xipe Totec, the new life, the spring.

Every year the danzantes dance for Xipe Totec. Every year there is a ceremony in his honor. They even have a special danza called Xipe. It is fast and beautiful and honors little Guajito.

Three danzas are usually done in a sequence, the danza Guajito, the danza Guadalajara, and the danza Xipe. Guajito still lives on in our danzas, as promised by the great spirits.

Fin