Reloading Abraham Lincoln

In honor of President’s Day, I’m talking today with Gary Moore, playwright, novelist, poet, academic dean and Abraham Lincoln scholar. Gary just launched a new website called Lincoln Reloaded and is traveling to San Diego for the premiere of his play, Burning in China. This and many of his creative work is about Lincoln and I wanted to see what he could share with us about his extensive body of work and his interesting in the 16th President.

Gary, why Lincoln “Reloaded?”

Every time tells the stories of the past from its point of view. Points of view. Historical characters and events are vessels we fill with meaning according to our changing needs. In light of this observation, all history can be seen to actually be myth. The conventional Lincoln observances leave me flat. He who drinks the old wine, has no place for the new. I’m reloading the Lincoln myth.

It’s an interesting time for this reimagining given we have the first President of Color and Lincoln was the President who ended slavery. So what meaning do you think the reloaded Lincoln holds for this generation?

If I continue the thread from my last answer, I’ll have to say it’s something to get drunk on. Intoxicated with possibility. As my performance poem, “Abraham Lincoln Was The King Of The Jews,” says: Abraham Lincoln is you and me. My new visions of Abraham Lincoln – the works I describe and excerpt on my website – although filled with exciting Lincoln lore, aren’t really about Abraham Lincoln at all. They’re about us. Ordinary and profound us.

When and how did you become so interested in Abraham Lincoln?

I’m afraid this will sound more soft-in-the-head than in truth I am, but the only way I can explain it is to say that I had a vision. It was 1969 and I was just out of the Army and living on the lower East side in New York and I lit a candle one night and wrote in my journal. I found myself writing about Abraham Lincoln writing by candle light, and then these other Lincoln scenes came pouring out from – where? I hadn’t thought of Abraham Lincoln since I was in eighth grade like everybody else. I didn’t know much about him. I went to the bookstore the next morning and found the Signet paperback edition of Don Fehrenbacher’s wonderful brief collection of Lincoln’s writings and started to get the complex feel of the man, oaf and angel. I was hooked. I was on the infinite Lincoln Highway. Never could stop reading, learning, writing about him. Or about us, using him.

Tell us about this new play you’re mounting in San Diego next week…

Burning in China tells the story of an American professor who goes to China in 1988 with a hundred parchment copies of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in his luggage and finds himself drawn into the passions of the Chinese democracy movement. Caleb Deschanel directs. He’s a five-time Oscar nominee in Cinematography, and he’s incorporating video of China and Chinese rock music into his production. The story has some features people are bound to think fictional, but it’s all true. Except maybe when the actor Jeff LeBeau steps onstage and says his name is Gary Moore and he went to China in 1988. But Jeff is so good – I’ve seen him do this role before, at the John Drew Theater in Easthampton – that when he says he’s Gary Moore, I believe him! Really. It’s amazing. I talked with him on the phone last night and I thought he was me! It was frightening but wonderful. What’s the line of Rilke? “Beauty is the beginning of terror we’re still just able to bear.” Burning in China has some of that, I hope. So much joy and hope in the Chinese people turning to tragedy, but the knowledge too that they will never give up. “We have failed,” one student demonstrator told me, “but our story will go on. We were a light in the darkness to show others the way.” When I was leaving China after the Tiananmen massacre, my Chinese friends asked me to tell their story, and so I have. May their story go on, and the light grow.

Tell us something we won’t likely know about Abraham Lincoln…

He was a sleepwalker. I use this in my novel Abe Ascending that my agent hasn’t been able to sell to anyone. It’s still available, folks, amazing stuff – Lincoln ascending in a balloon and making love a thousand feet above the White House. You can read an excerpt at my website, lincolnreloaded.com. And he loved gingerbread and never got enough of it.

What's next for Gary Moore the writer?

I'm totally blaming Abby Frucht for this. I'm the Dean at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a year ago I was drinking scotch with the writing faculty there, and Abby reminded me that given that we don't know if we can publish what we write, there's not a good percentage in doing it for that, but if we write for the intrinsic love of the project, we can count on at least that reward. I was at a turning point at that moment because I was beginning to see that my novel Abe Ascending, though it got a very good agent, was not going to get any kind of a publisher. Foo on them, I thought -- the next one's for me. So I wrote the love story of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, all in dialogue. I didn't want another voice. Just them. I love what I created. It lives. It thrills me. But apparently much of what I feel in the story I'm projecting from the deep reserves of Lincoln knowledge and love I have inside me. Because while the readers I've shown it to all find it remarkable in some way, none of them get swept in and can't put it down. So, next for Gary Moore the writer is to figure out whether to change the novel to better draw the reader in, or to strip the novel down to trim out its exposition and backstory and make it race forward as a play and then let the director and actors draw the audience in.

Now tell us something about Gary Moore that’s not on the official bio…

I caught a touchdown pass from Joe Namath. It was a pickup game in 37th Street Park in Beaver Falls. Joe was captain and picked me first for his team, which was an honor because there were lots of his buddies from the high school football team there. I guess he was saying, “I can beat the rest of you guys even with Gary on my side.” The first play from scrimmage we huddle and Joe says, “Gary, you go down to the tree, pass it on the right, cut left and come out from behind the tree.” The tree was the goal line, right in the middle, maybe thirty yards away. I did what he said and when I came out from behind the tree the ball was in my hands. I was, and am, a lucky guy. Even if I can’t get that damn novel published.

More censoring of Ultima

To the accompaniment of Su Teatro's production of Bless Me, Ultima opening in Denver this week, comes word of Rudolfo Anaya's beloved coming-of-age novel receiving the medieval slap of censorship in California. How much longer before such decayed minds follow the path of the more honorable, but extinct, dinosaurs?

The Chicano classic has sold over a third of a million copies, yet its reputability is often questioned by small minds. Assumedly, its Spanish expletives rank on those who similarly detest the presence of Mexicans in an economy that owes its survive to them.

You can read the whole story here, but as journalist Seema Mehta summarizes in her Feb. 4th article: "Parent Nancy Corgiat first complained to the superintendent about vulgar language, sexually explicit scenes and anti-Catholic bias in the book last summer, and reportedly told the school board in January that the book’s themes 'undermine the conservative family values in our homes.' ” Family values like censorship, no doubt.

All this, despite the fact that the 1972 novel "was spotlighted on former First Lady Laura Bush's must-read list and is the literature selection for this year's state high school Academic Decathlon competition" and was also "chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of its 'Big Read' program. Can we expect the Superintendent and school board of that district to next cut Grapes of Wrath? Oh wait, that was written by an Anglo.

Two-thirds of the rural Newman school district is "Latino," which might be a relevant reason for its former inclusion on required reading lists for schools there. The censorship doesn't pull it off Orestimba High School library shelves, at least, not for the moment. But apparently, "teachers are worried about district plans to review all literature taught in the classroom."

So, if you want to let the school's Principal Terra know what you think of this, Email him at his publicly available address: jterra@nclusd.k12.ca.us
If you want to contact the Superintendent and school board members, go here.
You might also want to leave a comment below if you want to send Anaya your support, and we'll try to see that he's aware of them.

And if you're in the school area, buy copies of the Ultima as gifts, because "there has been a run on the book at the school library, with a waiting list of students eager to check out the novel."

As one student commented on a school-linked website, "Our school sucks. I demand a better education!" We couldn't agree with him more.

(Thanks to Donaldo Urioste, Professor of Spanish & Chicano Literature at the School of World Languages & Cultures, California State University, Monterey Bay, for bringing this to our attention.)

Para el amor de mujeres…for the love of women

by Annette Leal Mattern

“If I lose my breast, I’ll lose my man.” The woman spoke to me without embarrassment or trepidation, but with the direct intention of wanting me to understand. I had just finished giving a lecture about women’s heath in Corpus Christi, Texas, hoping to encourage about 150 women – mostly Latinas - to become their own health advocate.

My talk was meant to empower women to assert themselves, particularly when talking with doctors, speaking up until their concerns were addressed. I had explained the importance of demanding explanations if they didn’t understand what was being said or done. It was their right. At the end, I asked women who had annual mammograms to stand. This woman had stayed sitting down.

The woman approached me immediately, compelled to explain to me why I had asked the impossible, my suggestion about annual mammograms was absurd. It was as though I’d directed her to skydive and she was trying to explain that she had no parachute.

The idea of a mastectomy was out of the question, the risk of losing her partner far, far outweighing the risk of cancer. “Besides, if I have cancer, I don’t want to know,” she declared.

“Yes, you do,” I insisted, fearing that this perfect stranger might die a horrible death. “With cancer, the earlier we catch it, the better the chance of survival,’ my pat answer falling on deaf ears.

My mind buzzed with so many questions as the words stumbled and bumbled out of my mouth. What about her? Is her value reduced to her bra size? Is she nothing without a man? And who wants a man like that anyway? Didn’t she understand this was a matter of life and death? Didn’t she think her life was worth more than fatty tissue with a nipple on the end?

I was talking to a wall. I can always tell…that glazed look that says, “I’m no longer listening; now you’re just noise.” And with that, she walked away.

I’ve thought a lot about that woman, wondering about the messages that shaped her self-worth. We were a long way from empowerment; a very long way.

At first, I wanted to be mad at the man, some self-centered bastard who would likely walk out on her if she was diagnosed - that is, after making her feel like a disfigured freak. In my mind, I saw a stereotypical machismo antagonist from Spanish novelas who treated her as chattel. This poor woman was his victim and I wanted to hate him.

The truth, of course, is that it was not the man but the woman who was responsible for her situation. She believed with great conviction that she was right, that her situation warranted the choice she made. She was not a victim of her husband but of her culture.

Like thousands of other women, she had received messages of body image all of her life. And she self identified with her physical body because it was the currency of her world. She chose a relationship with a man who reinforced her twisted sense of self. And, if she has daughters, she was shaping their values to follow the same pattern of sexualization.

We are prisoners of our own conditioning. Our values, our relationship to others and to ourselves, are all products of memories and experiences, lessons that began the minute we were born. As a society, we are compelled to measure every woman against a perfect model. It is the prism through which we compare our selves and all other women. For Latinas, that model is the product of the evolution of our ancestors as they walked across the Americas for thousands of years, hunting and gathering while feeding children from generous breasts.

That woman represented a bigger problem than the possibility of another mother or wife losing her breast . . . or her life . . . to cancer. She illustrated a distorted belief system in which she would be less without some body part, less beautiful or less of a woman or less sexy or just plain less. Irrespective of the risk, her choice was clear. She believed the magazines and rock videos and the GoDaddy commercials. It was her reality and we are part of it.

Don’t we live in a society enchanted with augmented bodies, cosmetic corrections of our individuality? Obsessed with the shell, aren’t we ignoring the spirit? We say we aspire to a higher self but do we truly act that way in the thousands of things we say and do every day?

I think often about messages I wish that woman had heard throughout her life. It’s always a bit different, but generally, my list goes like this:

• Honor your body, don’t idolize it. Know the difference. Your body is an amazing miracle. It is what gives your spirit a physical experience.


• Stay away from toxins. If you smoke, stop. Smoking is the single worst thing you can do to yourself.
  
• Don’t bargain with your health. Be proactive. Get regular check ups. With most diseases, waiting is a mistake.
• Be curious about yourself as well as about the world around you. Never stop learning. In every situation, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?”
• Know that you deserve a supportive and loving partner who respects you.
• Do not give your power away.
• Know that you are worthy.
• Believe that everything you need already exists within you.
• Listen to your inner voice. It is your soul directing you to what you know is right but temporarily forgot.
  
  

Share this information with Latinas in your life. Start the conversation to help remove the stigma derived from our social unacceptability of breast cancer. Here are some sobering facts that you should care about:

Breast cancer is the number one cause of cancer death among Latinas.

Even though non-Hispanic white women are more likely to get the disease (one in eight), Latinas are 20% more likely to die from it. This is because only 54% of Latinas with breast cancer were diagnosed early stage, compared to 63% among non-Hispanic white women.

When the disease is diagnosed in Latinas, the breast tumors are larger than those of non-Hispanic white women, also attributable to fewer mammograms and delayed follow-up of abnormal screenings of women who already know they have a problem.

Even adjusting for disparities in access to healthcare, Latinas get a more aggressive form of the disease and at younger ages than non-Hispanic women, suggesting a genetic component that we don’t yet understand.

For those diagnosed later, survival is progressively more difficult or, for too many Latinas, not possible. This is why screening is critical.

Early detection can determine whether or not our mothers or wives or daughters live out their full story. You play a critical role in the life of these women - you can save their life.

When breast cancer is diagnosed in the earliest stage, the survival rate is 97%. Almost every one survives.

Tell every woman you know…for the love of women.

Annette Leal Mattern

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

St. Valentine's Day, Mesoamerican Conference

Michael Sedano

Click here for a musical accompaniment to the image above.

On the eve of St. Valentine's Day, it's my pleasure to share some of poetry's best expressions of love. I like to print these out and give them to my wife, and to friends.


Read these aloud to your own Valentine.

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--William Butler Yeats, 1893

I always toss in this one as a cautionary tale.

SWEETHEART, do not love too long,
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's,
We were so much at one.
But O, in a minute she changed-
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.

--William Butler Yeats, 1904

I used to send out just the Yeats alone, to virtual valentines at the CHICLE list of yesteryear. 

One time I was surprised to get a bitter comment "You don't have any chicano love poems!" No, I didn't. I'd read none to equal the lamentation of "When You Are Old" nor the irony of "Do Not Love Too Long".

Then I came across Ina Cumpiano's fabulous "Metonymies" in Lauro Flores (ed) Floating Borderlands Cumpiano's final metonymy, the ashes, for me expresses a passionate intensity that reflects a powerful love.

Metonymies / Ina Cumpiano

1

LAST JULY, they loosened their grip, let go--
plum, sweet plum--until the grass
was bloody with the warm flesh. Months later
the finches, purple fruit, hide in what's left of leaves
so that only when they fly off,
when the branches bounce back to true
is their presence known. They will not outstay
the leaves, the thin white light disclosing
those empty hands, the tree, against the sky.
2

This trip south, the egret questions the lagoon:
the white curl of its own back is the answer.
No matter how many times I return, this shallow inlet
to the sea will be here; and the egret, long gone,
will grace it with presence.
In "The Blind Samurai" the camera zooms
to the old man's clever ear: a double metonymy
that links our deafness to his danger. By the time
we catch on--snap, snap, footsteps
in the underbrush--
he has done battle and
bandits litter the forest like cordwood.

3

The camellia loses its head
all at once; it does not diminish
petal by petal
so for weeks the severed blossom lingers
as moist as pain, at the foot of the bush.


4

If the police ordered me to evacuate,
what would I take with me?
Baby pictures, computer disks, the silver,
proofs of birth? The sun
would hang like old fruit until the smoke
gathered it in. Then: night in day, sirens,
and knowing that whatever I took
would hold in its small cup
everything I had ever lost.
So if the police ordered me to evacuate during a firestorm,
I would write your name on a slip of paper,
light it, and--
in those few hurried moments allowed me--
watch it burn, brush the ashes into an envelope
which I would seal and keep with me, always.

The Floating Borderlands, Twenty-five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature. Ed. Lauro Flores. Seattle: UofW Press, 1998, pp. 390-391. 1998

And a final St. Valentine's Day Offering...

foto msedano : Diego Rivera. Mexico DF, Palacio Nacional.

 

2009 Conference on Mesoamerica

“Continuity and Change in Mesoamerican History
From the Pre-Classic to the Colonial Era”
An Homage to Tatiana A. Proskouriakoff


May 15-16, 2009
Salazar Hall E184
California State University, Los Angeles



This conference on Mesoamerica commemorates the first centennial of Tatiana A. Proskouriakoff’s birth. Born in 1909 in Tomsk, Siberia (Russia), Proskouriakoff migrated with her family to the United States in 1916. She studied architecture and archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and began doing fieldwork on Maya sculpture and architectural reconstruction in Piedras Negras, Guatemala (1936-1937), Copán, Honduras (1938-1939), Chichén Itzá (1939-1940), and in Mayapán (1951-1955). 

In her first published article (1944), Proskouriakoff linked historical inscriptions in carved jade found in Chichén Itzá with the history of rulership in Piedras Negras, thus making it possible to undertake stylistic analysis of Classic Maya monuments and to understand the inscriptions in Maya sculptures and glyphs of the historical succession of rulers. 

Proskouriakoff’s work during the 1950s dealt with Mexico’s Gulf Coast, giving due emphasis to the meaning and function of the ancient ballgame as found in regional sculpture. While at the Peabody Museum (Harvard University), Proskouriakoff began her detailed stylistic analysis of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions in the belief that, more so than a record of ritual and calendric information, the contents were historical in scope. This breakthrough in Mesoamerican research led to Proskouriakoff’s historical dating of ruling dynasties in Yaxchilán, México (1964). 

Recognized for her fieldwork and publications on Maya inscriptions, architectural reconstructions, and the stylistic analysis of Maya sculpture, Proskouriakoff is also remembered for her contributions to the interpretation of ideological features in Mesoamerican art, religion, and native reverence toward ancestors. 

In 1984, Guatemala honored Proskouriakoff with the Order of the Quetzal. She died in 1985. Proskouriakoff’s book, Maya History, appeared posthumously in 1993 as a testimony of a life devoted to the study of Mesoamerica. 

In this commemoration of Proskouriakoff’s birth, the conference organizers invite papers on the following topics:

1. Tatiana Proskouriakoff and her contributions to Mesoamerican studies.
2. Maya Epigraphy.
3. Mesoamerica and its historical periods
4. The Epiclassic and multiethnic urban centers
5. Art and ideology in Mesoamerican Artifacts
6. Mesoamerican cave archaeology
7. Landscape, skyscape, and architectural design
8. Colonial ethnohistorical narratives and the question of historical periods
9. The Mexica and the Triple Alliance during the reign of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin
10. Religion, divination, and lunar symbolism in The Codex Borgia
11. History and ideology in the work of Spanish cronistas of the 16th century.
12. Mesoamerican culture and language in the work of Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits during the Colonial era.
13. Mesoamerica as a linguistic area: continuity and change in indigenous language texts.
14. Architecture, painting, literature, and sculpture: the encoding of Mesoamerican cultural features during the Colonial Era.
15. Transculturation in Art and History of 16th Century Mesoamerica

The deadline for a one-page abstract of conference papers is April 17, 2009. Please send your abstract as an electronic attachment to rcantu@calstatela.edu or mail to the following address:

Prof. Roberto Cantú
Department of Chicano Studies
California State University, Los Angeles
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032
Telephone: (323) 343-2195


Conference Program forthcoming in the Spring 2009.
This event will be free and open to the public.

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Click the counter below to leave a favorite poem, a comment on today's column, or an inquiry. If you'd like to be a La Bloga Guest Columnist, click here to explore your idea.

Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?

Cover art from original painting by Terry Ybanez @2008

Golondrina, why did you leave me?
A Novel

By Bárbara Renaud González

The first chicana novel to be published by UT Press.

The golondrina is a small and undistinguished swallow. But in Spanish, the word has evoked a thousand poems and songs dedicated to the migrant's departure and hoped-for return. As such, the migrant becomes like the swallow, a dream-seeker whose real home is nowhere, everywhere, and especially in the heart of the person left behind.

The swallow in this story is Amada García, a young Mexican woman in a brutal marriage, who makes a heart-wrenching decision—to leave her young daughter behind in Mexico as she escapes to el Norte searching for love, which she believes must reside in the country of freedom. However, she falls in love with the man who brings her to the Texas border, and the memories of those three passionate days forever sustain and define her journey in Texas. She meets and marries Lázaro Mistral, who is on his own journey—to reclaim the land his family lost after the U.S.-Mexican War. Their opposing narratives about love and war become the legacy of their first-born daughter, Lucero, who must reconcile their stories into her struggle to find "home," as her mother, Amada, finally discovers the country where love beats its infinite wings.

Bárbara Renaud González, a native-born Tejana and acclaimed journalist, has written a lyrical story of land, love, and loss, bringing us the first novel of a working-class Tejano family set in the cruelest beauty of the Texas panhandle. Her story exposes the brutality, tragedy, and hope of her homeland and helps to fill a dearth of scholarly and literary works on Mexican and Mexican American women in post–World War II Texas.


Bárbara Renaud González is a published writer, MSW, University of Michigan, post-grad, Harvard. Her novel, Golondrina, why did you leave me? is due to be published in April 09, first Chicana novel to be published by UT Press. Barbara’s essays/articles have appeared in diverse anthologies and magazines, including The Nation; The Progressive; Ms. Magazine; The Los Angeles Times, and many others. Her commentaries have aired on NPR's Morning Edition and LatinoUSA. In 2000, She received the Inter-American Press Association Opinion prize in Santiago de Chile. Presently, Barbara is working on a Tex-Mex fairy tale, "La Pinky," for which she received a literature grant from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio. She has also written a children's book about voting rights pioneer Willie Velasquez, that's under consideration at ArtePublico Press.

For more info, visit Barbara at www.barbararenaud.blogspot.com

¡Latinos in Lotusland in Chicago!

The 2009 AWP Annual Conference & Bookfair will be held on February 11-14 in Chicago at the Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue. I will be moderating a panel on Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press). As you might know, I'm lucky to be the editor of this landmark anthology which brings together 60 years of Los Angeles fiction by 34 Latino/a writers. The panel will be Manuel Muñoz, Kathleen Alcalá, Michael Jaime-Becerra and Estella González. The panel will be held in Continental C, Lobby Level, Saturday, February 14, 3:00 to 4:15 p.m. For a complete schedule, go here. For more information on the conference including registration, go here. Peruse the schedule to see other wonderful speakers such as Luis Alberto Urrea, Rigoberto González, and many others. I haven't had a chance to examine the full conference schedule, so if you know of any particular event that you'd like us to know about, post a comment below.

And if that weren't enough, PALABRA PURA is sponsoring an offsite special event on Friday, February 13, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. at the JAZZ SHOWCASE, 806 S. Plymouth Ct., Chicago. The cost: Free! But bring cash for bar drinks. EVENT DESCRIPTION: Following up on the multi-voiced reading hosted by ACENTOS in NYC last year during AWP, the Guild Complex, Letras Latinas, and Poetry Magazine will be hosting a "One Poem Festival" featuring an ample roster of Latino and Latina poets from Chicago and out of town, including: Lisa Alvarado, Carlos Cumpian, Silvia Curbelo, Gina Franco, Gabe Gomez, Irasema Gonzalez, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Gabriela Jauregui, Olivia Maciel, Carl Marcum, Valerie Martínez, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Achy Obejas, Daniel A. Olivas, Johanny Vasquez Paz, Paul Martinez Pompa, Linda Rodríguez, Jacob Saenz, Jorge Sánchez,Juan Manuel Sanchez Rich Villar. For more information, contact Ellen Wadey at ellenw@guildcomplex.org. You may also visit the Jazz Showcase website at http://www.jazzshowcase.com/, or the Guild Complex at guildcomplex.org. For a complete list of offsite events for the 2009 AWP Conference, go here.

Soldadera - a memoir

Unknown Soldaderas - Mexican Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Juan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alfonso 1950 My mother, Gloria 1940

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

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

1915 My Grandparents 1960

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