The Thick Dark Fog

Olga García Echeverría

Yesterday, I got a call from the Obama for America Campaign asking for a donation. Three things instantly came to mind: Guantanamo. Immigration. War. I didn’t have the time or the ganas to delve into my disappointment, so I simply said—I can’t afford it.

More often these days, I don’t believe in the business of politics or in big institutions. I believe in smaller things--my girlfriend’s organic herb garden, buying local, the necessity of art. It may sound corny, but I believe in poetry, in beautiful photographs, in music that heals and frees the self, in books and films that document what is usually undocumented. I believe in art that testifies, educates, inspires, shifts the paradigm, and helps fill some of the voids in this crazy, upside down world.

That’s why today I’m saying chale to the Obama Campaign and putting my money where my art is by donating to Randy Vasquez’ new film The Thick Dark Fog, a documentary about Walter Littlemoon, “an everday Lakota man from Wounded Knee,” who shares his story of being forced to attend an Indian boarding school. Like many other Native Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes and placed into federal bordering schools during the 19th and 20th centuries, Littlemoon’s upbringing was marked by racism and abuse. Aside from the film being a story about struggle and trauma, The Thick Dark Fog is also a journey of individual, communal, and inter-generational healing. Check out the trailer: http://www.thickdarkfog.com/?page_id=11

Before The Thick Dark Fog, Vasquez gave us another historically poignant film about the life of a Salvadoran woman who was kidnapped and tortured by death squads for her political activities in El Salvador in the 1980’s. That film, Testimony: The Maria Guardado Story, won Best Documentary at the 2002 New York Latino Film Festival. Looking back at his past two films, Vasquez shares, “I see a lot of similarities between Maria Guardado and Walter Littlemoon. Their stories were generally unknown and both were fighting for a wider audience that would pay attention to them, an audience that had ignored their realities for whatever reasons.” Like The Maria Guardado Story, The Thick Dark Fog is a also a personal testimony that sheds light on a painful part of history. Vasquez states, “Walter Littlemoon, before we met, had gone through his baptism of fire, which was four years of reliving what had happened to him at the schools as part of publishing his memoir, They Called Me Uncivilized: A Memoir of An Everyday Lakota Man From Wounded Knee, which in itself was an attempt to reach out to his estranged children and explain some of his negative behaviors in raising them.” It is this baptism of fire, this courageous journey of digging beneath the surface and moving towards true healing that is at the heart of The Thick Dark Fog.

Although The Thick Dark Fog is nearing completion, Vasquez still needs an additional $15,000.00 for final editing, original music, color correction, sound mix and archival footage. As with many independent filmmakers today, Vasquez is raising funds through Kickstarter. He has until September 1st, 2011 to raise the needed $15,000.00 via individual contributors like you and me. If Vasquez and his film crew don’t reach that goal by the set date, whatever monies have been raised must be returned. This is our opportunity to help make the films that matter. Every dollar counts!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1194934361/the-thick-dark-fog. http://www.thickdarkfog.com/?page_id=11

Here’s Randy Vasquez answering a few more questions about his recent film:













What led you to Walter Littlemoon and The Thick Dark Fog?
After I'd done Testimony: The Maria Guardado Story I was wondering what my next documentary would be. I worked kind of half-heartedly on a couple of things but wasn't fully inspired. Then in 2003, I started reading about the American Indian boarding schools and how kids were being forcibly turned away from their Native identities. At the same time I was interested in why there was this stereotype of the drunk Indian. Why was that? I was being told that it was simply a genetic matter but I didn't buy it. I learned about childhood trauma from the Indian boarding schools and it made sense to me that alcohol or even suicide would help relieve painful demons of the past. I kept hearing about how difficult it was for people to talk about the boarding school experience, from Alaska to North Carolina, and it was creating this void in family histories, a gap.

As part of my research I came across the book Trauma and Recovery by Harvard psychologist Judith Herman. I contacted her, told her what I was doing and she turned me on to her colleague Jayme Shorin who had ties to the Native community. I contacted Jayme and she said "You need to talk to Walter Littlemoon in Wounded Knee." I did.

What's the hardest part of being a filmmaker? For me, it's been asking the hard, personal and painful questions of my subjects during the interview. I know it's necessary for what I do but at the same time I don't like getting into people's personal business. In the end, I think their stories are too important not to be told, so I just do my best.

What's been the best part? After a screening of Testimony when people come up to me or Maria crying or in shock saying "I never knew this happened!" Then I know it was all worth it.

How the U.S. Mafia created Mexican drug violence

Americans tend to look down on "Mexico's drug problems" as something that those poor and dark people deserve, because they're supposedly less civilized or advanced than those in our superior Anglo country. Such Americans simultaneously ignore the guns and arms exported from here to Mexico that equip the drug wars. And they just as quickly will hide their face when anyone mentions that the biggest drug market is inside the U.S.

But as the excerpted article from Frontera NorteSur below explains, these same Americans need to hide their heads in the sands of Mars if they expect to escape from the documented historical truth of who started the Mexican drug culture. You can click here to read the entire article.

Given our country's inability and blindness to learning anything from the past, what and how is the U.S. gov't currently involved in supporting this drug trade? Would someone please ask Obama what of this still goes on?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Author Juan Alberto Cedillo’s La Costa Nostra en Mexico 1938-1950 (Grijalbo 2011) delves into the largely unknown story of the Mafia’s penetration of his country in the first half of the 20th century. The book chronicles the interactions of US hoodlums, Mexican politicians and policemen and even Hollywood personalities. Finding common ground in vice and leisure, their dealings included bootlegging, gambling, drug trafficking and more.

Names familiar from other places pop up in Cedillo’s account--Lucky Luciano, California boxing promoter Baron Long, Hollywood pioneer and studio czar Joseph M. Schenck and Al Capone, the capo who reportedly gained a Santa Claus reputation by handing out $50 tips to Mexican service industry workers accustomed to earning pennies a day.

The expanded cast of characters includes Mexican Presidents Lazaro Cardenas and Miguel Aleman, Mexican Senator Carlos Serrano and Virginia Hill, the so-called US “Mafia Queen” who maintained a relationship with Serrano and gained access to the highest levels of Mexican power.

The right-hand man of President Aleman, Serrano was tagged by the CIA as an individual who was heavily involved in cross-border drug trafficking and other illegal activities. A car belonging to Serrano was once stopped in the US and discovered to contain 60 tins of opium, according to a landmark 2001 book by Mexican researcher and author Sergio Aguayo.

From behind the scenes, Serrano reputedly ran the legendary Federal Security Directorate (DFS), which Cedillo credits for managing Mexico’s illegal drug business. Founded in 1947 and modeled after the FBI, the DFS’ agents received early training from J. Edgar Hoover’s boys. Once up and running, the Mexican political police force then funneled information to Washington about socialist governments. The CIA, Aguayo wrote, knew about DFS involvement in drug trafficking and crime but nevertheless praised the Mexican agency’s officers as “competent and capable.”

Aguayo’s and Cedillo’s depictons of the DFS, which was disbanded following scandals in the mid-1980s, challenge a popular folklore that sometimes romanticizes drug trafficking in narco ballads which sing of clashes between the hated federales and outlaw traffickers. Yet virtually from the very beginning, illegal drug trafficking and smuggling in Mexico was an enterprise managed and manipulated by the state in cahoots with foreigners.

“What the Italian Mafia did represents the genesis of large-scale drug trafficking to the US,” Cedillo recently told the Mexican press. “This is very important in understanding how drug trafficking currently works…. how this business changed at the beginning of the 1990s when we stopped being an exporting country and became a consuming one.”

Cities such as Ciudad Juarez, Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo witnessed the domestic consumption of cocaine soar in the 1,000 percent range by the mid-1990s, Cedillo said.

Cedillo and Aguayo expose other patterns in cross-border relationships, not the least of which was Washington’s propensity to look the other way at corruption and criminal activity in favor of the “higher” goals of winning the Cold War against godless communism.

In his book La Charola, for instance, Aguayo recounted the story of exiled Mexican journalist Rafael Garcia Travesi. A vocal opponent of President Aleman in the late 1940s, Garcia was detained and then deported from Los Angeles in an exercise of US collusion with a determined campaign by the Aleman administration to silence a pesky critic

Both Aguayo and Cedillo relied on official US and Mexican documents in preparing their journalistic works. In a recent on-line chat sponsored by the Mexican daily El Universal, Cedillo said the Mexican Defense Ministry denied access to certain documents, while other US documents containing possible information on Mafia-Mexican government ties still have not been declassified.

A ritzy Tijuana development spearheaded by Hollywood mogul Shenck was perhaps the glittering pinnacle of the Mexico-Mafia saga. Built in 1928 and 1929 for the then-lordly sum of $10 million, the Agua Caliente horse racing track and entertainment complex featured a 500-room hotel, a casino, tropical gardens, an 18-hole golf course, a private radio station and a small airport for the celebrities of the time “jetting” in for revelries across a tolerant border. In the late 1920s, small but action-packed Tijuana (population 20,000) employed an estimated 2,000 prostitutes. Abelardo Rodriguez, the governor of Baja California and future president of Mexico, owned the land on which Agua Caliente was constructed, Cedillo writes.

Concerned that vice was undermining the lofty goals of the 1910 Revolution, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas closed down Agua Caliente in 1935. Nonetheless, the track later reopened and the concession for its operation was eventually awarded to Jorge Hank Rhon, the controversial former mayor of Tijuana who was briefly detained and then released by Mexican federal and state authorities last month in connection with weapons and other charges.

Recent press coverage of the Mexican “drug war” has reported on the seemingly novel diversification of the Mexican cartels. But a semi-state capitalist business model rooted in illegal and legal activities of all sorts was evident back in the 1920s if not sooner.

Practically from its inception, international tourism was one of the promising business ventures eyed by the underworld. For example, Cedillo contends that President Aleman was working with “Murder Inc.” of US Mafia fame to open casinos in Acapulco before the scheme was disrupted by a US government probe of criminal syndicates.

In contemporary times, the narco-tourism connection was highlighted in the fateful career of former Quintana Roo Governor Mario Villaneueva, who wound up extradited to the US on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.

While aggressively pursuing large-scale tourism development in Cancun and the Riveria Maya, the politician was allegedly facilitating and protecting shipments of hundreds of tons of cocaine for the Juarez Cartel back in the 1990s.

A US indictment accused Villanueva of laundering almost $19 million in drug proceeds through Lehman Brothers in New York and accounts in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Panama and Mexico, including some under the names of British Virgin Islands shell corporations.

At the time of Villanueva’s 2010 extradition, US Attorney Preet Bharara accused the Mexican politician of turning Quintana Roo into a “virtual narco-state” where state infrastructure and law enforcement were sold to “one of the world’s most dangerous mafia enterprises.”

In a column, Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho wrote how former tourism industry officials told her that nearly half of the massive hotel development in Cancun, the most favored spot of US tourists visiting Mexico, occurred thanks to dirty money.

“The construction and operation of hotels and tourist services, whose purpose is to hide the origin of the illicitly obtained money, as well as the identity of its owner, is a silenced matter,” Cacho wrote. “There is a fine mesh that unites politicians and money launderers who could be involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking and contraband.”

© 2011 Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State Universitym Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Spotlight on Maria Melendez

by Melinda Palacio

It’s tough to spy on poet Maria Melendez online. The Colorado resident doesn’t have a website or blog. She rarely boasts about her latest publications and accolades on facebook or twitter. However, the quiet and self-effacing poetess is anything but invisible or shy. She is the acquiring editor for Momotombo Press at the University of Notre Dame, the publisher of Pilgrimage, and an award-winning poet and the author of two poetry books, both published by the University of Arizona Press: How Long She’ll Last in this World (2006) and Flexible Bones (2010). Maria also teaches and edits works of non-fiction and poetry. “I don’t have a website,” she said. “With a full dance card, an online presence hasn’t been a priority.” However, she does admit her pleasure in learning more about poets online. Several sites, ranging from Poetry Daily to Acentos Review to Letras Latinas to Poetry Society of America carry her poems and interviews.

Maria scrutinizes her poems and subjects them to severe revision. Watch out poems! She says she has to remind herself to be joyful, even though her poems often dance with language. Her first impulse is to agonize over each word. “I have the impulse to examine those infinite variations,” she said. Combing poetry with her biology background makes for magical poems as in her “Sapo Dorado-A Recent Extinction”:

“Back through a little drizzle and fizz of time, you'll find a writhing/


"toad ball," ten males throwing their two-inch selves all over/


a female's softball-sized back, slapping and shoving each other,/”

Maria says her influence for finding infinite variables in poetry stems from her father, a mathematician. “My Dad will go on equation binges, producing pages and pages of possibilities." However, infinite variables often apply to her word choices. Both Maria and her father share an intense ability to search for the perfect variable. For Maria, the variable is a word instead of a number or function, but Maria and her father prefer to zero in on the perfect combination.

She may not have a personal website calling card, but her poems and interviews circle the world wide web and she obliges when called to read at venues near and far (I’ve had the pleasure of reading with Maria Melendez at Beyond Baroque, the Church, and Cal State University Los Angeles). Melendez enjoys the face-to-face contact with readers and contributors of Pilgrimage Magazine and the chance to represent Pilgrimage and Letras Latinas at poetry readings and writers conferences.

Next Tuesday, August 16, Maria travels to New York City for the Bryant Park Word for Word Poetry where she will read with fellow J. Michael Martinez and Toni Plummer.

The next theme for Pilgrimage Magazine is Worth & Value. Submission deadline is October 15, 2011. General guidelines available at Pilgrimage.

The Walls and Marts Did Not Devour Them

Maria Melendez

inspired by Brock Dethier's "Across the Grid"

Once upon a parking lot,

mazdas, jettas, fords, toyotas

veered around like unmoored planets

orbiting the rows to find a spot.

The softness of his palm was lost

to her who mothered here by jerks

and terseness: grip his wrist and pull,

like ripping weeds. It wasn't

greed brought them here, but socks,

which they all needed. As a tired

kid can hate his used-up mom,

herself yanked by bankbooks,

rent, an hour's work just barely

two milk gallons, so he hates her

in the foyer as she rattles keys

in answer to the greeter, who he hates

for the wrinkles in his face.

The boy's back tenses for the hunt

to find The Toy that will punch through

her blunt refusals. "Can't we get..."

and "Please, it's only..." begin as

mantras, become koans, and end up

bitter as eternal curses on her name.

Of course she loves him still, in fury

at the flat fluorescent glare,

at the tiles with their scuffed,

insistent squares. The wired child,

blessed be his exit, will forget

he hates her later, when she rubs

the blankets at his shoulders, when he

nestles into rest, so freely given.

He'll forget her hard sock-eyes, and she'll

remember little hands can be a balm.

Reprinted from Poetry at 3 and Helicon West broadside series.

Chicanonautica: La Cultura in the Library

Borders is crashing and burning. The final liquidation sales are on. In a few short months, it will all be gone. Looks like I ended my days as a bookseller there just in time.

Now I’m safely employed at a library, checking in, sorting and shelving books and “media items.” They call it Library Page, but I prefer to think of it Book Wrangler. Yippie-Tay-Oh-Tie-Ey!

One of the perks of the job is that I’m literally swimming in mind-stimulating stuff, finding things I wouldn’t have otherwise found. Or sometimes something I’ve been in search of for years is right there. Serendipity doo-dah daze.

Also, because our customers (the word “patron” is passé) are more and more of an Afrohispanic mix with touches of the Middle East, Asia, and Native America -- some people from the Eastside of the Valley of the Sun are afraid they might get shot here -- I get to keep up La Cultura.

We’ve got books, magazines and pulp westerns in Spanish, and they get checked out a lot, and not just by the gente I interact with every day.

Recenty I checked out Carlos Fuentes’ Vlad -- in which Dracula moves to Mexico City and finds that he fits in well, corrupting a respectable licenciado and his family along the way. Despite the look of the novella (it’s a little over a hundred pages), Fuentes’ isn’t trying to cash in on the current romantic vampire craze. This is a more traditional Dracula, with all of his political corruption intact, flourishing in a new environment.

And if you haven’t been in a library lately, they aren’t just about books anymore. They’ve become multimedia centers. The big thing is access to computers, and the Internet. There’s also CDs --our Latin section is impressive -- and DVDs.

The selection of movies in español is allowing me to catch up on Cinema Mexicana, from the alta clase art films, to monstros y luchadores. I recently checked out both Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert (the title was in English on the Criterion package) and Santo, El Enmascarado de Plata in Atacan las Brujas (“Witches Attack”) and found that they made a good double feature.

Simon of the Desert is all about resisting temptation. Silvia Pinal plays the Devil trying to literally get Simon off his pedestal and seduce him. And there are miracles and demonic possession. Finally the Devil has to resort to time travel. All in forty-five minutes!

Santo (it means “saint,” get it?) also resists temptation in Atacan las Brujas. It begins with a dream sequence, and keep going like a strange nightmare. He even defeats a demonic horde while posing in crucifixion position. I’m not sure if the surrealism was intentional or not, but the effect is the same.

So, La Cultura is alive and well in my library, providing me with temptations that I can’t resist, as all good libraries, and cultures, should.

Now, if there were only more Mexican comic books!

The Story Behind the Story: Waiting for the Biblioburro

By Monica Brown

Illustrated by John Parra

The Story Behind the Story

by Monica Brown

I love librarians.  Like me, (and I’ll bet you too if you are reading this), librarians are book people.  Book people find joy between the pages of a book, but their passion doesn’t stop there.  True book people must share books with others.   They believe that placing books in young hands and sharing stories with young minds is meaningful.  Luis Soriano is a book person.  Luis first came to my attention when I read the New York Times article, “Acclaimed Colombian Institution has 4,800 books and 10 legs” by Simon Romero.  Fascinated, I did some research and came across Valentina Canavesio’s short film Biblioburro—The Donkey Library.  The story filled me with joy and not a little pride in the resourcefulness and passion of the Latino culture that Luis and I share. Growing up, Luis Soriano did not have the benefit of extensive formal studies and unlimited financial resources.  What he did have was vision—and two donkeys named Alfa and Beto.  For years, Maestro Soriano has delivered books in rural Colombia to children who don’t have access to libraries.  Some don’t even have teachers or schools.  But Luis, who received his school degree at 16, and then became a teacher and librarian, has made it his life’s work to change that. 

When I wrote Waiting for the Biblioburro, I didn’t want to presume to tell Luis’s story for him, so I created a fictional story inspired by his, from the perspective of a little girl whose life he changes.  I contacted Mr. Romero, the writer, and Ms Canavesio, the filmmaker, and through them, reached Luis himself.  I knew as I was writing this book that I wanted Luis’s blessing--I was lucky enough to get it, and to get to know Luis over the phone and through emails. When I first spoke to  Luis over the phone and across thousands of miles, I was felt that I was in the presence of greatness—he is great man with a great heart.  Luis shared with me his wish to sow the seeds of creativity and to cultivate dreams in the minds of children.

After talking with Luis, I felt inspired to write an imaginative rendering of Luis’s legacy—a legacy not only of literacy, but of sharing one’s own stories with the world.  My story is about a creative little girl named Ana who loves books and reading, but who doesn’t have access to a library, books, or even a teacher.  It’s her story of waiting, discovery, and finding a voice. 

I hope that Ana’s story, like Luis Soriano’s vision, will inspire us all to be literacy workers and activist librarians, teachers, parents, and friends.  What would you do to bring books to children?  Would you ride a donkey for miles, risking attack and robbery?  Would you build a library with your own hands?  Luis Soriano did.  And we can too. 

Visit Monica at www.monicabrown.net

Watch the book trailer for Waiting for the Biblioburro

On-Line Floricanto August launch

Mid-Month Benefit for Magu

Latinopia carries a good interview with Magu, and several notable video programs featuring Magu and his art.

The Lujan family asks gente to donate to assist with medical bills and the preservation of Magu's artwork and personal collection. The mid-August event at Pomona's dA Center for the Arts offers an opportunity to acquire a work from the artist's hand.

August 12 Special Preview

August 13-30, 2011

dA Center for the Arts

252 South Main Street, Pomona, CA 91767

Details, credit card link at Magulandia.

Mailing address for checks:

Magulandia Fund, PO Box 94140, Pasadena, CA 91109

On-Line Floricanto

Francisco Alarcón and the moderators of the Facebook group Poets Responding to SB 1070 advance the following for your interest and commentary.

1. "No Books in the Barrio" by Leticia Diaz-Perez
2. "Caminante / Traveler" by Christopher Caskey
3. "Sueño" by Matt Sedillo
4. "My Mother's Hands" by David Iribarne
5. "La Pulga" by Nancy Aidé González



No Books in the Barrio
by Leticia Diaz-Perez

You can buy anything you want
in the
barrio
at
just about any time of the
day or
night
anything
I mean,
a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g.

You can buy
rice
rum
Raid
and
the lotto,
you can buy
booze
beans
batteries
and
Bustelo,
you can buy
soap
sex
salads
and
sundaes,
you can buy
calling cards
cold cream
candy
and condoms
and...
and...
and...
you can buy
ANY
drug of choice
you can buy
a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g-
at any time of the
day or
night
a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g
except
BOOKS
in the barrio.

Nope
can't buy
books
in the
barrio
no fancy bookstores with
cafe
au
lait
wifi
and
cheese cake-
nope
gotta go
much
much
lower
lower
for that-
way
way
down
down
to the
Upper
East Side
and rub elbows with the
upper
upper
types
who speak
"upper
class"
English
if, your want to buy
BOOKS
Yep,
you gotta pay the
$1.25 bus ride
that takes you from the
black and brown-toned part of town
to the pale faced territory of the
Gringo
if you want to buy
BOOKS


But...if you want to buy
anything else,
and I mean
a-n--y-t-h-i-ng-
except
BOOKS
then just
step right up!
step right up
and
walk right in
because we've
got what you need
and we're
open 24/7
in the barrio...
and hey
if you've got the
cash
we've got the
merchandise
know what I mean?
so
just step right up
step right up!
cause'
you can buy anything
you want
in the
barrio
anything
a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g
except,
BOOKS.

Caminante / Traveler

by Christopher Caskey

I am the Rincón Mountains
looking over Tucson.
I am the Sonoran Desert,
dust devils,
rising and falling over hard pan,
blowing,
but never blowing anything away.
I am the hawk
riding thermals
half a mile away.
I am the rodent that he sees
from half a mile
skittering, safe, into a hole.

I am the serpent that follows,
the skin he leaves behind,
too small for my new frame,
snake
and snake ghost at the same time.
I am the fence
that they are going to string across the valley
dividing what is mine from what is yours.

I am
Jamás,
dejes de amar,
dejes de soñar,
el amor es todo.

I am snow on saguaro
melting into nada
like exhaust from cars that are just passing through.
I am Interstate Nineteen
littered with rattle snakes and flat tires,
carrying our business from Nogales to Phoenix,
returning with America.

I am the gossip of dead things
rattling secrets in my bone voice,
a wash board basin,
playing Renaissance concertos translated into Mexican.
I am mojado,
crossing scrub land
with shin daggers and Gila monsters,
looking for a better life.



Sueño
by Matt Sedillo

Sueño
In tears
Praying quietly
In the back bus
Her face
Her frame
Unassuming
Untouched by the conquest
Pure Mixtec
But she
Speaks Spanish
And prays Catholic
Suffers quietly
Sacrifice
Prayer
And
Humility
Mark her days
Like her fingers
Over rosary beads
NAFTA
Has shaped
Her adult life
Uprooted
With her children
Planted in this soil
En un barrio
En Estados Unidos
Prop 187
ICE RAIDS
SB1070
And why don’t you just go home?
The marches
The petitions
The rallies
And this is my home!
Have defined
Their lives
She gave birth to dreamers
Who risk incarceration
Deportation
Separation
Of a family
For a vision
Of an America
That might fully include them
In tears
Unassuming
Praying quietly
In the back of the bus
On her way home
She dare not go
To the station
She wishes
Her children
Would learn
To take less risks
Learn to slip
Learn to live
Between the cracks
But they can’t
They were born
Of generations
Of struggle
Who saw injustice
Who lived by the sacrifice
Of small women
In the back of buses
Of men far
Too far from home
Toiling under
A sweltering sun
On hostile ground
Yet still willing
To plant in this soil
Of women
Who lived out the best
Years of their lives
On hands and knees
Cleaning the floors
Of those who could afford
To turn their nose
At the sight of their own waste
Children born
Of such sacrifice
Under such injustice
Under no circumstance
Can afford to waste any time
Nor turn their back
On historical mission
Nor turn back the clock
No by their very
Existence
They have no choice but to move
The hands of history forward
March through that long dark night
And into the light
Of justice
Of freedom
Promised us
Only by our ability
To envision it
But that vision
Is everything
Worth living for
Worth fighting for
Worth dying for
Worth throwing away
This sub American life for
A dream
More than worthy of sacrifice
So lo siento señora
Reza por ellos
El Sueño vive
Cause these kids today
They don’t play it safe
They are practically born
Dreaming




My Mother's Hands
by David Iribarne

They used to look big
coarse and little flabby like mine
where you couldn’t
see the definitions of her bones.

Now that’s all you see.

The veins as blue as can be
looking like they want to bulge out.

She prepares the bread
hitting the dough with her fists
slamming it with all her might.
She tosses it up and down.

I ask—“Are you alright?”

She says—“I am fine as always"

She never complained
but inside I knew she was not well
I look at how she hits the dough
I know that’s how she feels.





La Pulga
By Nancy Aidé González

Vibrant Dora and
Spongebob piñatas
sway in the wind
ready for a fiesta,
Vero Mango lollipops,
De la Rosa Peanut Mazapan candy,
and spoon suckers made
with Tamarind and chili,
wait patiently on tables
a taste of Mexico,
of home.

Ripe oblong
watermelons
red juice dripping,
Large strawberries
seeds smiling,
Fragrant papaya
mustard yellow,
Red and green
chiles dancing
in their bins
ready to be
made into
savory salsa.

Imitation Gucci
and Coach purses
place among tables,
later to be filled with lipstick,
wallets, and keys.

Bumpy leather
alligator boots
lined in rows
no teeth ,
await the warmth of
macho feet.

Cumbia, salsa,
old school ,
hip hop,
rap beats,
a fusion of
sounds
meshing into
a rhapsody.

Aromas of
churros,
carne asada ,
pozole,
menudo,
barbacoa ,
gorditas
and carnitas
tantalizing
and delicious
offerings from
food trucks.

Tricked
out bikes
with low seats
and high
handle bars
gleaming
chrome grips,
seats carefully covered
in plush velvet
on display
ready to
glide down
the boulevard.

Framed pictures
of Emiliano Zapata,
Pancho Villa, and
La Virgen de Guadalupe
Mexican symbols
to be remembered
revered.

Little girls with
Black pony tails,
Small Boys with
toy trucks,
wrinkled
women with
colorful house
dresses,
men with
large silver belt buckles,
women with
silver high heel
shoes,
men with
tattoos
sleeved
arms,
all looking for
small treasures,
a slice of happiness.


Flea market
smells,
sounds,
objects,
to be experienced
and enjoyed on
Sundays
after church.

© Nancy Aidé González, 2011



BIOS

1. "No Books in the Barrio" by Leticia Diaz-Perez
2. "Caminante / Traveler" by Christopher Caskey
3. "Sueño" by Matt Sedillo
4. "My Mother's Hands" by David Iribarne
5. "La Pulga" by Nancy Aidé González


Leticia Diaz-PerezLeticia Diaz-Perez was born in Virginia and raised in Michigan.She attended the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a BA/English and American Literature and an MA/Spanish and Latin American Literature. While at the University of Michigan she co-hosted "Radio Caliente" at WCBN FM , one of the first Latino radio shows in the Ann Arbor area. It was at WCBN that she interviewed Latino writers Pedro Pietri, Tato Laviera, Trinidad Sanchez,Sandra Cisneros and Piri Thomas-inspiring her to start writing and telling her story.Leticia has taught Spanish at the University of Michigan and in the Michigan public school system. She also taught in the New York City public school system, (4th grade bilingual teacher) where she had the opportunity to work with a group of beautiful children who had recently arrived from the Dominican Republic.Leticia is currently working on her first book of poems, "Sugar from the Sky".




Christopher CaskeyChristopher Caskey received BA in creative writing and Spanish at SUNY Oswego. His MA in Spanish came from San José State University. He has taught Spanish for ten years and written poetry for fifteen.

Matt SedilloTwo time national slam poet, Grandslam Champion Damn Slam Los Angeles CA 2011, published author as featured on KPFK and the Los Angeles Times.

David IribarneDavid Iribarne graduated from CSUS where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English. He resides in Sacramento, CA where he has lived for 38 years. He works in social services and plans to enter the Masters of Social Work program in fall 2012. He has had several poems published in Poetry Now, Susurrus, Catchword, and won second prize in Sacramento News & Review’s student poetry contest in 2005. Iribarne has a book entitled Bones, Skin, and Soul which covers such subjects as breast and skin cancer. He also recently finished a chapbook entitled The Soul of Love.



Nancy Aidé GonzálezNancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet, writer and educator. She currently resides in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Nancy began scribbling stories and poems in tattered notebooks in junior high. Writing is a wonderful and sometimes painful journey of self-discovery for Nancy.

Nancy graduated from California State University, Sacramento with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. Miss González also has a Master’s degree in Education with an emphasis in School Administration from California State University, Stanislaus. She has been teaching in high-poverty schools with limited English proficient and migratory children for ten years. She enjoys teaching her students on a daily basis. Nancy believes the best part of teaching is seeing the light in her student’s eyes when they finally grasp a difficult concept. She also enjoys witnessing her students grow as individuals throughout the school year. Each year she tries to motivate her students to become lifelong readers and writers.

Three poems

By Daniel A. Olivas

“Las Dos Fridas”

I would
have been
there for
you,
when Diego
was not.
But you were
never alone,
always with
yourself.
The two Fridas,
hand-in-hand,
waiting for no
one yet hoping
for him. But
he is with a
model, a young,
stupid, giggling
thing. That fat
frog, forgetting
his true love
to be in a puta’s
embrace. I
never would
have forgotten
you. Never for
a moment.
Es la verdad.

◙

“Papa’s Car”

Papa’s car was battleship-sized –
a gray station wagon that creaked
and moaned with every turn.

Clear vinyl pulled tightly over the
seats revealing even more gray.
The rear seat faced backwards
so that when I sat there, I could
see where I had been, but not
where I was going.

Papa’s gray station wagon took
us places like Venice Beach, or
the dentist, or maybe a fiesta at
my school or even to Abuelita’s
house.

Sometimes we’d just drive, not
going anywhere in particular,
and I would fall asleep feeling
safe as Papa maneuvered our
ship through the vast ocean of
Los Angeles.

◙

“Tezcatlipoca’s Glory”

I made a fool out of you
Back in the bright days
Of the Aztecs and Toltecs.
I made a fool out of you,
And it was easy.

I was a simple god,
Not as wonderful as you,
The great Quetzalcoatl.
¡Ay Dios mío!
You, the sun god, were the greatest!

Long after the Spaniards
Evicted us and brought the Christian
Deities, you were remembered!

Even D. H. Lawrence named
A novel after you: The Plumed Serpent.
Because that is your form,
A horrendous snake
With a head framed in magnificent feathers.

Yet who am I, simple Tezcatlipoca,
As compared to you?
The god of the air!
The pinche, goddamned air!
What kind of god is that?

But it was I who shamed you
So that you fled Tenochtitlán,
Our homeland,
In humiliation.

I know you remember the night
I disguised myself
As a great hairy spider and
Offered you your very first taste of pulque
Which (as I’m sure you now know)
Is worse than tequila
Because it sneaks up on your brain
Without warning.

¡Ay! You got muy borracho!
And you loved that warm feeling
That ran down your throat and into your stomach
And your groin grew hot, too!

What did the great sun god do?
In a drunken heat,
You had your way
With your sister, Quetzalpetlatl!

I watched from behind a cactus
As you ripped her clothes, and you
Moaned and ugly moan, and your sister
Screamed and I laughed!

And in shame, you left your home
And wandered
Leaving it all to me!

My brilliant plan,
So simple but so effective.
Why you would trust a great
Hairy spider is beyond me.
Perhaps your hubris lulled you
Into a sad belief that no creature
Would dare cause harm to Quetzalcoatl!
I made a fool out of you
Back in the bright days
Of the Aztecs and Toltecs.
I made a fool out of you,
And it was easy.


◙

[“Las Dos Fridas” first appeared in Indiana English; “Papa’s Car” and “Tezcatlipoca’s Glory” first appeared LatinoLA. All are featured in the unpublished collection, Crossing the Border.]