George Carrizal, 1945-2009

El Paso artist George Carrizal is dead. David Fleet called me up last Wednesday to tell me. “He was my friend and once he was my lover who I talked to every night. He cared for me and worried about me until the very end.” Artist Cesar Ivan put together a wonderful blog of photographs and paintings to honor George and David wrote a moving tribute to his dead friend which he read at George’s funeral yesterday (Saturday, 10/11/09). This is an act of re-membering in the old sense--putting a life back together in one’s memory, in the collective memory.

I make a good pot of beans

I Make a Good Pot of Beans

Christians like my beans.
Right-wing, left-wing—they like my beans.
Buddhists like my beans.
Muslims and Jews like my beans.
Agnostics and atheists.
Mexicans and gringos.
Vegetarians and meat eaters.
The drunks down the street like my beans.
I know some politicians who like my beans.
Likewise some ex-cons and thieves.
Friends of mine.
All of them.
Poets of course like my beans.
Probably some novelists.
A few holy men, a few holy women
(not too many out there).
Even my kids and grandkids like my beans.
Write me a letter.
I’ll send you the recipe for my beans.



***

Image from the “Simple Mom” website

Youtubing Lee & Me: Literary El Paso

Marcia Daudistel has edited LITERARY EL PASO for the TCU Press Series which features the literary traditions of Texas cities. I promise you: El Paso's literary history can stand up to that of any city in Texas. LITERARY EL PASO will include John Rechy, Arturo Islas, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Dagoberto Gilb, Antonio Burciaga, Ricardo Sanchez, Rick DeMarinis, Denise Chavez and many many others. It's a humongous book (600-pages plus)--at $30 cheap for its size--and will be available at the end of this month. Lee contributed a story, "When He Is 37" from her collection My Sister Disappear and I have two poems, "The Gavachos in the Photograph" (The Price of Doing Business in Mexico) and "One Way for Middle-Aged Persons to Meditate" (Get Some Fuses for the House). Marcia and El Paso Magazine asked us to make youtube short videos as part of the promotion. If you're in the neighborhood, Barnes & Noble on the Westside will be having an event on October 24th, 4pm, celebrating the arrival of the book. Below are the videos. Lee only reads the first section of her story, and I read "The Gavachos in the Photograph." If you're reading this on FACEBOOK, which doesn't download video from Blogger, click here for Lee's performance and here for mine.





By the way, the photograph at the top (also in the video) is by Pedro Rueles Alvarez. Here's the note in the back of the book about the protographs: "Pedro Ruelas Alvarez, a street photographer, took the photograph of Lee and me sitting in the corner booth by the front window of the famous Martino’s Restaurant on Avenida Juárez just on the other side of the 'free bridge.' We were living in Las Cruces at the time, and we had no idea that we would ever move to El Paso. Ruelas, who charged us three dollars for the photograph, is now dead, but many of the waiters--including my favorite, Moisés II, a dead–ringer for Peter Lorre--are still there. They all make exquisite martinis right at your table while you sit and watch." Now Moises II is no longer there, and with the insane violence of the drug wars keeping the paseños away from Juarez, Martino's is hanging on by the slenderest of threads.

Where was the Drug Czar? Where was the Border Czar?

Drug Czar: Gil Kerlikowske

Alan Bersin: Border Czar

Yeah, where were they? We know they weren't in El Paso Monday and Tuesday, September 21st and 22nd [See Footnote]. That's when the "Global Public Policy Forum" convened to discuss the U.S. War on Drugs 1969-2009. Yes, 2009 is not only the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, it's also the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's declaration of the War on Drugs. If I didn't enjoy irony, life in the real world would be a lot more boring. The War on Drugs, of course, has failed miserably. In El Paso we only have to walk down the street and cross a concrete ditch of a river over into our sister city of Juárez to know this is a fact. 3200 people have been killed over there in the last 20 months as the El Paso/Juárez Cartel battles it out with el Chapo's Sinoloa Cartel. The forum was arranged in a unique collaboration between academia--led by Drs. Kathleen Staudt, Josiah Heyman, Howard Campell of UTEP and many others--and the city of El Paso led by City Councilperson Beto O'Rourke. The El Paso City Council, you might remember, created a national buzz earlier in the year when it unanimously resolved to ask for a national open and honest discussion about the drug war. Although vetoed by Mayor John Cook with a number of frivolous charges, that resolution and its veto was the stimulus for the El Paso Forum.

The speakers and panels, for the most part, were interesting and very well-informed, and they came from Mexico and the U.S., from the academic, media, political and legal communities. The gist of most of their talks were--as reformed drug warrior Terry Nelson kept hammering at--was that the huge problems caused by the sale, the use and addiction to illegal drugs (everything from the cartels and the costs of drug interdiction) was not the drugs themselves, but the prohibition of those drugs. Hello! The one naysayer to that point of view was Anthony Placido, the Chief of Intelligence of the Drug Enforcement Administration. His speech on Tuesday was compelling simply because it was full of fear-mongering (full of horrific show and tell of dead bodies and brains with holes in them) and faulty logic. The job of the "state," as he kept referring to the government, was security, and the state had to balance its perceived notion of security against civil rights. Very Cheneyesque.

Anthony Placido: Chief of Intelligence, DEA

Actually, I was not going to mention Placido's talk in this brief description, but Tuesday night I heard a chilling story from a high school teacher in the El Paso Independent School District. He was in class, getting ready to give out a test, when police officers arrived at the door of his classroom with drug-sniffing dogs. They ordered all of the students out of the class and into the hall way where they were lined up against the walls while the dogs searched the room for drugs. Like I say, I was horrified. This is Big Brother scary kind of stuff and it's certainly not the way to go about teaching kids to be open-minded and curious about their lives and the world in which they live. I do not understand why the EPISD, the school administrators, the teacher's union or a group of parents have not loudly protested this invasion of the high school. Meanwhile, as was pointed out during a number of the forum panels, it's easier for students to buy marijuana out on the streets than it is to buy alcohol.

Please, Mr. Placido, sit down, take a deep breath and smell the roses. We need to inform you that the drug war has been lost. Not to worry. The cartels have made enough money so they will not go away. There will be plenty for you to do.

Oh, well. I'm told that soon the whole forum will be on-line and I will put links up to the various panels and discussions. You'll be able to be the judge. In the meantime, I'll list several of the on-line resources that speak for some of the speakers, plus newspapertree.com's article linking to some of the many national and internation media articles arising from the forum--

The newspaper tree link. Also, there are a number of other articles there about the forum as well as other pieces about the drug war and life on the frontera in genera.

Judge Jim Gray, a Republican judge from Orange County, gave one of the most compelling speeches. He didn't break any new ground. He simply stated his own history of realizing that the drug war wasn't working and his journey of research to write his book Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed. He could have been talking to the Chamber of Commerce or to a religious congregation and his speech would have been the same--full of common sense and honest.

Terry Nelson, a tall gangly ex-DEA agent, spoke with the grit and humor of a guy who has been in the trenches on the other side and realizes he's doing the wrong thing. He's on the board of LEAP, aka Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. He's a fun guy to listen to. He came to El Paso earlier in the year to lobby the city council members to stand up to Mayor Cook's veto. Four did (one of whom was daughter Susie Byrd), four didn't. Oh well. Terry Nelson is the kind of guy you'd like to have over simply to listen to his stories.

Ethan Nadelmann founded and is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Ethan is a drug policy savant, the kind of guy you don't want to be on a panel with because he knows the answers to most all questions, and he answers them with wit and enthusiasm. The Drug Policy Alliance is hosting its annual International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, November 12-14. It should be a good event. The times, as Bobby D used to sing, are a changing.

Congratulations to UTEP and to the City of El Paso for hosting this event. It made us proud. Below is a trailer to the conference, but if you are on facebook reading this, then follow this youtube link.



Footnote. I should also note that a number of elected officials did not show their faces or send representatives. I saw six City Council members there sometime during the two days (Carl Robinson and Rachel Quintana were no shows). Mayor Cook spoke at the beginning and his assistant Robert Andrade was helping organize during both days, County Attorney Jose Rodriguez spoke on one of the panels and attended several discussion, Congressman Silvestre Reyes sent a representative, likewise State Senator Eliot Shapleigh. It would have been nice to see our District Attorney Jaime Esparza, somebody from the police administration, somebody from the Sherriff's office. The Governor and Texas Senators should not be expected to attend because...well, somehow El Paso is not really part of Texas. Why? I don't know.

Sunday Morning El Paso Texas

Sunday Morning in Sunset Heights,
A Discarded Rose

El Paso & Juárez Sunday Morning
from the little park at the top of Scenic drive

Sunday mornings, when I have the chance, I ride my bike from the Cinco Puntos Press National Headquarters (as John Byrd calls it) through downtown and up through Sunset Heights and Kern Place and across Scenic Drive which skirts around the southern edge of the Franklin Mountains. The mountains on the other side are the Sierra de Juárez. The Rio Grande (aka Rio Bravo) cuts through the two ranges of mountains. Hence, El Paso, the Pass. It's a beautiful ride. CPP is a few blocks from the tall buildings on the eastern edge of downtown. If you look closely between the clumps of buildings you can see one of the bridges that crosses into Juárez, but besides and a few other telltale signs recognizable only by folks who live here it seems to be one city. It is one city. A divided city. This side and that side. They say the same thing on the other side. But they say it Spanish.

And it's harder and harder to go back and forth.

Spotting the Almost Extinct White-Legged Byrd in the Wilderness

Hiding out from the rain and eating a cold cheese and sausage burrito

Son Johnny, who is the guy who mostly manages the workings of Cinco Puntos, invited me on a camping trip to the San Pedro Park Wilderness which is northwest of Albuquerque about an hour and a half, just north of Cuba. We've been up there several times together, sometimes with my close friend and Johnny's godfather Steve Sprague. It's the first time I've been backpacking since Steve's a few years ago. It's taken me a while to recuperate from the journey--the altitude, the 40lbs of backpack (we always carry too much), the old joints and muscles. But it was an incredible journey. My friend Joe Somoza wrote and asked how it went. This is what I wrote him.

■

Joe,
It was a good trip, but not a simple and easy trip. It was so good to be with Johnny. He sort of took care of me the whole trip--helped me put on my pack, took care of cooking, this and that, a true pleasure. Drove up Tuesday morning and of course stopped at REI where we spent too much money, slipped through Cuba (speeding ticket for $71 on the way to the wilderness, 55mph in a 45mph zone, curling up into the mts, a nice cop though) and got to our car camp at the trailhead about 530. A beautiful night with lots of stars. A steak, a beer, the simple business of being a camper is so nice. Tent. Pots and pans. Sleeping bags. How to get up and piss at night. This needs to be done, that needs to be done. Sleeping is hard to get used to without a comfy mattress. The next morning (39 degrees) oatmeal and coffee and packed our packs and headed up-trail. It was harder that I remember. The higher altitude. 40lbs on my back. And yes, maybe I am older, maybe those goddamned leaves have turned against me, but I pushed on. Would walk maybe 40 minutes and we'd take a break. So beautiful. A little butterfly followed me along, orange-red and black wings, and by god that butterfly was laughing at me. Old man old enough to die. Close to 1pm the skies started to hail. Well, we all know that hail blows away real quick. But not this hail. It kept on. Then it turned into rain. Shit. We climbed under a rock overhang in the midst of a dark forest, the rain dripping here and there on us. It kept up for an hour. We ate a burrito (cold tortilla) with summer sausage and cheddar cheese with Louisiana hot sauce. It was delicious. The rain slackened. We decided to walk some without our packs to find out where we were. After a while the trail opened into a big meadow. A good place to camp. The rain came and went, but we had on our raincoats and stood under trees when it got too heavy. Ran into a fancy grouse hunter with his gun strapped across his back. He said it might rain all night, said maybe it would stop. Thanks a lot, huh? We decided to go get our packs and come back and find a camping place. If it was raining when we got back, then we'd trudge back to our car and spend the night in Cuba. If it cleared, then we would stay. So that's what we did. We came back and the clouds were breaking and the sun was poking through. We had a wonderful campsite high above the creek, enough sun shining through "the ambiguous clouds" (Johnny's phrase). We got very lucky. No more rain. We were able to hang damp clothes and sleeping bags on rocks and got everything (except cotton stuff) mostly dry. We started boiling water to purify and to make coffee and we settled into a wonderful view and later a good dinner. The fire was hard to start--an hour long project where we ripped pages from poem books and novels and used toilet paper and all sorts of fancy teepee structures. Everything was simply wet or damp. Shit. Finally, John remembered a Tom Brown book where TB said to shave sticks for the dry wood inside. So we did that and to make sure we poured a thimbleful of white gas on top. The wood slowly started, and we nursed it and soon we had a good fire that would last us through the evening as long as we dried more sticks before burning. We slept sort of fitful. John was worried about more rain, I heard some sort of animal sniffing around outside, but the night passed and the morning was partly cloudy, the earth happy with a layer of thick dew, a bunch of elk over the next rise talking to each other about the day's activities, all of them looking forward to the mating season, oblivious to the fact that hunting season was upon them. Or were they? Oatmeal and coffee. Delicious. A nice dump in the woods (see photo below). We bushwhacked for several hours looking for those elk. We didn't find them but we had an incredible walk. No sign of human beasts. We had lunch around noon and packed up and started back down the trail. A wondrous rhythm walking downhill full of prayers and beautiful things to see. It started to hail and rain of course, but that was cool. We were ready with raincoats and besides we were going back to the car. On the way home we stopped at the Frontier and re-membered Albuquerque and I took John to the house on Rincon Avenue where he was born and we drove home listening to a mystery on the radio and lost in our own thoughts about the next day.
Love to you,
Bobby

A wet fire is still a good fire

The almost extinct white-legged byrd
doing his business in the woods

Self-portrait falling down

Camp from Las Vacas Creek

Elk head. Note that the trophy antlers
have been sawed off along with the brain pan.
But at least the hunter took home the meat.

Breaking camp

Heading home

Self portrait 3/4 mile from the trailhead #51

Johnny Byrd in front of the house
on Rincon Avenue where he was born in 1973.
(Just west of 48th Street, west of the Rio Grande,
several blocks from Central Avenue & under the mesa).
Lee reminded me that we'd let Susie run around
in the field without her diapers on.
That's how we potty-trained her.
I guess it worked.
Sort of.

Toenails

When I was a kid I collected toenails. I liked the big ones the best, the ones like warped dry planks of wood, so I let my toenails grow long—long enough to cut holes in my socks—before I chopped them off. Every two months or so I harvested my toenails. The best crops I cut from my big toes, of course, but my little toes yielded peculiar curled nails that added class and personality to my collection. I enjoyed watching the toenails on my little toes grow. I looked forward to harvesting those nails. The toenails from the middle three toes on either foot were ordinary, normal sized nails but they certainly added bulk to my rising mound of toenails. Oddly enough I reaped bigger and more interesting crops of toenails from my left foot than from my right foot, although the left foot was harder to get to because of the way my body is shaped.

Nobody in my family knew about my collection of toenails. I put the toenails in a 12-ounce Mason jar that I kept hidden in my closet. I daydreamed that scientists would someday discover a miracle drug to something gruesome like cancer or polio. It’s prime ingredient would be toenails. Toenails. Toenails. Toenails. I’d have a head start. By then I’d have a big jar full of toenails. I’d sell my toenails and make a lot of money. It would be a strange accomplishment, but still my mom would be proud of me.

After two years I had collected about a half-inch of toenails in my jar. One day I was talking to my friend Marty. He lived down the street in a house that was dark and sad inside. He had a small bedroom in the back that he shared with his little brother. Marty had a secret he wanted to show me. We were alone in the house. He unscrewed a panel in the wall. It was his secret hiding place. He reached in and pulled out a jar almost half full of toenails. Marty had been saving toenails for almost four years. I didn’t know what to say. I took the jar from his hand and looked at his toenails. Marty watched me. He was smiling with pride. These toenails were his secret, his accomplishment.

What do you think, he asked?

I laughed at him. What are you doing with these nasty toenails? Are you crazy?

I couldn’t stop laughing. Marty wanted to explain, but I wouldn’t let him. I knew already what he would say. I was ashamed for him and I was ashamed for me. Big tears welled up in his eyes. I went home and flushed my collection of toenails down the toilet. Marty and I never spoke about the toenails again.

Round 2: Juarez/EP versus Luis Urrea @ Monument Marker #1

Self-portrait with Luis Urrea at Monument Marker #1

Please visit Round 1, my August 18 blog note about Luis Urrea's visit to El Paso, so that this will make a bit more sense.

Yes, this is the U.S./Mexico Border. It's the first marker set down to delineate the U.S/Mexico Border as established by the 1854 Treaty of Mesilla.) Behind us is where Francisco Madero established La Casita Gris as the capital of the Revolutionary Govermnent. In 1911 he and his little army crossed the Rio Grande (aka el Rio Bravo) and established his revolutionary government to do battle with the armies of the dictator Porfirio Diaz. It was here Pancho Villa, the Italian Garibaldi, Pascual Orozco and others sat and smoked and made plans with the little Madero¹. In the clump of salt cedar trees, you can see a bust of Madero.

To get there, we drove past two Border Patrol vans. One on east side of the river, then crossed the brick company bridge and came along the levee road where another BP agent inside his van asked what we were doing and told us to be careful. We saw pickups pulled up to the banks of the river and Mexican families swimming, having picnics, a few men hovering near the dam that crosses the river, waiting for a chance to slip undetected into El Norte.



Mexican families swimming in the Rio Bravo.
Monument Marker #1 is truly a sacred spot. A contradiction of everything you read about in the newspapers or see on the TV about the U.S./Mexico Border. A few miles from the downtowns of El Paso and Juárez you can actually step across the border here. You can step into Mexico like 9/11 and the great immigration scare never happened. But very few people from El Norte visit it. Maybe they believe everything they read in those newspaper. And, oddly enough, fewer still write much about it. I think most of us want to protect it from the hideous border fence that the federal government put up. I am hesitant about bringing attention to this surreal place, but as the nation's maniacal fear about the border and Mexico continues to grow like kudzu, I'm starting to think it's best people know about it. We need to protect that small open piece of land between two cities, between two states and between two countries. There are no fences here. If a secular place can be holy, then this is a holy place.

And most importantly--geologically and historically--this is the place where the Rio Grande cuts through the mountains (hence, El Paso, or The Pass) and heads east toward the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know why the feds skipped the Monument Marker #1 Park and the Monte Cristo Rey which abuts it when they built their fence. Maybe they too recognized it's a special place in the local and national psyches of both nations. I doubt it.

The beast doesn't seem to have an imagination.

[¹The photograph of Orozco, Baniff, Villa and Garibaldi is found at the Library of Congress FLICKR site here.]

Dreaming a Flat Bridge between Juárez and El Paso

Since Luis Urrea's visit to El Paso, I got sidetracked and I find myself moving around the furniture in my imagination about El Paso and Juárez. That's how I found this postcard tucked into our digital files for David Romo's Ringside Seat to a Revolution. How charming and idyllic it is, so much so it drips with the real blood of irony in comparing to what we have now. It's true, back in the day, the bridge between El Paso and Juárez was flat [*see note], and the Rio Bravo (aka, Rio Grande) was a common resource, certainly not a fenced and heavily guarded dividing line between El Norte and El Sur. Then in the early 60s the Kennedy Administration brokered the Chamizal Treaty which diverted the river into a concrete ditch. It also moved the border at the downtown bridge a hundred yards or so north, over which some pendejo engineer designed, and the feds built, a three story tall bridge. It's meaning was simple--divide one city from the other. These decisions, made in DC and DF, radically altered not only the river, but also south downtown El Paso, especially around the Segundo Barrio and Chihuahuita Barrio. And over the years since the 60s the culture and the politics of the two cities has changed dramatically. It was slow change at first, but then in the mid-90s to now, the change became accelerated. The border on the U.S. side has become a military camp for a number of federal agencies, each elbowing more and more space for themselves, fewer and fewer people from the U.S. go back and forth to enjoy families and friends and entertainment to simply enjoy Mexico, and illegal drugs and immigration have become essential cash industries for the Mexican economy. And so how do we reverse this insanity? How do we make our bridge flat again?

First thought, best thought: Rewrite the U.S. drug laws; remove the capitalistic incentive from the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine; and treat addiction as a sickness, not as a crime. But you say this to the bureaucrats in D.C., they just talk gobbley-gook, then they turn around and show you their fat asses. I'm a poet and I should be able to say this better, but, damnit, as I write this, it's Friday afternoon, and I'm tired of the insanity I see.

Insanity like a three-story bridge that should be a flat bridge.

●●

[**NOTE: Thanks to Roberto Camp who a long time ago explained to me that the building of that monstrosity of a bridge was a tipping point in the history of these two sister cities.]

Round 1: Juárez / El Paso Riddle vs Luis Alberto Urrea

"Juárez No.1" A paper mache piñata by Abel Saucedo
In an exhibition of his work at the El Paso, Downtown Library
Juárez No.1 refers to ongoing drug war and murders.
For more information about Saucedo's work, see this article

Open up the El Paso Times most days--first section, page 6 or 7, you'll read an article like the one below about the on-going narco wars going on down the hill and across the river in Juárez from where Lee and I live.

Bodies of five men found in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/05/2009 04:08:36 PM MDT

The bodies of five men, one of whom was decapitated, were found in a parked sport utility vehicle Wednesday morning in Juárez, Chihuahua state police said.

The man's severed head was in a plastic bag left atop the hood of a red Jeep Patriot found about 5:40 a.m. near Avenida Tecnologico and Avenida Vicente Guerrero. The men had not been identified and appeared to have been beaten.

There had been three additional homicides by Wednesday afternoon, adding to the nearly 1,200 people killed in Juárez this year due in part by a war among drug traffickers.

Here's the rub. El Paso is ranked the third safest in the country and Men's Health magazine ranked El Paso the second "happiest city" in the country. Weird shit. I haven't studied the statistics, and, in fact, they bore me. I leave that sort of stuff to my daughter Susie Byrd who sits on the El Paso Council. She loves the nuts and bolts of running a city. I'm a poet. I like thinking and writing about El Paso and Juárez, cities that I've come to love, two cities divided by a river and an international border but which made out of the same cloth, the same place, the same roots. All sorts of paradoxes and contradictions and, as Blake called them, contraries.

So I was delighted and curious when the editor at Playboy Magazine (yeah, yeah, that Playboy Magazine) hired Luis Alberto Urrea to come down here to write an article about El Paso. Writers usually parachute into El Paso, they talk to the usual suspects of reporters and so-called experts of various persuasions (politics, academia, etcetera) from both sides of the river and then they send back blood and guts dispatches. But the Playboy editor wanted a different look at a city that occupies such a contradictory and peculiarly romantic place in the American psyche. He chose Luis for obvious reasons. Luis is un fronterizo puro carrying all the appropriate baggage. He grew up in Tijuana and San Diego, his father is Mexican, his mother is from Boston, for God's sake, and he's recognized for his non-fiction about the border, more recently The Devil's Highway. Besides, he writes like a novelist because he is a novelist, eg the epic Hummingbird's Daughter about Teresa Urrea (yeah, a distant cousin whom all the Urreas call tia), aka Teresita, la Santa de Cabora. It's a long story. Read his books.

Luis was in town for a week talking with people and driving around and taking notes. He's been here a bunch of times before--to visit, to speak at the Border Book Festival or UTEP or NMSU, to do research in the archives at the downtown library and at UTEP re: his tia Teresita. This time he stayed at our house on Louisville in the Five Points neighborhood of El Paso. It was fun for Lee and me to have him around. We talked about our common obsessions--El Paso and writing and books and writer gossip and poetry. Benjamin Alire Saenz had us over to dinner one night, I drove him around, historian David Romo (Ringside Seat to a Revolution) drove him around, Susie drove him around and introduced him to all sorts of folks, he met with Border Patrol section chief Paul Wells, he ate at Papa Burgers and Chico's Tacos and Ardovino's Desert Crossing, he listened to and hung out with Ernie Tinajero and the band Radio la Chusma, etcetera. He certainly didn't get the Cook's Tour. He got the down-home tour. Which, as you'll see, included the Concordia and Smelter Town cemeteries. We got interesting ghosts wandering around.


"The Good & the Bad" A Found Poem in Concordia Cemetery.
Who knows if the rocks are the same rocks.
Concordia Cemetery is across the street from the L&J Restaurant, one of the great Mexican restaurants and watering holes in El Paso. I had taken Luis here years before and he wanted to go back to visit John Wesley Hardin's grave. Concordia is an old west graveyard--nameless and forgotten graves for the poor and not so poor; a barren Chinese graveyard enclosed by a stone fence with rectangular blocks of concrete sitting atop the bones; lots of tombs for the richer Catholic dead; a well manicured grassy section for the Jewish dead; a similar section for the Methodist. The dead are always dead no matter who they are. The dust and rocks and burrowing owls tell us this truth. Likewise the volunteer cactus and desert trees and weeds. We are all spectators of the dead. A very strange place on a hot day. Very strange thoughts.

The Concordia's main claim to fame is that John Wesley Hardin is buried there. A jail surrounds his grave--not for any symbolic reason, but because several years ago citizens of his birthplace tried to steal his bones. They wanted to transport the murderer back to East Texas for purely monetary reasons. JWH is a tourist draw. Such is the weird El Paso news.


John Wesley Hardin's Gravesite

Chinese Grave, Concordia Cemetery

Child's Grave, Concordia Cemetery>


Luis and Johnny Byrd in the shade of a big mesquite.
It was at least 104 that day.

Before you check out, make sure you watch Radio la Chusma playing "Cruising"--it's pure El Paso sound, all those Mexican vibes mixed in oldie radio and very hip chicanismo. You get to ride around in a two-tone Chevy through El Chuco. Watchalo!

Round 2 will be Monument Marker 1 and the Smelter Town Cemetery. It'll be up in a few days.

Death Rider on Texas Avenue

Death Rider on Texas Avenue.
He needed 70-cents to catch a bus.
He told me I wouldn’t believe him why.
I didn’t. It’s the luck of the draw.
I wish it made sense but it doesn’t make sense.
August and we can almost taste the cooler weather.
Bright tomatoes. A cantaloupe.
I gave him $5.

The Creators of INCANTATIONS

I live a couple of professional lives. I'm a poet and a publisher. It's a peculiar and very interesting dilemma. Lee (she's a novelist and short-story writer) and i got into the publishing life so we could try to make a living at something we loved--putting language on the page. Our company Cinco Puntos Press doesn't publish much poetry. Why? Because very few people buy poetry books. But sometimes we go out on a limb and publish a book that crosses the terrain. In this instance, it's INCANTATIONS: SONGS, SPELLS AND IMAGES BY MAYAN WOMEN. This magical book (I use the term "magical" in the literal sense) was edited and curated by poet Ambar Past. More about Ambar later. But for now I'm pasting below a blognote that appeared on our Cinco Puntos Press blogspot. Because a different crowd of readers come to this blog, I thought it would be good to put this here too. This is one of those times when I get the chance to wear my poet hat and my publisher hat stacked atop one another.

OVER A HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE COLLABORATED to write, illustrate, and create this book, among them singers, seers, witchwives, washer women, sugar beer brewers, conjurers, native bearers, prayer makers, soothsayers, sorceresses, dyers, diviners, hired mourners, spinners, shepherdesses, babysitters, millers, maids, bookbinders, spellbinders, cornharvesters, great-grandmothers, sharecroppers, necromancers, exorcists, coffee pickers, potters, crazy women, midwives, planters, woodlanders, bonesetters, troublemakers, spiritualists, mothers-in-law, peddlers, gravediggers, fireworks makers, drinkers, hags, beggars, bakers, basket weavers, shamanesses, liars, computers, comagres, sculptresses, muses, and even men. We have made this book “as we make our children,” in the words of Petú Xantis, “with the strength of our flesh and the birds of our heart.”


In the land of Som Chi, the Eloquent Conjurer,
In the land of Som Chi, Spinner of Incantations.

—Ritual de los Bacabes

So Ambar Past begins her essay "Notes on the Creators" in the anthology INCANTATIONS: SONGS, SPELLS AND IMAGES BY MAYAN WOMEN. Below, in this video, Ambar and Maruch Méndes Péres celebrate the book, making offering to the Gods, with candles, poetry and a reading.

[NOTES: Ambar's daughter, the videographer Tila Rodriguez Past filmed, edited and produced this video. It was originally published on the web on Blip TV here. By the way, if you're on facebook reading this, you might not be able to watch the video in the blognote. It will, however, be posted on facebook in videos and on the wall separately.]

Maruch is a shepherdess and poet. This is what she chants to the Gods:

"I AM GIVING YOU YOUR FOOD
I AM FEEDING YOU WITH CANDLES AND POETRY"

The Tzotzil Maya of the Chiapas Highlands say that the Gods need to have poetry in order to survive and so they created humans to make that poetry, that feast. Thus, Maruch and Ambar are celebrating the publication of our U.S. edition of INCANTATIONS. Maruch chants poetry and lights the candles for the altar and later in the video Ambar reads a poem. This magical book--edited and curated by Ambar--was originally created by el Taller Leñateros (Woodlanders Workshop), a self-governing collective of mostly Mayan women. A member of the taller, Maruch was one of the book’s creators.

In her essay "Notes on the Creators,"Ambar tells this story about Maruch--

Shepherdess Maruch Méndes Péres is the author of Songs of the Drunken Woman. Maruch is not much of a drinker, however, and claims she never married because she can’t stand drunks. She lives in Catixtik, Chamula with two little girls she adopted, Xvel and Marta Méndes. Now it seems that Maruch has also adopted Xvel and Marta’s three siblings and also their birth mother, Dominga. All of them have changed their last names to Méndes. The Leñateros were trying to get in touch with Maruch last year to pay her royalties from the sales of the Spanish version of this book, but were told that she had died, and would be buried that very day. All of us from the Workshop piled into a hired van packed full of flowers and we headed off sadly to Maruch’s hamlet. There were hundreds of people in mourning outside of her house, including Maruch herself, who was so overjoyed to witness our arrival at the funeral that she forgot for a moment her sadness over the death of her elder sister—also named Maruch Méndes.

Here, then, is a couple of Maruch's incantations:

THE DRUNKEN WOMAN’S SONG

Saint Mother,
Godmother, I am drunk.

I caught the drops that fall from your roof
I drank your shadow.

Now I am getting drunk.
Anyway, my Saint Mother,
anyway, my Godmother,

look after me
so I won’t trip over something.

I am drunk; I have drunk,
my Saint Mother, my Godmother,
Saint Maruch, Niña Maruch.

I want all your pretty ones to overwhelm me.
I want to sing,

Virgin Maruch,
Niña Maruch.

I am a drinker of drink.
I drank your wine.

It has gone to my head.
My heart is spinning

I know how to drink.
I know how to drink everything.

—Maruch Méndes Péres

●

TO KAXAIL

I step and walk
on your flowering face,

Holy Mother, Holy Wildwood,
Sacred Earth, Sacred Ground.

Show me the way, Mother,
put me on the right track.

Rise up, Holy Rock!
Rise up, Holy Tree!

Come with me on the way up.
Be with me on the way down.

Sacred Mother,
Holy Breast,

Holy Kaxail,
Sacred Earth,

Holy Ground,
Holy Soil,

Sacred Ahau,
Holy Snake,

Holy Thunderbolt:
Protect me with your shadow.

—Maruch Méndes Péres

The Death of Dr. Manuel Arroyo Galvan

“Truth is the first casualty in a war.”

Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC), that old Greek bastard who wrote plays, said something like that 2500 years ago. Nothing has changed much since then. Especially in Ciudad Juárez a few minutes across the river from where I live . The Juarez Cartel is battling the Sinaloa Cartel for the right to use that city as its place of business. Since January 2008 more that 2200 people have been assassinated mob-style in La Ciudad Juárez. Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, has sent 10,000 federal troops to the city. His rationale was that the city police are dirty. They’re at the trough slopping up the mordida. For a while, the murders abated, but now they have returned with heart-numbing regularity. All the rich people, the powerful people, have fled the city. They live in El Paso or elsewhere. Even the mayor lives on this side of the river. The poor, the working class and the lower middle-class are bearing the brunt of the carnage. On the streets the people don’t trust the troops. They don’t trust the police. They worry that the authorities, whatever badge they are wearing, are working for either Juárez Cartel (the city police) or the Sinaloa Cartel (the army). These are the rumors. And rumors are as good as place as any for news. The newspapers aren’t trusted either. Juárez is not a safe place to write real news, hard news. Nosey journalists are killed with impunity. And now it seems the cartels and their collaborators are stepping into the academic and intellectual communities.

Listen here.

It’s May 29th, just a few weeks ago. A 44-year-old man is driving back to work on a hot afternoon. He lives in a desert city on the U.S./Mexico border, so he has the AC humming away at full blast and his window is open. Why? Because he likes the AC and he likes the smell of the air in his city, even if it is dirty. This man loves his car. It’s a 1992 Chrysler New Yorker, a huge boat of a car, una ranfla grande, with deep leather seats and lots of bells and whistles. A big roomy space good for all sorts of things—talk and laughter and kids and love-making. It’s the kind of car he dreamed about when he was kid. His parents were migrants from the state of Durango. They worked in the maquilas. They never crossed over to the United States, aka Gringolandia, so he grew up south of that little bit of a river that separates us from them. Back then his mother was an advocate of the Catholic Church’s Theology of Liberation, so at an early age he sat in living rooms listening to workers talking about organizing and creating better lives for their families and their people. He had listened to the anger, he had listened to the sorrow, he had seen how the poverty can grind into a family’s heart and he had hoped that something could be done. He too had gone to work in a maquiladora. $30 to $35 a week was probably the high end of his wage scale. But somehow—through a combination of happy karma and good luck, his and his city’s—he had entered the university and studied and worked himself up the ladder from a bachelor’s degree to a master’s and finally a PhD. He became a professor of social studies and education. So this man, this driver of the Chrysler New Yorker, is an academic, a well-respected leader in the local intellectual community. He is not afraid to butt heads with the jefes at the university, and he is working on a book about social movements in his city and the problems they confronted. He didn’t make much money, but that was not what his life was about. His life reflected who he was.

What I want to say is this: if I lived in this man’s city, then I would know him. He would be an acquaintance, a guy I'd talk to at parties or at a coffee shop, maybe at a poetry reading or an art gallery. He’s the kind of guy who I cross paths with all the time. He has the same intellectual, civic and emotional interests that I have. His world is like my world, his life is not unlike my life.

So he is driving his car and daydreaming. Like any of us on a sunny afternoon he’s distracted by this or that. Who knows what he is thinking about? He has both hands on the steering wheel, he has his seat belt on, he’s approaching an intersection, the light is turning yellow and a white panel van pulls up next to him on the driver’s side. The van comes too close, so much so the man looks over to see who it is. He’s pissed. Why doesn’t that vato look out where he’s going? The window of the van rolls down and a man he does not know points a gun at him. This unknown man shoots six times and the Chrysler New Yorker swerves into a telephone pole.

The driver is dead.

The dead man was Dr. Manuel Arroyo Galvan, a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez just 10 or 15 minutes across the river from where I live. He was 44 years old, an intellectual who cared about the community from which he came. He was a sociology and education professor and researcher for the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). He was a social activist, a divorced father of a son whom he loved and cared for. His murder will not be solved, and even if it is “solved,” no one will believe what the authorities say. There are lots of theories-—he was the victim of a revenge attack for a legal complaint he reportedly filed over a stolen truck, the victim’s stumbling across sensitive information in the course of his research, maybe it was a simple case of mistaken identity, or maybe Manny was dirty. That’s the first idea that pops up into people’s minds when someone is killed--what was he doing wrong? A good friend of mine, a juarense, told me that in Juárez, everybody is an expert. It’s like being at a soccer game. One opinion is as valid as the next. We are, he said, scared for our own lives but at the same time we must explain what is happening. We don’t trust the news, we don’t trust the cops so we must explain it ourselves.

The day after I heard about Manuel Arroyo’s death I got the email below from my friend. Excuse the awkward translation. It is mine. Also, I want to say I will no longer give the names of any of my friends in Juarez. The shadow crosses the river. I have inserted the video inside his email which documents the march—

Comp@as,

The death of Manuel Arroyo is lamentable, not only for the insidious way he was assassinated, but also because he was a generous man and a active participant in our community, besides being a controversial and brave academic who on various occasions had to assume the political costs of his beliefs.

This past Friday, soon after we learned of his death, that congregated at la Megabandera [a park near the university over which is hoisted a giant flag of Mexico] and spontaneously marched to the Prosecutor General’s Office where we vigorously protested. It wasn't for nothing. Every one of us that joined this procession had shared with Manuel, in some moment or another, practices, spaces, discussions, arguments, desires and words, many words. Above all, we shared with him the determinations to transform the city.



With his death we have died a little, but this is the moment when we must walk into the street. We cannot stay in our homes waiting to see who will be the next victim nor can we permit that our first suspicion about the assassination rest with the victim.

It seems that the university has finally taken a position that is clear, definitive and articulate about the assassinations of Manuel, of professor Gerardo González and student Alejandro Irigoyen Flores y the disappearances of students Lidia Ramos Mancha and Mónica Janeth Alanís. This is an encouraging signal that things can change. We will gather today at six in the after at the Megabandera and march together.

In this way we can send a clear message that prevails in our city and in our country is untenable and that we demand a secure city, with respect to the human rights and individual guaranties for all. This is something very basic and elemental--that condition these rights prevail.

This is a critical moment and an extraordinary opportunity. We must make the effort and we must take to the streets.

A few days after that first spontaneous march, friends and comrades from the university held a larger, with speeches and reminiscences, sharing the life of Manuel Arroyo Galvan and his intellectual legacy in the city. It was a larger and more organized event, and it was covered in media in Juárez and El Paso. The two photos above, and also the photograph of the soldier in the Humvee at the top, were taken by border photographer Bruce Berman. Bruce, who has a daily blog documenting the border cities of El Paso and Juárez, attended the second march, his camera in his hand. At the event they organizers played the classic Mexican rock song by El Tri, “Rolling Stones,”—“Las Piedras rodantes.” Below is a video from youtube of Alex Lora of El Tri singing that song. Listen to it and learn the lyrics, which you can google and translate. It's a simple little way to mourn for Manuel Arroyo Galvan, to weep for him and to stand in solidarity with him and the citizens of La Ciudad Juarez.

Even if you are like me: You never knew him.