The Tejas Star Book Award was created by the Region One ESC Library Advisory Committee to promote reading in general and for readers to discover the cognitive and economic benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism. All the children of Texas have the opportunity to select their favorite book from the Tejas Star list during the 2008-2009 school year.



Congratulations to Xavier Garza! His bilingual book Lucha Libre, The Man in the Silver Mask: a bilingual cuento (Cinco Puntos Press) won the 2008-2009 Tejas Star Book award.

Far be it from me to argue with Simon Cowell, but as I watched the finale of American Idol and boy-next-door Kris Allen win the title I finalized a theory I have been brewing for the last few months. You see Simon has told Kris from the beginning that he had to be more confident, cockier, but I would argue that the boy’s humility and lack of cockiness is exactly what won the competition for Kris. And I’m wondering…does this represent a sea change in the arts, particularly in the music industry?


I actually began thinking about this when I attended a keynote speech given by brilliant Dominican author Julia Alvarez. The conference organizer who was doing the introduction stood before us and read a long list of all of Julia’s publications as people shifted in their chairs. She listed every award and accolade (of which there are MANY) whilst the author herself sat on the stage in her rebozo looking uncomfortable and anxious as we were for it to be over with. Finally Julia leaned over to the woman and told her, “You can skip through all that. Please.” She really wasn’t about all that and clearly wasn’t comfortable being fawned over. Now you could argue that the very fact that she would tell the woman to move on displayed a certain level of confidence, but being confident and being arrogant are two very different things. Ms. Alvarez is the former but not the latter. But that very afternoon I was on my elliptical listening to Latin Hip Hop and Reggaeton and it came to me… Perhaps with the current national climate, the time for arrogance is fading.


I was listening to Pitbull and Daddy Yankee and began counting how many times they repeated their names and their record labels as part of the “lyrics.” When I play Nicky Jam’s album “The Black Carpet” it has become a joke between my son and I how many times he says, “Nicky Jams, yo!” over and over and over throughout the recording, as well as the name of the album. I mean, I KNOW who it is and what it’s called, I bought the damn thing, didn’t I? I stopped and admitted that this had begun to seem arrogant and self-indulgent to me. Now I know it was begun as a way for a people who fought for recognition and a voice to represent themselves, a way for unrepresented people to demand to be heard, and I know this has played an important part in the culture of modern music. But though I am far from the usual demographic I think things are changing. I think in this Obamera (Obama-era…I just made that up!) and with the country struggling with the economy and survival we are turning outward rather than inward, confident rather than arrogant.


Now I know the average AI watcher is not going to be into Reggaeton, but I can guarantee that a large amount of those young girls who voted for Kris also paid 99 cents to download Fergalicious, which could not be more self-promoting if it tried, but it was hard not to respond to his total non-pretention and lack of slickness. Though I am a serious Adam fan I couldn’t help but be drawn in to Kris’s shock as they announced his name as the winner. He, like Julia Alvarez, comes across as someone you could be friends with who just happens to be talented and famous. They don’t need to repeat their names over and over again because we remember their names because we like them. We like them because they’re not obnoxious and constantly reminding us that they’re better or more famous. They’re one of us.


Am I just an aging idealist whose channeling her socialist mother, or do you think the “me generation” is now become an “us generation?” One can only hope.

This post is motivated by similar articles I've read lately about why it's great to be a Latino in the U.S. or particular cities, etc. Lacking any brilliant inspiration for today's edition of La Bloga, I decided to steal the idea and give you my own list. No particular order, just how the pieces came to me. I have more than five reasons, but I ran out of time. Maybe I'll continue with my list in future posts. If you have your own suggestions, send them in. Click on the comments link below.


1. Canción Mexicana - this radio program has been on the air for 24 years, an amazing run, and it's still as strong as ever. The show is broadcast on Denver's public radio jazz station, KUVO, 89.3 FM and on the Internet at www.kuvo.org. The show is hosted by Florencia Hernández-Ramos and Debra Gallegos every Sunday from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm (Mountain).

Here's what the KUVO website says about this very popular show that has become a cultural icon in the Rocky Mountain West: New Mexico, Colorado and Tejano music with information excerpts from Latino USA and News From Our Community. Canción Mexicana has dominated jazz89 KUVO's Sunday line-up in both audience and business support. The best of the best in Tex-Mex music, Canción Mexicana has been frequently recognized in Denver's major newspapers. The program consistently ranks in the top five slots on Sunday mornings in the Denver metro area and has enjoyed the number one spot. It's cumbia, it's rancheras, and a little bit of mariachi - it's all that and more; it's Canción Mexicana with the best New Mexico, Tejano and Colorado music. There's music on Canción Mexicana as well as reports from Latino USA with a glimpse into what's happening in the community. Get ready to dance!



2. La Raza Rocks - this show follows Canción Mexicana at 1:00 pm, Sundays, on KUVO. Pocho Joe and Gabe are the incredibly knowledgeable hosts of an hour of the best of Latino rock - new and old - Sunny & the Sunliners, Santana, Los Lobos, the Iguanas, Los Lonely Boys, and Dr. Loco and his Rockin' Jalapeno Band. Interviews and information are part of the show's presentation. Pocho Joe and Gabe like to dig deep into Chicano rock, coming up with groups like Thee Midniters, Tierra, Little Julian Herrera, El Chicano,War, the Blendells, Cannibal & the Headhunters, and the Premiers, but they also present the latest groups and singers. Over the years, this show has introduced Denver to Ozomatli, Quetzal, Alejandro Escovedo, the Blazers, and many more. As Pocho Joe likes to say, the show covers the "roots and branches" of Chicano soul music. It'll tear you up.


3. Su Teatro - this theater group sprung from the Movement more than thirty-five years ago (1971) as traveling agit-prop, consisting mostly of long-haired students. Today it is a well-established production company that every year amazes Denver audiences with the diversity and brilliance of Latino and Chicano theater. Under the direction of the long-haired Anthony Garcia, El Centro Su Teatro is about to enter a new phase with a multi-million dollar facility that promises to continue to enrich the Denver cultural scene with outstanding plays and events. In recent years, Su Teatro has presented remarkable theater such as Rudy Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima; Ollin; El Sol Que Tú Eres (Daniel Valdez and Tony Garcia collaborated on this Chicano version of the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus); Las Chicas de 3.5” Floppy; Death and the Maiden; and Catastrophe by Samuel Beckett. Annual events include the Neruda Poetry Festival (10 years), The XicanIndie Film Festival (11 years), and the Chicano Music Festival (12 years).


4. A bevy of writers and a strong literary tradition. Denver became the home for beloved poet Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado, author of one of the most famous Chicano poems ever published, Stupid America. Lalo probably is the best known Denver Chicano writer, but the city and the state have a long history of writers who have proudly preserved the history of Colorado's Chicanos, and made a little of their own while they were at it. Names that immediately come to mind include Margie Domingo, Flor Lovato, Ramon Del Castillo, Anthony Vigil, Joe Navarro, and Corky Gonzales for I Am Joaquin, a classic bit of Chicano lit. (The Denver Public Library has arranged for a Rudolfo "Corky" Gonzales Exhibit at the Central Library, June 2 through September 20, 2009. A special reception to honor the exhibit is set for June 18 from 7 - 9 pm at the Central Library, 10 West 14th Avenue Parkway.)

The tradition continues and there are young poets reading and writing all over the city, with readings and slams happening at places like the Taza de Café where Café Cultura did a regular thing, Cafe Nuba, the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, the Neruda Poetry Festival, Art From Ashes, etc. We got fiction writers, too - Mario Acevedo, Aaron A. Abeyta, Rudy Garcia, Emma Perez, Angel Vigil, Reneé Fajardo, and yours truly, to name a few. Denver is a city that loves to read; it has great independent bookstores and many author events. Now if we could just get a permanent book fair.


5. The Chicano Humanities and Arts Council (CHAC) and the Museo de las Américas. These two institutions sit on Santa Fe Drive in Denver's West Side. They provide art, artifacts, history, and venues for performance artists, poets, film-makers, and sculptors. CHAC has been around for thirty-one years, created by a group of artists who saw the need for their own space, devoted to their understanding of art and the creative process. That spirit still lives on at CHAC. The Museo has consistently presented world-class exhibits of Latino, Chicano and Latin American art, and has developed a national reputation for its adherence to its mission. As the website says, the Museo educates our community about the diversity of Latino Americano art and culture from ancient to contemporary through innovative exhibitions and programs. With the Latino population growing exponentially in the Denver and wider communities, the Museo plays an important role in building pride in the Latino community's heritage and promoting understanding among cultures. Other history and art museums in Denver cannot focus on one segment of the community in a sustained or comprehensive manner. The Museo was organized to fill this important niche in the cultural milieu. Under the leadership of newly-appointed director Maruca Salazar, a celebrated artist in her own right, the Museo should make an even bigger impression on the art-loving Denver residents.

The cool thing about this list is that you don't have to be a Chicana or a Chicano to enjoy the music, art, writing or history. We like to share.

Like I said, send in your own suggestions for this list - is it really great to be a Chicano or Chicana, wherever you live? If so, why?



Later.

La Bloga welcomes journalist Lydia Gil to our roster of guest columnists. Ms. Gil teaches Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Denver. She reports on cultural and literary news for the Hispanic News Services of EFE and is the author of Mimí's Parranda/La parranda de Mimí, a bilingual children's book.

Luis Alberto Urrea stopped in Denver last Tuesday to present his new novel Into the Beautiful North at the Tattered Cover, as part of an extensive book tour, which started in Kankakee, IL on the 20th. Urrea has been on the run since, reading in Denver, Tempe, Philadelphia, NYC, DC; tomorrow in Portland; the 4th in Seattle... You get the picture. 

The reading was great, mostly because the actual reading was minimal and it was more like a long, chilled conversation with the audience. And also because he brought goodies: cardboard abanicos and postcards with the logo of Tacho's "La Mano Caída" restaurant and internet café... Yes, not only is he a wonderfully skilled writer, with 14 books and tons of awards to his name, but also a marketing wiz. And you thought multi-city book tours were dead...

Urrea seems super dedicated to his fans... To those unhappy with the lighter tone of Into The Beautiful North "because it's not The Hummingbird's Daughter " he promises a sequel of the latter for next year and this, in addition to the film version, directed by Luis Mandoki and starring Antonio Banderas and Ivana Barquero. And, to those who think that The Hummingbird's Daughter should be considered typical of his writing, he insists that it was, indeed, the exception. 

He said that after Hummingbird and The Devil's Highway, writing his latest novel was a treat. He wanted to have a good time, a sort of literary holiday... And from what he told us, a very well deserved holiday. It turns out that his previous work was a long, introspective look at growing up in the Barrio and at breaking what he calls "the secret codes of machismo"... It was rejected by his publisher. So you see, even writers with long lists of awards and Hollywood credits get their manuscripts rejected. So, gente, keep writing!

Several of the many anecdotes Urrea shared with the audience were not surprisingly about the writing life. How, for instance, he's a long-distance writer, going pretty much from the computer to the chiropractor... Readers seem forever curious about these things: when do you write, what's your favorite poem, they ask, as if the answer could shed light on a coded passage of fiction or revive a moribund writing routine... So while answering one of those questions, Urrea explained that many of his ideas for narrative have actually come from poetry. When he's in between writing projects, he says, "that's when stacks of poetry books start to take over the house..." What a nice image.

Estoy leyendo... Purgatorio by Tomás Eloy Martínez. Not your typical story about desaparecidos during the Dirty War in Argentina. In 1976, Simón Cardoso, a cartographer, is detained by the military and never seen again. His wife, Emilia Dupuy, unconvinced of his death, awaits his return amidst the predictability of her suburban life in New Jersey. Three decades after his disappearance, Emilia, now a middle-aged woman with distant memories of her youth, runs into Simón in her neighborhood and recognizes him instantly, as he seems oddly to be frozen in time... A good read, so far.

Daniel Cano. Death and the American Dream. Tempe AZ: Bilingual Review Press / Editorial Bilingüe, 2009.

ISBN: 978-1-931010-54-2 (cloth) 978-1-931010-55-9 (paper)

Michael Sedano

Charley Trujillo leans into his story. The historical Tiburcio Vasquez had been a fluently bilingual upperclass scion of a Californio familia on the mid-19th century Monterey peninsula. Vasquez ran afoul of the clash of cultures--perhaps because he was too good at moving in and out of his hispanoparlante cultura and his equally educated Englich, I think—and went on the lam from la jura. Escaping a feared Mexican-killer lawman, Vasquez was pinched in West Hollywood by a local posse. In the newspapers of the day, Tiburcio’s personality won the day, but the jury hanged him anyway, no hard feelings, in 1875.

Trujillo, the author of Soldados, and Dogs From Illusion, writes with straightforward power about Chicanos in Vietnam, so his upcoming documentary film on this California legend should prove to be equally compelling. My conversation with Charley at the National Latino Writers Conference highlights the little-known, or mis-known, early history of Chicano culture in California. These people had stories; had newspapers, writers, an information culture, and that was a hundred years ago. So large a story, so small a memory.

Against that historical amnesia comes a much-needed historical novel, Daniel Cano’s Death and the American Dream. Next year marks the centennial of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, along with a starting point in the chronology of Mexican immigration into California. In Death and the American Dream, populated by an unusual protagonist supported by strong women, set against a convincing historical landscape, Cano treats his reader to six years in the life of a fugitive from the Mexican revolution who settles into a Mexicano community, not in East L.A., but a barrio that occupied today’s Brentwood on the tony west side.

Any title with “American Dream” in it has to be writ large, and the main problem with Death and the American Dream is it is writ too short. With success of this novel, it could become one in a series of historical novels tracking the conflicted biculturalism of that revolution-driven Chicano diaspora, in the person of Pepe Rios, who is not yet thirty as the novel ends in 1920. Pepe would be around 80 in 1970, the height of the Chicano Movement. It would be interesting seeing how Cano gets us there.

In 1911, eighteen year old Pepe Rios thrashes away from battle in Juarez to safety on the El Paso del Norte shore, where locals have set up picnics to take in the Mexican fireworks. Soldiering with Pancho Villa, Pepe gets tangled with the federales and believes he’s betrayed both his Villista compañeros and the feds, and killing his brother. Unable to tell his mother of his own role in the brother’s death, Pepe’s guilt launches him into headlong flight from the welter of confusions surrounding the battle and likelihood of execution by whichever side catches him first.

Crossing the river, Pepe kills an opposing soldier. Moving toward California, Pepe gets involved in killing a white man. Then Pepe’s best friend Seferino disappears into the hands of Los Angeles police and dies a suicide because he had it coming. These are the deaths that weigh heavily on Pepe—a son’s debt to his mother; the gallows; class and ethnic aporia--just as he’s about to get his first real taste of the American dream. The year is 1915. Pepe’s changed his name to José San Juan, and after years of subsisting on a steady diet of hard physical labor, San Juan—Cano always calls him Pepe--finds a dream job as a cub reporter at Martín Algodón’s newspaper, El ababar.

Cano puts strong women into Rios’ life. For his part, Pepe is not one of those “el hombre domina” tipos but willingly seeks his woman mentors. Ángela, the severe boss and cultural coach, continues where the priest left off back on el rancho, training the student’s mind. The alluringly beautiful Camilia, who years earlier has mentored Pepe Rios in passion, now his publisher’s wife, has gotten Rios/San Juan the life-changing break. Eusebia, a troubled woman, mother, and intimate confidant, disdains Pepe’s social whorl.

Mentored by seasoned bilingual veterana Ángela Durón, a writing career opens to the skilled letter-scribe and habitual diarist. Pepe hungrily takes to Ángela’s training. Secretly, he hopes one day to investigate Seferino’s murder, expose corruption, and bring a measure of justice to his “Just Us” excluded gente. Cano is spare but effective establishing the pervasive brutality of cop v. comunidad of the period, the Them and Us still extant. There’s no whining in Pepe’s bitterness. Cano allows Pepe and his neighbors seething outrage, moderated for similarly outraged readers by the dramatic irony that Pepe’s role is to be a tool. On one hand, the capitalist running dog Algodón keeps a willing Pepe on a financial leash. On the other hand, the anarchists cynically exploit Pepe, playing his ghosts against his better judgment, driving him to despicable and dangerous acts.

Language is no barrier to the monolingual Pepe. His beat is the newspaper’s society pages and occasional hard news piece. Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking upper crust society opens to San Juan. Movers and shakers who love seeing their names and faces in the paper welcome the writer into their society, and Pepe’s a natural bon vivant and surreptitious interviewer. He gets good stuff that Ángela turns into interesting copy. Even without his own byline, other editors clamor for the reporter’s news. The money helps. With advanced skill, and notoriety, come danger. Ricardo Flores Magon comes to town to publish the famous Régeneración. In hot pursuit: the cops, the feds, the Mexican feds, judges, anglo media. Magon will eventually get 20 years that cost his life.

Home life offers little comfort to the fatigued and deeply stressed reporter. He’s out late at fancy events, often, in the company of attractive women who seem available. His wife aspires to none of Pepe’s social graces. Her values rest in her home, family, and gente. Eusebia recognizes her indianness as polar opposite to what draws Pepe out of the home. She understands her role. She brought her own children to marriage with Pepe. She knows as does he, that Pepe settled on her, still haunted by the memories of another woman. She recognizes the constant presence of the glamorous ex-lover, Camilia, in Pepe's career.

Here are four excepts from Dr. Ortego's address, titled, La Tarea Y El Trabajo: Summary And Assessment Of Contemporary Latino American Literature. Click here for a full-text PDF of Dr. Ortego's address.

Over the years that I knew Tomas Rivera, the Chicano author of Y no se lo trago la tierra—first recipient of the Premio Quinto Sol Award in 1972—he would say of his writing, “Ta cabron la cosa,” meaning the task of writing was not always easy. Still, se require el trabajo, the writing must be done. In that sense, all of us who write—especially those of us Latinos who write about our experiences as Latinos—somos trabajadores de la raza. As Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician and philosopher put it in the Meaning of Persons (1957): We are not free of the task, but neither are we free of its responsibilities. The task (la tarea) looms large before us but the work (el trabajo) must be undertaken to complete the task. And what is that task? For us as Latinos and as writers that task is not just to add our literary voices to the chronicle of the human condition but to testify to the presence of our people in that chronicle. That task is formidable, even daunting, but not insurmountable.

. . . .

Given this distinction, the state of Latino American literature today is extraordinarily vibrant made more vibrant by the pulse of Latin American literature. Of course there's a connection. Somos primos. Representing "various Latino nationalities" as Carlos Vasquez has described the participants of this conference, Latino Americans are attuned to the pulse of Latin America. The reverse is not always true. Latino American writers are not as widely recognized in Latin America as Latin American writers are recognized in the United States. Few Latino American writers find their works translated into Spanish for a Latin American literary public. While there is a significant number of Latino American writers who write in Spanish, they are not lionized by that Latin American literary public as Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, and Jorge Luis Borges--to name but a few--are lionized in the United States.

. . . .

The point is that the term “Latino Writers” most often directs inquiries to Latin American writers. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that few Americans outside of Hispanic literary specialists know very much about U.S. Latino literature today. To be sure, there are successful U.S. Latino writers like Sandra Cisneros Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chavez, Piri Thomas, Miguel Algarin, Nicolasa Mohr, Achy Abejas, and Angel Castro. In the main, however, when pressed, uninitiated Americans will ask quizzically: Are there U.S. Latino writers. Who are they? What this points to is the woeful ignorance of Americans about U.S. Latinos despite their long historical presence in the United States. This also points to the woeful inattention to and neglect of Latino Americans in the daily mainstream of American life.

. . . .

In 1970 I sent a piece of fiction entitled “The Dwarf of San Miguel” to John DiStefano at the New England Review. Within a week he called me excitedly hoping I hadn’t commit-ted the story elsewhere. It was a good story, he said, and he wanted to publish it in the very next issue of the New England Review. I didn’t tell him his was the 21st journal I had sent it to. The 20 previous rejections told me they liked the story but that the beginning needed work or that the middle didn’t quite hold the story together or that the ending needed something punchier. For me this epi-sode confirms that a piece finds its publisher and that a writer must hold firm in trusting his or her art. Of the million words I’m sure I’ve written by now I don’t write with a publisher or a reader in mind.

Next year marks the tenth iteration of the National Latino Writers Conference. La Bloga is happy to announce the opening of registration, so be alert for los datos in November or December.

Rigoberto Gonzáles Reviews YA Novel in El Paso Times.

Dan Olivas didn't get a chance to remind readers of Young Adult literature to catch Rigoberto's take on Diana López' Confetti Girl, a novel of a parent's death, adolescent stirrings, with a generous helping of comedy, Gonzáles find it a satisfying book, concluding, 

NEW BOOKS
The following book summaries are taken from the UNM Press website -

Santa Fe Nativa: A Collection of Nuevomexicano Writing
Rosalie C. Otero, A. Gabriel Melendez, Enrique R. Lamadrid
University of New Mexico Press, November, 2009

The belief that land is sacred, embodying the memory and inheritance of those who sacrificed to settle it, is common among New Mexican Hispanos, or Nuevomexicanos, and Santa Fe serves as their unique geographic and symbolic center. The city will celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of its founding in 2010 and this anthology honors its role as the foundation of New Mexican Hispanic culture.

Divided into nine parts, this collection reflects the displacement that many Hispanos feel having watched their hometown transform into a tourist and art Mecca. Parts I and II pay homage to Santa Fe through the sentiment that Hispano writers express for the city. Parts III and IV provide historical maps for places that have been reconstructed or obliterated by development, while Part V is dedicated to Santa Fe's distinctive neighborhoods. Parts VI and VII express nostalgia for traditional lifeways. Part VIII illustrates the spirit of Santa Fe and Part IX reflects on traditions that stand the test of time.

Rosalie C. Otero is the director of the University Honors Program, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and the associate dean of University College. She has written several book chapters, articles, and short fiction.

A. Gabriel Meléndez is professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Enrique R. Lamadrid is a literary folklorist and cultural historian in the University of New Mexico's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In 2005, he was awarded the Americo Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Society in recognition of his work as a cultural activist.


Juan and the Jackalope: A Children's Book in Verse
Rudolfo Anaya
Amy Cordova , Illustrator
University of New Mexico Press, November, 2009

When Rosita, the loveliest gal in the Pecos River Valley, offers her delicious rhubarb pie as first prize for the Great Grasshopper Race, a thousand love-struck vaqueros line up for the competition. Of course everyone believes that the legendary cowboy Pecos Bill, riding his giant grasshopper, Hoppy, is a shoo-in for the grand prize. Sure enough, Bill and Hoppy give an impressive performance, crisscrossing the Southwest in a raucous ride. But young Juan, who is hopelessly in love with Rosita, astonishes them all when he and Jack the Jackalope take a miraculous ride around the world and across the Milky Way. The daring pair return, covered in stardust, to claim the beautiful Rosita and her delicious pie.

Set in New Mexico, Anaya's fanciful story, coupled with Amy Córdova's vivid illustrations, brings the tradition of Southwestern tall tales to a new generation of young readers.

Ages 6 and up

Rudolfo Anaya, widely acclaimed as one of the founders of modern Chicano literature, is professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. Anaya was presented with the National Medal of Arts for literature in 2001 and his novel Alburquerque (the city's original Spanish spelling) won the PEN Center West Award for Fiction. He has also received the Premio Quinto Sol, the national Chicano literary award, the American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation, the Mexican Medal of Friendship from the Mexican Consulate, and the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award. He is best known for the classic Bless Me Ultima.

Amy Cordova lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she is co-owner of her own gallery, Enger-Cordova Fine Art. She has illustrated many children's books and teaches art to elementary school children at the Yaxche Learning Center.


NEW DIRECTOR AT MUSEO DE LAS AMERICAS
The Museo de las Américas (Museo) Board of Trustees announced that Maruca Salazar has been selected as the new executive director. Additionally, David Dadone, former director of operations for the Museo, has been promoted to deputy director. Salazar will assume the position in July.

We are delighted that Maruca Salazar will be leading the Museo de las Américas as the new Executive Director, stated George Martinez, Board president. She comes to us with a wealth of artistic, administrative, and curatorial experience. Furthermore, Maruca's relationships with teachers and artists throughout the region will greatly assist us in increasing the scope and reach of our education programs, while expanding our artistic vision.

Prior to joining the Museo, Salazar served as the arts coordinator and arts staff developer for Denver Public Schools. During her tenure, Salazar developed an integrated arts education program, and was responsible for the development and stewardship of the $6.5 million arts budget. She holds a Master's of Arts in Multicultural Education from the University of Colorado, Denver; and a Bachelor's of Arts in Multicultural Education from the University of Veracruz, Mexico.

This is the opportunity of a lifetime and a true honor, stated Salazar. As an artist and educator, as well as a long time supporter and participant of the Museo de las Américas, I am committed to advancing Museo's legacy of learning and sharing.

A longtime advocate for the arts, Salazar is a founding member and supporter of the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, XicanIndie Film Festival, Pirate Gallery, and the Museo de las Américas. As a Visual Artist she has exhibited at local museums and galleries, including the Museo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

This is an exciting time for the Museo, stated Martinez. The Board and staff are confident that Maruca will lead the Museo to new and exciting places, and cement our place as a cornerstone of Denver and the West's cultural community.

About the Museo de las Américas
Museo de las Américas (Museo) is the Rocky Mountain region's foremost museum dedicated to educating its community about the diversity of Latino Americano art and culture from ancient to contemporary. The Museo presents exhibitions and education programs that offer new views on Latin American art, advancing the role of Latino artists in the global cultural dialogue, and becoming a cultural hub for the local, national, and global community. The museum is centrally located in the historic Santa Fe Arts District - one of Denver's oldest Latino neighborhoods - at 861 Santa Fe Drive. For more information, please visit: www.museo.org.

Congratulations to Maruca! She's a great fit for the Museo.


HIT LIST READING AND SIGNING AT THE TATTERED COVER
On May 21, Mario Acevedo and I read and signed Hit List at the Tattered Cover here in Denver. We promoted the event as the M&M show and free M&M cookies were given to all who attended. I know that Mario and I had a good time and we think our audience did too. We sold a good number of books and read from our stories in the collection. Mario also read from Shortcut to the Moon by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a prime example of the terrific writing that can be found in this book. Here's a bit from Alicia's story:

When you're from El Paso, you get used to the rough grain of the wind. The leaves turn piss yellow or brittle brown in the fall, not every shade of red and gold and purple, and the winter wind doesn't frostbite your thighs or turn your tears to icicles. In Iowa City, you learn the meaning of seasons. At the Black Angel Cemetery, where I spent untold hours practicing Iowa Writing Workshop techniques that felt like they were making me change from being left-handed to right-handed, the colored leaves of oaks and maples stood out among the headstones like fiery panes of stained glass. What I loved most about that year in Iowa, other than the cornfields and the blizzards and the daffodils blooming under the snow and the juicy double cheeseburgers at George's Bar, was getting blitzed on Cuervo and Colombian with my cousin Ivon in all-night, heart-to-heart sessions that we called "shortcuts to the moon."

I read from A.E. Roman' s Under the Bridge, a story that introduces Chico Santana, the private investigator that plays a lead role in Roman's debut novel, Chinatown Angel. You may recall that I interviewed Roman for La Bloga just before his book came out this past March. The book is great and you should pick it up if you are any kind of reader who appreciates exciting fiction, crime or otherwise. Here's part of what I read to the Tattered Cover audience:

My name is Chico Santana. I'm a private investigator. First off, I'm a nice guy, My wife Ramona says so, and she's part Haitian and part Dominican, so it must be true.

If you look closely at my nose, you can tell it's been broken twice. And if you pay attention to word on the street, you'll come to understand that the men who broke my nose are no longer eating anything that won't flow up a straw. I'm not a tough guy. A lot of tough guys are six feet under. I'm just lucky.

And I'm also not one of those PIs that sit at a desk with his feet up , waiting for his bosses ... to throw him a bone. Nor am I one of those types who are always bragging how close they can come to your chin without hitting you. I have no .38, but I do have a license to bust your ass, and if I have to, I will bust your ass and maybe even the ass of somebody you love.

Mario's story leads off the collection. Oh, Yeah is a short piece but it has plenty of humor, surprises, and tension to whet your appetite for the rest of the stories. My story, The Skull of Pancho Villa, features Gus Corral, a character I've grown fond of and who is starring in the novel I've just started. Here are a couple of photos from the event.

Manuel Ramos and Mario Acevedo at the Tattered Cover, May 21, 2009

Mario and Manuel sign copies of Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery

THE LINEUP

Edited by Gerald So with Patrick Shawn Bagley, R. Narvaez, and Anthony Rainone

ISSN 1945-7510 6" x 9", 36 pages, saddle-stitched $6.00

Available from Lulu.com and fine independent bookstores

Help promote The Lineup

The Lineup: Poems on Crime, Issue 02, has arrived. What does poetry have to do with crime? As Patrick Shawn Bagley says in his introduction to the latest issue of this chapbook, Poets do not ask that question. People for whom poetry is a vital part of their reading life do not ask that question. ... So why do we write crime fiction, let alone crime poetry? One may as well ask why we write -- or read -- anything at all. We do it in an attempt to understand. We do it to find some kind of meaning in events that all too often leave victims, perpetrators and everyone around them damaged or destroyed. ... Here you will find proof beyond any reasonable doubt of poetry's relevance to modern life.

Get your hands on this book and dig deep into serious, provocative images. I'm honored that my poem, The Smell of Onions, is included. The Lineup has quite a lineup of contributors: Amy MacLennan, Jennifer L. Knox, Deshant Paul, Stephen D. Rogers, Sophie Hannah, Christopher Watkins, Carol Novack, John Harvey, reed Farrel Coleman, Patrick Carrington, Karen Petersen, Janis Butler Holm. I hear that issue 03 will have Sarah Cortez as one of the editors. Sarah is the co-editor of Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery.

GUEST MUSIC REVIEW

Mariachi Classics: Mariachi Real de San Diego
Review by Flo, host of Cancion Mexicana, KUVO 89.3 fm, Denver

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but music is worth a thousand pictures. This is aptly illustrated by Mariachi Classics, a 2009 CD released by Mariachi Real of San Diego on the Mardi Gras Records label.

The CD has sixteen covers of songs that should be in the repertoire of any mariachi worth its salt. Many of the tunes evoke visions of girls in bright yellow, red, and blue swirling skirts with colorful satin ribbons in their hair. Others conjure up a snorting, prancing horse that rears up on its hind legs straddled by a charro waving his sombrero just as the Mariachi comes to a crescendo.

The table is set by the opening song, Las Mañanitas, signaling that what is coming is indeed a taste of old Mexico. In Mexico where most people follow the Catholic calendar, Las Mañanitas is traditionally sung to those celebrating the feast day of the Saint whose name they bear. In the United States, for people of Mexican heritage, no matter by how many generations or by how many miles they are distanced from Mexico, Las Mañanitas has become the “birthday” song.

All of the canciones on the CD are standards and the Mariachi Real de San Diego gives exciting renditions. A song becomes a standard by being played over and over again and in this case for decades. The songs have survived wars, crossed borders and been passed from generation to generation. Yet each time they are sung they sound as exciting as the first time but familiar enough that we know every word.

No matter how you translate it, the Mariachi Real de San Diego lives up to its name. In Spanish “real” means royal. This Mariachi’s vocal and instrumental mastery blend together seamlessly to create solid, soul-stirring renditions of these Mexican standards. If you only speak English, you’re also right - this is truly a REAL mariachi.
____________
Thanks, Flo - here's a video of Mariachi Real de San Diego

Mariachi Real de San Diego @ Yahoo! Video

Later.

Thanks to Jose B Gonzalez and www.LatinoStories.com for sharing these videos with La Bloga readers.

Malin Alegria
Estrella Alvarez is turning fifteen, and she's not happy about it. For as long as she can remember, her mother has been planning an elaborate quinceañera, complete with a mariachi band, cheesy decorations, and a hideous dress. Estrella is so over it.

Reyna Grande
Dancing with Butterflies is about four women who share a love of Folklorico dancing. It was inspired by Grande's own love of Folklorico, and her desire to bring it to Latino Literature.


René Colato Laínez
Together a little boy and his grandma discover a world of language and realize that loved ones have special ways of understanding each other.


Josefina Lopez
A journalist and activist, Canela believes passion is essential to life; but lately passion seems to be in short supply. It has disappeared from her relationship with her fiancé, who is more interested in controlling her than encouraging her. It's absent from her work, where censorship and politics keep important stories from being published. And while her family is full of outspoken individuals, the only one Canela can truly call passionate is her cousin and best friend Luna, who just took her own life.


Fred Arroyo
Remember that the dream of one is the dream of everyone. Ernest is searching for a place where he can live beyond his past.


Patricia Santana
Premio Aztlan at NHCC Latino Writers Conference
Having left her much-loved San Diego barrio, Yolanda Sahagún is now living in the university dorms when a series of events—her mother dies and her father sells their home—forces her to re-examine her life.

Luis Alberto Urrea. Into the Beautiful North. NY: Little Brown, 2009.
ISBN-10: 0316025275
ISBN-13: 978-0316025270

Michael Sedano


Don't say anything negative when I ask this question: Into the Beautiful North is one of those novels a reader will not put aside until its conclusion, ¿No?

Absolutely yes.

But then the reader will ask if Urrea's current novel is worthy of the praise heaped upon the author's notably wonderful novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter?

No. It's not.

On the other hand, Hummingbird's Daughter is an impossible work to follow; that is one superb novel. Whatever you are reading next, stop that. Go to your library or bookseller and take delivery of The   Hummingbird's Daughter. Read it. You're welcome de adelantado.

Into the Beautiful North, is not Hummingbird's Daughter. How could it be? A buddy novel, Urrea wisely sets out not to build on Hummingbird but to do something completely different. And quite well, ese, if you get what I mean, y si no, pues, no. But Into the Beautiful North is one of those funny pieces that comes along only every once in a while, so, finishing the dramatic Hummingbird, read this next one; you owe it to yourself.

Would any film fanatic compare "The Wizard of Oz", let's say, to "El Norte," or, maybe "Spanglish"? As an intellectual romp, one might. Howzabout comparing Into the Beautiful North to "The Magnificent Seven?" Now there's the delightful parallel; not mine, but Urrea's. His crew of colorful characters venture out from backwater Sinaloa to the mercilless frontera of San Diego / Tijuana, perhaps the two worst cities in the world, on a "mission from God" like los hermanos azul. 

How refreshing to discover a border crossing story that is a comedy. Not that Into the Beautiful North, is not a deadly serious border crossing story; it is. But the crossing ain't the tale, it's the cultural gaps that define the limits of these characters' experience, and infuse the plot with a sense of dread that, thankfully, Urrea holds in abeyance.

On their first crossing, they get caught. Not in a calamitous tragedy for the three teenage girls, but for their friend, Tacho, a gay vato who's assumed the role of protector and adult. Tacho gets an asskicking by assholes from the ICE. La migra, the regular tipos, are just regular good people doing a job, but these newly appointed jerks have no sense of honor. But then, Urrea sets up the beating long in advance of the mid-novel crossing.

Tacho has a lot of smarts that, owing to Mexico's extreme poverty, never had the benefit of a classroom. He's not ashamed of his sexuality, nor do his fellow villagers shun him for being himself. Outsiders, like the corrupt cops who come through selling mota to tourist surfers, could make life a misery. Tacho laughs at their hatred by taking the stereotypically gay limp-wristed posture as the name of his bar, La Mano Caida. As Tacho and the three luscious teenage girls are being processed back to TJ at the San Ysidro lock-up, he calls out the name of his business. The mensos from ICE hear Tacho wrong; they hear a terrorist organization, "Al Kaeda." It's a funny phonetic trick but also a satiric gut punch. As a literary device, it strikes me as a contrivance. The one weak element in an otherwise brilliant novel. I wonder if Urrea came up with the joke first, then forced the plot to arrive at that moment?

Ni modo. Pretend you've never read Urrea's earlier work and take Into the Beautiful North for itself. You'll laugh, breathe sighs of relief, nod your head knowingly at the deadly serious facts that rest just beneath the surface of this wonderfully comedic satire of manners, love, lust, and immigration.

Memorial Day, 2009.

Every year I struggle to defeat my sentimental nature that tends to the maudlin. This year, I lost, and sank into a green funk, staring into the faces of some soldiers I trained with back in 1969. A friend asked if I know where these vatos are today, if they lived through that year? I do not know, and I do not want to know.



The storms start out there, on Monterey Bay. Grey blue haze obscures the horizon between sea and sky. Eyes front, but the vista compels our eyes to dart left, to take in the wondrous mottled light beyond the red roofs and yellow barracks, past the sparkling white sand of the firing range. On the water, bright patches where sunlight penetrates the morning dank define the luminous swell and ebb of the tide. Darker greys wash down from the ether shouting rain! Wetness swooshes across the water, heading directly toward us. “The Daily Dozen.” Windmill stretches. Jumping jacks. Jump thrust. “United States Army Drill Number One, Exercise Number Five, everyone’s favorite, the Push Up.” We drop to the front leaning rest position and begin the four count exertion. “One, two, three, ONE, Drill Sergeant, one two three TWO, Drill Sergeant…” Peripheral vision of breathtaking beauty counterweights a boot shouting in your ear, “keep your butt down, Trainee!”

We smell the rain coming, pushing the air before it, enveloping us in cool humidity that smells wet, that raises gooseflesh. Now we hear its relentless arrival. Below us, Ft. Ord has surrendered to its drenching. Visibility zero down there in forbidden territory. We are maggots, confined to The Hill.

The first heavy drops of water strike us, a few more, more. At the order we pull our waterproof poncho from our gear, hunker down under the protective sheet. We are forty green tipi spaced dress right dress across the platoon’s PT field. The rain noise drowns out any other sound but the swirling wind pushing up from the bay. An unrelenting volume of water strikes our heads and backs. We savor these moments of privacy, alone with our own thoughts and memories, for now the Army only this dull green light and the sound of the passing squall. We feel rivulets form, tingle, and stream the length of our spine as the water courses down to the ground. We are blind; we can see only our boot toes and the corona of daylight that glows at the periphery of our waterproof poncho. Mud splashes against our now scuffed, once spit-shined combat boots. Run-off forms around our toes, puddling fashions the outlines of our leather as erosion sculpts a memory of our presence on the land.

The noise abates. The rain passes. We obey. Ponchos off. Stand tall. Monterey Bay sparkles with magical light, whales, porpoises, salmon, sardines, Steinbeck…"U.S. Army Drill Number One, Exercise Number Five. The Push Up…”

We bitched and moaned. We laughed. I hope we all lived.


So here we are, the last Tuesday of May, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here. See you in June.

La Bloga welcomes your comments. Mouse down to the Comments counter below and Klik. If you'd like to be a La Bloga Guest Columnist, click here .

Michael Sedano

Among the most valuable experiences available to writers attending the conference are one-on-one meetings with agents, publishers, and authors. Here are a few shots from the 9:00 set of meetings.


By the way, technology is a wondrous way to pass a lay over. Like in Las Vegas, where the airport provides free wi-fi throughout the building, along with dedicated stations with AC plugs to keep the Mac running and charging while the camera uploads to the drive, and Adobe Fireworks does its magic shrinking the files to acceptable size. Tan cool, que no? Que si!

Michael Sedano

An exhausting day of workshops, open mic readings, banquet, awards. Superb presentations by readers. Again, I apologize for not making the effort to name each individual, but promise to exert some diligence within the next few days to correct these shortcomings.

DAGOBERTO GILB

La Bloga wishes Dagoberto Gilb a quick recovery - we were saddened to hear of his health issues but we understand that he is doing well and should be back writing soon, which is great news.

A family representative released this statement on May 11:

Dagoberto Gilb had a minor stroke on April 29. He is grateful for everybody's concern and well wishes, and is now privately recuperating in rehab. He will be released within a few weeks and is looking forward to resuming writing and working.

The award-winning writer's most recent novel is The Flowers (2008). Prior to that he edited Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature (2007). Gilb is a tenured professor in the creative writing program at Texas State University in San Marcos. You can find out much more about the writer on his website, click here.

Those of you who want to send your best wishes to Mr. Gilb can post a comment here on La Bloga and we will make sure he gets your messages.

I came across the following quote attributed to Dagoberto Gilb:

Write from the gut and soul. Spill it. Write from las alturas and from hoyos (avoid cheap, italicized, affected use of Spanish words). Don't offer excuses, explanations, apologies, apologias (the Latin). Remember Danny Santiago? His theme, his gimmick and hook, was being Chicano. Explaining, i.e., apologia lit. In other words, don't write for Them. Don't respond to their issues (if they ask about the gang problems in your community, ask them what they're doing about their biker and pedophile problems). Try to please God or the Virgin and not others (well, Others). But privately. As in silent prayer. They know you are flesh, know your tears of joy and pain. You will quit your day job; if you're a writer, you'll be fired often enough, anyway. If you want to be The Leader of the People, if you want to be a Saint, if you want to be The Guru, please don't pretend to be first of all a writer. Unless you're dead.
Notes on Lit from the Americas



MARIO BENEDETTI

From the Associated Press:

Mario Benedetti, a prolific Uruguayan writer whose novels and poems reflect the idiosyncrasies of Montevideo's middle class and a social commitment forged by years in exile from a military dictatorship, died Sunday, May 17, his secretary said. He was 88.

Benedetti died at his home in Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, personal secretary Ariel Silva said. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year, and had been released from a hospital on May 6.

Called "Don Mario" by his friends, the mustachioed author penned more than 60 novels, poems, short stories and plays, winning honors including Bulgaria's Jristo Borev award for poetry and essays in 1985, and Amnesty International's Golden Flame in 1986. In 1999 he won the Queen Sofia prize for Iberoamerican poetry.

His writings on love, politics and life in Uruguay's capital were turned into popular songs and a movie, and his readings in his homeland attracted sold-out crowds.

Read more at this jump.

For a look at some of the world-wide reaction to Mr. Benedetti's death, click here. Or here. Or here.

ESQUIRE WRITING CONTEST

Esquire made this recent announcement concerning its writing contest:

This contest is open to all, and the winning story will be published in a future issue of the magazine (as well as here, the new online home of Esquire fiction).

We encourage you to enter, but you have to follow the rules. The first and most important rule — besides, of course, that the story has to be original — is that the story must be based on one of three titles that we have provided.

Second rule: Your story cannot exceed 4,000 words. We are serious about that, too.

Other rules: You may submit only one story. The contest begins on May 1, 2009. All entries are due by midnight of August 1, 2009 and must be submitted electronically here at esquiresubmissions.com. (Yet more official rules here.)

First prize: publication in Esquire and $2,500.

Simple. Pick your title and start writing. And don't disappoint us.

LA BLOGA FLASH FICTION WRITING CONTEST?

Copyright 2009 by Manuel Ramos. All rights reserved.

Exercising the writing muscle ...

Leaving

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

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

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

Saturday Afternoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trial

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

The lawyer stood up.

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

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

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

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

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

Artist

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

He packed up his spray cans and rags.

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

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

He sprayed paint into a rag and covered his nose.

Patient

“I think it’s the H1N1 influenza.”

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

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

“I could die.”

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

“Thanks, I guess.”

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

Runner

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

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

____________________________________________________

Well, that was fun.

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

Later.

(to see Part 1, go here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Replies to Comandante Ramiro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A New Game for Washington?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghosts of 1910

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Josefina López. NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.
ISBN: 9780446699419


Michael Sedano


From its opening paragraphs, Hungry Woman in Paris reads with the same hyperbolic first person breathlessness of a Young Adult chiclit novel. But mothers, don't let your girls read Canela's story until they're engaged--at least--if not married. And if that adventurous daughter of yours reads Hungry Woman in Paris despite your censorship, then tells you she wants to go to Paris on vacation, alone, tell her you know about the swinger sex club scene, so don't get any cochina ideas about doing a ménage a quatre right there on the dance floor. Wouldn't she prefer a nice trip to Disneylandia, instead?

Your teenage boys will keep the novel under the mattress, and share the "best parts" with all their friends.

All of which means Josefina López achieves her purposes to, in turn, amuse, shock, tempt, and taunt sundry readers lacking the good sense to recognize Hungry Woman in Paris as a deliberately outrageous pastiche of the chiclit genre, with a generous helping of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Hemingway? Canela is the movable feast, which is part of the joke, and López' affront to prudes everywhere.

The novel is an almost complete success. I say "almost" because López' first person voice leads me to wonder if there's more than a soupçon of autobiography in this ribald tale of a failed journalist on the lam from a prima's tragic suicide and the bizarre velorio, a failed engagement, an irate mother, and her own depression. Naturally, she enrolls in cooking school.

This is not your mother's Como Agua Para Chocolate, despite the recipes and cookery. Canela stumbles her way through class, affronting classmates, seducing chefs and translators, earning a few measly Euros posing nude or helping Japanese tourists buy Louis Vuitton merchandise, and, with her typically impulsive thoughtlessness, help a Turkish woman escape her husband's vengeance. Más, she then inserts herself into the notorious riots of Arab youth contra French racism, and plays cougar to a Arabic rapper from the projects. Then...other stuff happens. This is the kind of novel that readers are advised to just sit back and let unfold.

Hungry Woman in Paris boldly takes Chicana literature into places where, like a literary Star Trek, no woman has gone before. Not that there aren't a few perplexities.

Canela comes out of Boyle Heights, a semi-successful writer but a failure to meet her Mexican-American family's standards to be a good Mexican daughter. Conflicting cultural norms play havoc with Canela's and her family's expectations. Canela's spent a lifetime fleeing them with no particular direction, and this has been further complicated by US immigration strictures. France, Canela discovers, is a lot like the US, except in many ways, worse, for immigrants.

That's right, "Mexican-American," a curious choice, given Canela's upbringing among the Mexicanas and Chicanas of Boyle Heights, her allusions to protests she's been involved in, and her kick-ass attitude to rules and external controls. Canela is conscious of the distinction, electing the binational term because "Chicana" would be too difficult to explain, with her limited French. But that's the public Canela. Yet, even the private Canela prefers the hyphenated identity term, but chafes under the oxymoron.

"No, I'm North American...Mexican-American," she tells a cabbie. "I clarified for him in Spanish. I wanted to tell him I was a Chicana, but then I would have to give him a cultural and historical lesson". The incident with the cab driver offers one of the novel's more insightful moments. Canela taunts the nationalistic driver that he can call himself Spanish if he likes, but his children, and for sure his grandchildren, will call themselves French. "It won't be up to you to determine their identity, it's up to them."

Given the extremes López takes her character, her editorial conventionality comes as a disappointment. She translates all Spanish language phrases into English, if not as an apposition in a follow-up periphrasis. The only saving grace of this irritating editorial strategy is the absence of italics. "'Hmmm,' her mother says, 'donde el va, yo ya vine.' Where he is going I've already been was my mother's way of saying she had already planned for betrayal."

When all is said and done, Canela and López want to make this one point clear: men everywhere are shits, most of them. A woman has a right to live her life in whatever fashion meets her needs, wants, desires, curiosities. Keep tasting life's treats and eventually, like the runaway Turkish bride, or Canela herself, a woman will find the man who deserves her. Or is that vice versa? Could a chiclit novel have a different ending? Probably not. López' Epilogue wraps the novel into a tidy package:

"Frenchwomen don't get fat and Japanese women don't grow old or get fat...but Latina women do. We get fat and we wrinkle, but our wrinkles come from laughing and crying. We know how to feel and eat; we know how to love and to come; we know how to live ourselves to death." In the end, readers will fulfill López' wish. It was delicious. And yes, "hungry" means horny.

Pancho Rodriguez and Tennessee Williams A Love Story Almost Lost to Time

Jesus Fernando Liera Cruz, a junior at Sierra Vista High School in Baldwin Park, was honored by the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE). Libertad Cautiva won the statewide essay contest, earning him a $1,000 scholarship. He addressed his poem at the Seal of Excellence Award Banquet in Long Beach. Here is the poem in Spanish and English.