'JANUSARY,13, 2b06 $2.25 1 opENirstp :THE EYES OF TEXAS FOR FIFTY'YEARS F • •

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744701111111 89397II JANUARY 13, 2006 Dialogue TheTexas Observer EL PASO, NEW MEXICO? the time to investigate the situation Interesting piece ("Far Out Far West and write about it. DEPARTMENTS Texas," December 16, 2005). Tiresome Scott Ballew to read another slam about El Paso Austin DIALOGUE 2 midway through it, but as the source of the quote is a Dallasite, I can FROM PICKLES TO ART EDITORIAL 3 understand. I wouldn't want to live In her column, "Exiting the Pickle Winter Libros in Dallas either. Maybe we El Pasoans Factory," (November 18, 2005), Molly should revive the idea of joining New Ivins asked how the United States BOOKS & CULTURE Mexico and spare Texas the burden of could work toward a goal of investing El Paso way out there even beyond the more toward education "than on stuff ALL THE NEWS THEY FORGOT 4 fringe, where nobody wants to live, to kill people." She asked for sug- TO PRINT and hardly anyone, even the Observer, gestions. Here's one: more art. This by Molly Ivins has anything good to say about it. country is art starved. There is simply Marshall Carter-Tripp no good reason for so much mun- PASS THE PESTICIDES 6 El Paso daneness everywhere. The arts are by James E. McWilliams disciplines of "safe" risk taking. OPEN FORUM People who develop a taste for MY ANCESTORS' VIOLENCE 8 I found the article, "Letter from art are too busy, too interested, to by Patrick Timmons Ft. Benning" (December 16, 2005), be easily diverted by Consumerism through Google News. I think that (the religion) or Militarism. One WITNESSES TO HISTORY 12 Katherine Jashinski is very brave and of the side effects of playing and/or by Barbara Belejack admirable. It's not easy to commit working in the arts is the impetus to something and then find that you to pursue and discover Truth. Not THE HUMMINGBIRD'S GREAT 20 have changed to such a degree that an iron clad dogmatic Truth but the GREAT-NEPHEW the commitment becomes a heavy personal liquid Truth that is central by Gregg Barrios burden. I would just like to extend to each person. "What do I really my sympathy and support to Ms. like?" People who become acquainted RINGSIDE SEAT TO A REVOLUTION 24 Jashinski. I admire her attitude and with a personal truth very often by David Romo the approach she is taking and I know develop a capacity to perceive other things will work out just fine. types of truth. Familiarity with the TRUTH OF THE MATTER 28 Dave Buchta arts in general, and a specific art form by Debbie Nathan Phoenix, AZ in particular, also develops what the writer Alice Walker calls "an eye to NOT ON THE RADAR ELEGY FOR THE LIVING 32 see with." by Carrie Fountain My sister sent me a link to the article How? Free art supplies are the most "A Death in McAllen" (September 23, inspirational, fun, challenging toys

WEDDINGS 34 2005), and I had to respond by letting for human beings. The high cost of by Ruperto Garcia you know that my father was in the care art supplies limits the ability of many of that facility and was finally moved people to make art. So, provide free

AFTERWORD 38 to a hospice center (Comfort House) art supplies to community centers, The Kindness of Strangers in McAllen where he passed with churches, after school programs, by Gregg Barrios dignity. The care at McAllen Nursing schools, senior centers, or anyplace Center was almost sub-human. Only a where people gather regularly. Just few people were truly compassionate. the art supplies (this includes musical Cover photo: "Fotografos de prensa/ I know it is a challenging place to instruments, dance shoes, ballet bar, press photographers" work, but it seems that the quality of dictionaries, etc.). That's something by Rodrigo Moya care could be improved. It is a most that could easily be done; it's less unfortunate situation and clearly Backpage photo: "El garrotero / The Brakeman" complicated than fixing the educa- by Rodrigo Moya" screams that the system needs major tion system. And it's certainly less reform. Unfortunately, it just isn't on expensive than missiles, bombs, guns, the radar—or politically viable—to prisons, etc. talk about care for elders. Melanie Hickerson I appreciate that Dave Mann took Austin

2 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 EDITORIAL Winter Libros

eader Marshall Carter- ing more than a vast cultural wasteland." Streetcar Named Desire, one of the great Tripp writes that We know the feeling. plays of the 20th century. it's "tiresome to read Perhaps the best-known chronicler of Other border and Mexico-related another slam about life and death on the border these days articles include Debbie Nathan's review El Paso" ("Dialogue," is Luis Alberto Urrea, a novelist-poet- of Trail of Feathers, about the 1998 dis- this issue). No one, professor who was featured in several appearance and death of San Antonio sheFIZ explains, not "even the Observer," panels at last fall's Texas Book Festival Express-News Mexico correspondent has anything good to say about her in Austin (two panels on border vio- Philip True; James E. McWilliams' hometown. lence—one in English, one in Spanish— review of the updated edition of The We have no way of knowing for sure along with a terrific one-man show, a Death of Ramon Gonzalez, a beautifully what Carter-Tripp will think of the cur- conversation moderated by author and rendered examination of agribusiness rent issue, but one thing we do know: journalist Jan Reid). and pesticides in the Mexican country- El Paso, Juarez, and the border in gen- Urrea hails from the other end of side; and "Witnesses to History," a photo eral loom large. Among the highlights the border, as we like to say in Texas: essay based on the eponymous exhibit is an excerpt from the prologue and He was born in Tijuana and grew up at the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern several chapters of Ringside Seat to the in San Diego. His latest book, The and Mexican Photography at Texas Revolution: An Underground Cultural Hummingbird's Daughter, belongs on an State University in San Marcos. History of El Paso and Juarez: 1893-1923 updated list of Great American Novels. With our first issue of 2006, we wel- by "micro-historian" and occasional Twenty years in the making, the book is come back our loyal readers. If you Observer contributor David Dorado based on the life of an intriguing young received a holiday subscription and you Romo. After years of archival research woman who briefly lived in El Paso at are new to the magazine, welcome to and random wanderings, Romo dis- the end of the 19th century, influenced the Observer. We'll be back in two weeks covered a wealth of information about the course of Mexican history, was a with our January 27 issue, featuring underground trails, forgotten ancestors, media celebrity in her day, and whose our consistently fine reporting on the lost photographers, and music he had story is included in Romo's Ringside nefarious activities of state and national never heard before. As he confesses, Seat to the Revolution. (She was also, not politicos, political columns, and more although he was raised in both Juarez so coincidentally, Luis Alberto Urrea's Books & the Culture (including our and El Paso, he spent a large part of his great aunt.) regular Poetry Page). life trying to get away from both of these San Antonio journalist and playwright Finally, one more thing: Long live cities, determined to live "some place Gregg Barrios interviewed Urrea for border rats—people attracted to an area where things were happening, where this issue. He also wrote the Afterword, that so many "consider a cultural waste- matters of significance occurred." Yet which reveals a little-known border con- land," and who write about its possibili- something kept drawing him back to nection behind Stanley Kowalski and ties as well as its pain. "this place that so many consider noth- Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' iY que viva El Paso! ■

THE TEXAS OBSERVER I VOLUME 98, NO. 1 I A Journal of Free Voices Since 1954

Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger James McWilliams, Char Miller, USPS 541300), entire contents copy- rates on request. Microfilm available Executive Editor Jake Bernstein Debbie Nathan, Karen Olsson, righted ©2005, is published biweekly from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N. Editor Barbara Belejack John Ross, Andrew Wheat except during January and August Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Associate Editor Dave Mann when there is a 4 week break between Publisher Charlotte McCann issues (24 issues per year) by the Indexes The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index Associate Publisher Julia Austin Staff Photographers Texas Democracy Foundation, a 501(c)3 to Periodicals; Texas Index and, for Circulation Manager Lara George Alan Pogue, Jana Birchum, non-profit foundation, 307 West 7th the years 1954 through 1981, The Texas Art Director/Webmaster Matt Omohundro Steve Satterwhite Street, Austin, Texas 78701. Telephone Poetry Editor Naomi Shihab Nye (512) 477-0746. Observer Index. Contributing Artists Copy Editors Roxanne Bogucka, E-mail [email protected] POSTMASTER Send address changes Sam Hurt, Kevin Kreneck, Laurie Baker Texas Democracy Foundation Board to: The Texas Observer, 307 West 7th Michael Krone, Gary Oliver, World Wide Web DownHome page Staff Writer Forrest Wilder Lou Dubose, Molly lvins, Susan Hays, Street, Austin, Texas 78701. Doug Potter D'Ann Johnson, Jim Marston, Gilberto www.texasobserver.org. Periodicals Editorial Interns Kyle Keller, Sofia Resnick, Ocalias, Bernard Rapoport, Geoffrey Postage paid at Austin, TX and at addi- Editorial Advisory Board tional mailing offices. Kelly Sharp, Elizabeth L. Taylor Rips, Sharron Rush, Ronnie Dugger Books & the Culture is David Anderson, Chandler Davidson, (Emeritus) Subscriptions One year $32, two years funded in part by the City Contributing Writers Dave Denison, Sissy Farenthold, $59, three years $84. Full-time stu- of Austin through the Nate Blakeslee, Gabriela Bocagrande, John Kenneth Galbraith, In Memoriam dents $18 per year; add $13 per year Cultural Arts Division and Robert Bryce, Michael Erard, Lawrence Goodwyn, Bob Eckhardt, 1913-2001, for foreign subs. Back issues S3 pre- by a grant from the Texas James K. Galbraith, Dagoberto Gilb, Jim Hightower, Cliff Olofson,1931-1995 paid. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk Commission on the Arts. Steven G. Kellman, Lucius Lomax, Kaye Northcott, Susan Reid The Texas Observer (ISSN 0040-4519/

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 3 OOKS " w CULJRE All the News They Forgot to Print BY MOLLY IVINS the public's conscious- ness, usually because MEDIA EMOCkACY l CTION Censored 2006: corporate media tend The Top 25 Censored Stories to underreport stories by Peter Phillips and Project Censored about corporate mis- Seven Stories Press deeds and government 834 pages, $18.95 abuses. The No. 1 pick by 11111 hat we need in this Project Censored this CENSORED country—along year should more than with a disaster relief make the media blink— agency—is a Media it is a much-needed deep Accountability Day. whiff of ammonia smell- One precious day ing salts for the comatose: out of the entire year when everyone Bush Administration in the news media stops reporting on Moves to Eliminate what's wrong with everyone else and Open Government. devotes a complete 24-hour news cycle Gene Roberts, a great to looking at our own failures. How's news editor, says we that for a great idea? tend to miss the stories My colleagues, of course, are per- that seep and creep, the suaded that every day is Pick on the ones whose effects are Media Day. Every day, the right wing cumulative, not abrupt. accuses us of liberal bias and the liber- This administration THE TOP 25 CENSORED STORIES als accuse us of right-wing or corporate has drastically changed bias—so who needs more of this? the rules on Freedom I have long been persuaded that the of Information Act news media collectively will be sent to requests; has changed Peter Phillips and Project Censored hell not for our sins of commission, but laws that restrict public INTRODUCTION BY NORMAN SOLOMON I CARTOONS BY TOM TOMORROW our sins of omission. The real scandal access to federal records, in the media is not bias, it is laziness. mostly by expanding Laziness and bad news judgment. Our the national security classification; question of whether the vote in Ohio failure is what we miss, what we fail to operates in secret under the Patriot needed closer examination. cover, what we let slip by, what we don't Act; and consistently refuses to No. 4: Surveillance Society Quietly give enough attention to—because, provide information to Congress Moves In. It's another seep 'n' creep after all, we have to cover Jennifer and and the Government Accountability story, where the cumulative effect Brad, and Scott and Laci, and Whosit Office. The cumulative total effect is should send us all shrieking into the who disappeared in Aruba without horrifying. streets—the Patriot Act, the quiet res- whom the world can scarce carry on. No. 2: Iraq Coverage. Faulted for urrection of the MATRIX program, the Happily, the perfect news peg, as we failure to report the results of the REAL ID Act, which passed without say in the biz, for Media Accountability two battles for Fallujah and the civil- debate as an amendment to an emer- Day already exists—it's Project ian death toll. The civilian death toll gency spending bill to fund troops in Censored's annual release of the 10 big- story is hard to get—a dearth of accu- Afghanistan and Iraq. gest stories ignored or under-covered by rate numbers—but the humanitarian No. 5: United States Uses Tsunami to mainstream media. Project Censored is disaster in Fallujah comes with impec- Military Advantage in Southeast Asia. based at Sonoma State University, with cable sources. Oops. Ugh. both faculty and students involved in No. 3: Distorted Election Coverage. No. 6: The Real Oil for Food Scam. its preparation. Faulting the study that caused most The oil-for-food story was rotten with Of course, the stories are not actually of the corporate media to dismiss the political motives from the beginning— (( censored" by any authority, but they do discrepancy between exit polls and the right used it to belabor the United not receive enough attention to enter the vote tally, and the still-contentious Nations. The part that got little

4 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 attention here was the extent to which we, the United States, were part of the scam. Harper's magazine deserves TheTexas Observer credit for its December 2004 story, PRESENTS "The UN is Us: Exposing Saddam Hussein's Silent Partner." No. 7: Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood. That a /— THE 5TH ANNUAL lot of journalists are getting killed in Iraq is indisputable. I work with RABBLE ROUSER the Committee to Protect Journalists and am by no means persuaded we ROURNDUP are targeted by anyone other than NO terrorists. However, Project Censored honors stories about military policies that could improve the situation of ( FAT CAT those journalists who risk their lives. SCHMOREFEST No. 8: Iraqi Farmers Threatened by Bremer's Mandates. It's part of the untold story of the disastrous effort to make Iraq into a neo-con's free- & Silent Auction! market dream. Order 81 issued by Paul Bremer made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to reuse seeds harvested from to hosts new varieties registered under the law. Iraqi farmers were forced away from MOLLY IVINS JIM HIGHTOWER traditional methods to a system of patented seeds, where they can't grow musical -uests- crops without paying a licensing fee to an American corporation. THE MARCIA BALL BAND '- No. 9: Iran's New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency. The effects of Iran's switching from dollars to GRUPO MIASMA Euros in oil trading. No. 10: Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy. CAROLYN WONDERLAND A classic case of a story not unreport- ed but underreported—a practice so environmentally irresponsible it makes your hair hurt to think about it. Most journalists manage to find a SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2006 quibble or two with Project Censored's list every year, but mostly we just stand W est Fourth, Austin, TX there and nod, yep, missed that one, LA ZONA ROSA and that one and... But here's a wonderful fact about 6-7pm: Fat Cat Schmoozefest ($49.95) daily journalism—we don't ever have to get it all right, because we get a new 1-10Pm: Rabble Rouser Roundup ($20/$25 at door) chance every day. ■

Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated Tickets available: columnist. Her most recent book with Lou www.texasobserver.org 151 2 .477.0746 Dubose is Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America (Random House). For Proceeds to benefit The Texas Observer. more information about Project Cen- sored, see www.projectcensored.org.

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Pass the Pesticides BY JAMES E. MCWILLIAMS what had once been a peasant-oriented nated with pesticide runoff. Why were agricultural system. Magdaleno's tic Gonzalez and his exploited co-workers The Death of Ramon Gonzalez: also suggests that the economic transi- thus exposed? Why were his and his The Modern Agricultural tion that placed him in the midst of family's suffering tolerated? Dilemma pesticide-choked fields unraveled not Wright answers this question by effec- By Angus Wright just his pants but his personal sense tively placing Gonzalez' working condi- University of Texas Press of human decency. And there's even tions in the context of late twentieth- 416 pages, $19.95 the distant hint that Magdaleno might century geopolitical change. Beginning have been unwillingly complicit in in the 1940s (with an emphasis on ometimes it's a seem- his own demise—a victim who's been the Green Revolution) and culminat- ingly random sentence forced in the position of pulling apart ing in the early stirrings of global- in a book that makes the his own security. ization in the 1980s, industrialized deepest impression. It's Here's what Magdaleno goes on to say nations led by the United States sought often a line that could about working in the Culiacan fields: cheaper ways to produce food. This easily have been tossed quest to boost agricultural productiv- byS a sloppy editor, or even self-edited A lot of people died that season, ity in the name of national health and as superfluous window dressing. But especially the children. They said it wealth, Wright notes, had measurable really, for the attentive reader, it's a was the cold or the flu. It was very outcomes. It undoubtedly increased line that—in all its evocative detail— difficult for the mothers to take care the GDPs of poor nations, and it cer- is unexpectedly critical to the story of them. The women had to awaken tainly enriched the corporations that and quietly emblematic of the whole. at one in the morning to prepare the capitalized agricultural industrializa- For me, in Angus Wright's The Death lunch that would be all the men had tion. But—largely as a result of intense of Ramon Gonzalez, that rare sort of to eat in the field. The outhouses pesticide use—increased agricultural line hit suddenly, forcefully and with were locked up at night. There were output also destroyed (and continues clarity. no beds, just whatever blankets or to destroy) local environments, men It read: "Magdaleno picked loose clothes we had to put on the ground. such as Magdaleno and Gonzalez, their threads from a seam in his jeans as he The company store charged very wives and children, and a way of life continued to talk." high prices, and we were given scrip that was once more stable, equitable, The observation is poignant. On the for some of our wages that was only and proudly provincial. Technological surface, it suggests nervousness, as if good in the company store. progress, as it always has, came at a Magdaleno was perhaps uncomfort- human cost. able talking to an Anglo about the The fact that Magdaleno said this while Back to the question: Why were abuse he had endured as an agricul- picking "loose threads from a seam in Gonzalez and his exploited co-workers tural laborer. On another level, though, his jeans" makes Wright's book much thus exposed? The answer, as Wright there's the important reminder that more than a timely analysis of an envi- convincingly portrays it, is both obvi- Wright's vivid condemnation of agri- ronmental problem. It makes it a rivet- ous and discomforting: so that we here cultural modernization is based not on ing narrative of human suffering, cor- in the United States (and yes, we here an ivory tower analysis of impersonal porate greed, and, as such, a clarion call in Texas) could get more vegetables, data but on looking the oppressed in for political reform. cheaper vegetables, vegetables on a the eye, hearing their stories, speaking Wright's book, originally published year-round basis, and vegetables grown their language, and observing them in 1990 and recently re-released with through methods that are illegal on closely enough to notice them fidgeting a new "Afterword," pivots on the fate this side of the border. Oh yeah, and with loose threads on worn clothing. of Ram6n Gonzalez—the fictionalized so a few people could get really, really, This choice detail, in other words, cap- name of a tomato picker in the Culiacan really rich. tures the book's spirit, intentions, and Valley who very likely died as a result of It's simple enough in this day and methodology. direct pesticide poisoning. Gonzalez age to expose greed. But Wright's bril- Symbolically, there's also the insin- worked very closely with toxic chemi- liance is his ability to complicate an uation that the Culiacan Valley of cals that were illegal in the United idea as basic as wealth. The concept of Northwest Mexico, where Magdaleno States. He lacked protective equipment "wealth," he contends, varies across time, worked, was itself coming apart at the or training in dangerous pesticide use. place and culture. Gonzalez' family, seams as capitalists commercialized Frequently he bathed in water contami- for example, who came from Oaxaca,

6 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 were agricultural workers, too. But ics." In short, they're indulging in a about food and food production—due they knew a radically different world Monsanto-inspired wet dream. in part to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food of work, and they entertained broader To wit, in Wright's afterword to the Nation and the investigative literature and more humanitarian conceptions 2005 edition, he notes a depressing it spawned—has become increasing- of wealth. Resisting the temptation milestone. In 2004, for the first time ly popular among young American to romanticize subsistence agriculture "in recent history," the United States consumers. A broader focus on sus- and peasant culture, Wright describes imported more food than it exported. tainability, organic produce, and fair in some detail the traditional Mixtec This despite the fact that " [t] he United labor practices has encouraged other- system of agricultural production in States is generally thought to have the wise politically lukewarm Americans Oaxaca. It's a system that stressed sta- best natural agricultural endowment to make political decisions in the gro- bility and community, as well as very of soils and climate of any nation on cery stores they frequent and the food different ideas about "the improve- earth." Why, then, the trade imbal- they bring home to cook. Wright may ment of human life than those held by ance? Absentee agribusiness conglom- be right—the answer to agribusiness the elites." erates, Wright concludes, have recog- and the abuse it perpetuates may have Under Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940), nized the financial benefits of develop- to be strictly political. But, now that peasants enjoyed the state-protected ing "Culiacan Valley-style agriculture food is finally about more than food opportunity to "sink their roots deeper throughout the world." In other words, in the United States, it's never been into the countryside." Tied to their the inequities he highlights through easier for the average citizen to bust up land, they nurtured "relatively auton- the personal stories of Gonzalez and a sidewalk. ■ omous rural communities" within Magdaleno have only intensified since a "closed natural system," and they he published his book in 1990. All in Contributing writer James E. McWilliams enjoyed the dignity that came from the name of one very narrow version is the author of A Revolution in Eating: feeding themselves. Wright's explana- of "wealth." How the Quest for Food Shaped tion for the transition from tradition- America (Columbia University Press). alism to modernization—a transition right knows better than cynically justified with the rhetoric of most academics (he's an the Green Revolution and its promise emeritus professor of to feed the world—exposes the hidden environmental studies at • Suitt Nava W littomatintai finiquarters e pitfalls of not just pesticide-intensive Cal State-Sacramento) that books don't Come Visit us for LUNCH! In addition to our organic agriculture, but of the entire project of change the world. His answer to the coffee, pizzas, empanadas, pastries and pies, we globalization as a development driven problem of irresponsible agricultural now prepare made to order sandwiches, salads, and even black bean gazpacho. largely by unregulated private corpo- modernization is thus old fashioned, li rations. (One positive aspect of the class-driven, get-your-ass-out-there- 38{)i S. Ce4igran off f filfot- Green Revolution, Wright notes, is that and-protest-the-WTO political change. Poy, {;Oil Aka 11v, oter s5t7)741-531 rut rliw CC crop development was done by pub- " [I] gnorance and unregulated lic institutions" that could not patent promotion of dangerous technologies," their seeds.) All in all, Wright shows, he insists, "are intimately tied a rather blunt conception of "wealth" to the political relationships and Milagros, Retablos has been foisted upon the quieter cor- the ideological assumptions that and Arte Popular ners of the earth. determine how a nation is ruled." His book is hard to ignore if for no These relationships, he writes, must be other reason than anyone who eats is contested. As a great singer-songwriter involved in the development he docu- once observed, "You've got to bust up ments. The next time you grocery shop, a sidewalk sometimes to get people notice the melons from Mexico, aspar- to gather around." And so Wright is agus from Peru, and snow peas from swinging his sledgehammer, arguing Guatemala. Then notice their price for conventional political opposition compared to the local organic options. as the solution to the problems he Cheap. And they're cheap because cor- describes. porations that claim they're feeding the That focus on conventional politi- world are in actuality growing crops cal opposition may be the only dated in places that offer inexpensive land, aspect of this fertile book. What may TRADING COMPANY® abundant labor, and no regulations have also changed between now and FOLK ART & OTHER TREASURES FROM AROUND THE WORLD against "lavish quantities of hazardous 1990 is America's attitude toward 209 CONGRESS AVE•AUSTIN 512/479 - 8377 OPEN DAILY 10-6, FREE PARKING BEHIND THE STORE pesticides to deal with the difficult pest food. Although by no means main- www.tesoros.com problems of the tropics and semi-trop- stream, a kind of cultural awareness

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 7 BOOKS & THE CULTURE My Ancestors' Violence BY PATRICK TIMMONS family history because Central Texans 80 years of vigilantism behind them. and Georgians loom large in America's As Carrigan demonstrates, the prac- The Making of a Lynching experience of racial violence—a sub- tice of lynching predates the founding Culture: Violence and ject that fascinates me as much as it of the Texas Republic; white settlers Vigilantism in Central Texas, disturbs. had turned from lynching Indians, 1836-1916 We discuss lynching at length in my Mexicans, Texas Unionists, and horse By William D. Carrigan classes. I teach in the South, in a British thieves and rustlers of all sorts, to the University of Illinois Press accent. These facts are not significant. terrorizing of black male residents who 308 pages, $35 But I tell students that my father was faced the furious, fatal indignity of the son of Central Texans, and the lynch mobs for alleged crimes against The First Waco Horror: grandson of Georgians, a strategy that white women. The Lynching of Jesse helps me probe the silence that often Washington and the Rise of the surrounds Americans who ignore the The culture of mob violence that NAACP memory of racial violence. supported the lynching of Jesse By Patricia Bernstein Late 19th- and early 20th-century Washington was eight decades Texas A&M University Press lynching postcards collected in James old in 1916. Central Texans had 264 pages, $29.95 Allen's Without Sanctuary force students long justified extralegal killing as a to confront the devastating effects of necessary fact of life. In the earli- live Weldon Timmons, racial and gender inequalities. The most est days of white settlement such my paternal grand- shocking images I show in class depict violence was administered not by father, was born on the charred body of Jesse Washington, lynch mobs but by citizen posses November 11, 1906 in a young black man tried and convicted in pursuit of "encroaching" Native Prairie Hill, Limestone for the murder of white, middle-aged Americans or "invading" Mexicans. County, Texas. His par- Lucy Fryer near Waco in 1916. At the As the region became more settled, a ents, Joseph and Elizabeth Timmons, moment the McClennan County jury tradition emerged of administering hailedC from Georgia—not too far from handed down Washington's convic- justice without recourse to the still- where I currently teach college history tion, a mob rose in the room, plucked developing court system. During the classes. Five of my grandfather's sib- the defendant from the clutches of sectional conflict, vigilance com- lings were born east of the Mississippi. local law enforcement, dragging him mittees sought out suspected slave But in the late 1880s for some reason or to the square where he was brutally insurrectionists, abolitionists, and another—probably economic surviv- tortured, burned, castrated, and killed. Republicans. After emancipation, al—Clive's parents took their growing Washington's lynching was distinc- whites continued to rely upon mob family to Central Texas: an area south tive because Waco photographer Fred violence as a means of maintaining of Dallas, north of Austin, and west of Gildersleeve took pictures of it as it was order over freemen who had become, Houston, soon to be enriched by cot- happening. As we study his images, I in the minds of whites, dangerous ton sales. Clive ended up in Fort Worth, consider it crucial to tell my students murderers and rapists. married a Kimbrough, resulting in my that my family was undoubtedly aware father's birth in 1937. I have relatives of—and perhaps even participated in— Carrigan mines various sources to lying in the Prairie Hill Cemetery in the Washington lynching. After all, it reconstruct the world view of those Limestone County. attracted a crowd of 15,000. who shaped the "lynching culture": My father disowned his family—I Historian William Carrigan's Making newspapers of the time, oral inter- was born in England—never talked of a Lynching Culture proves that my views with Central Texas residents, free about his relatives, and until his 1993 ancestors would have been familiar people and former slaves, local govern- suicide rendered him incapable of fur- with a type of violence that generated ment and court records, and docu- ther objections, refused to register his a self-sustaining racist and sexist cul- ments from state and national archives. two sons for U.S. citizenship with the ture. When my great-grandparents left This detailed survey of published and embassy in London. I've always been Georgia around 1890, that state's white archival sources enables him to grasp curious about who my American rela- citizens were mercilessly lynching how most Central Texans lived within tives were and why my father became blacks as they consolidated Jim Crow "a culture of violence." Carrigan ana- so hostile to his past. Recently I've social practices. By the time my grand- lyzes how the region's white residents started to pay more attention to my father was born, Central Texans had celebrated memories of vigilante vio-

8 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 lence, and how these prior instances of Washington and the Rise of the NAACP. "How could such a thing take place?" It's violent retribution framed lynching in The owner of a Houston public rela- a good question, but it's not one that meaningful ways. In other words, how tions firm, Bernstein describes herself her methodology allows her to answer one generation's memory of lynching as a writer who has published articles in adequately. Repeatedly, Bernstein refers helped legitimize its continued practice, Smithsonian Magazine, Texas Monthly, to how "riff raff" led the lynch mob, even as the targeted victims changed. and Cosmopolitan. Like Carrigan, she how the authorities failed in their duty Carrigan argues that lynching lay is a native of Central Texas, and The to protect Washington, how they con- at the heart of the culture, powerfully First Waco Horror advances the histori- spired with Fred Gildersleeve to allow defining the concepts of public duty cal debate about lynching in important him to take pictures of the lynching and prestige. In 1884 for the first time ways. But despite her wide reading, from a courthouse window, and how in Central Texas, a mob lynched a black Bernstein cannot conceive of lynching they alsd failed to prosecute the mob man, Zeke Hadley, for the alleged rape as Carrigan does—an integral part of a leaders, even though they knew their of a white woman. The Hill County "culture of violence." Instead, she asks identities. To be sure, Bernstein docu- mob surrounded the jail in Hillsboro ments all of these findings. But she on June 23, extracted Hadley from a ... after all the books have been refuses to recognize that conspiring cell, and hanged him. They explained read and all the theories of lynch- to commit such an act—going back their actions in the Whitney Messenger ing carefully considered, separately to at least 1836—had defined civilized and in combination, there remains behavior. We regret the necessity of having to an essential darkness at the heart of Instead, Bernstein uses Washington's step beyond the limits of the law in the lynching epidemic that none of lynching to explore how it galvanized the execution of this negro but we the analyses adequately illuminates: the NAACP. The civil rights organiza- have positive proof of his guilt and How could otherwise absolutely con- tion's anti-lynching campaign referred think the crime justifies the act ... ventional twentieth-century people to it as the "Waco horror," a phrase that [we] dedicate this precident [sic.] to living in a prosperous, industrialized Bernstein repackages for the title of the mothers, wives, and daughters of society suddenly metamorphose into her book. Like Elisabeth Freeman, the this community, the extreme mea- a wild mob howling for blood and NAACP activist who investigated the sures to which we have resorted. then, within two or three hours— lynching, Bernstein remains focused on their blood lust sated—revert to the graphic nature of the Gildersleeve Some three decades and about 30 being inoffensive, everyday folk photographs: instances of lynching after Hadley, again? other Central Texans butchered Jesse Only when you look closer do you see Washington in Waco's square. Carrigan Indeed, she does not shy from present- a fuzzy area in the center of the pic- explains such acts by looking at the big ing lynching as an outrageous brutality, ture, below the tree, like a ribbon of picture—going back to the founding of a practice seemingly at odds with con- smoke. And then, through the smoke, the Texas Republic—and paying atten- temporary Central Texans' belief that you can just make out ... a leg, a foot, tion to intriguing patterns, including they were highly civilized and cultured: an elbow. A naked human being lies fairly secretive mob-killings of blacks collapsed at the bottom of the tree on and whites during Reconstruction. If you had been picked up from top of a smoldering pile of slats and By 1900, he states, such violence had wherever you were and dropped into kindling. Around his neck is a chain, become institutionalized as a "punish- Waco, Texas, on the morning of which stretches up over a branch of ment for blacks administered by whites." May 15, 1916, and if you, devoid of the tree. His breadth of research and ability to all context, had watched the Waco use stories to craft analysis help the Horror unfold, you would surely But that focus prompts a series of modern reader recognize how and why have thought you were no longer on questions: Were other forms of such lynching became widely embraced, and earth but had fallen into the bot- violence any less brutal, even if they how such vigilantism became a tool to tom pit of Hell. How could such a weren't documented by a photographer? enforce a particular set of racial and thing take place? ... Waco was not Or protested by the NAACP? Indeed, it's gendered power relations in the region. even a backwoods outpost, peopled the second part of Bernstein's subtitle with inbred crackers driven mad by that best explains her approach: the rise nlike Carrigan, Patricia moonshine and pellagra. The people of the NAACP. Her book is less of an Bernstein is not an academ- of Waco considered themselves to exploration of the historical roots of ic historian, but has delved be thoroughly civilized and modern. lynching and more a narrative of how into a wide range of pub- They were not our ancient ances- Freeman, a militant in the movement for lished and archival primary sourc- tors; they were our grandparents and women's suffrage, came to investigate es to write her first book, The First great-grandparents. ... the Washington lynching for the NAACP, Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse —continued on page 19

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9 BETWEEN HEAVEN AND TEXAS Photographs by Wyman Meinzer Introduction by Sarah Bird Poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye 80 color photos • $34.95 cloth

INFERNO By Charles Bowden Photographs by Michael P. Berman Bill and Alice Wright Photography Series 66 duotones • $45.00 cloth

LA VIDA BRINCA Photographs by Bill Wittliff Essays by Elizabeth Ferrer and Stephen Harrigan 105 duotones • $50.00 cloth

DAVID SMITH Drawing + Sculpting Text by Steven Nash and Candida Smith Distributed for the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas 80 color and b&w illus. • $35.00 paper

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, 1525-1825 Prints from the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation By James Clifton With contributions by Leslie Scattone and Andrew C. Weislogel Distributed for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 9 color, 192 h&c illus. $30.00 paper, $50.00 doth

THE ART AND LIFE OF LUCAS JOHNSON Introduction by Walter Hopps Essay by Edmund P. Pillsbury Illustrated chronology by Patricia Covo Johnson Distributed for the Houston Artists Fund 73 color, 46 duotone, 42 b&w illus. $34.95 doth

BLANTON MUSEUM OF ART Distributed for the Blanton Museum of Art University of Texas at Austin Handbook of the Collection 235 color illus. • $20.00 paper American Art since 1900 Edited by Annette DiMeo Cariozzi and Kelly Baum 265 color, 40 b&w illus. $40.00 paper

Latin American Collection Edited by Gabriel Perez-Barreiro 420 color ilius. • $40.00 paper, $75.00 cloth

BACRGROUND PHOTO BY JOHN DYER ax Weber reminds us both of these issues, ask her how that too often we act she suggests we pay for them. like a herd of sheep. We A Herd of Sheep The answer must be higher taxes. Mdecide we're for some- by The tax rate has to be based on the thing without examining the validity BERNARD RAPOPORT ability to pay, as it was before Reagan of our conclusion. Let's consider one and the Bushes began rewriting our divisive issue: pro-life v. pro-choice. tax code to favor those of us who can Women's reproductive rights are a most afford to pay. Those who have compelling issue. But when we vote scriptions filled for my heart condi- more should pay more—consider- for someone based on one particu- tion. The bill was $1,000! I asked the ably more. lar issue, we could be neglecting our pharmacist, "What if I didn't have that As someone who founded and children, ourselves, and the nature of amount of money?" He said, "Well, directed the building of a large finan- the society in which we live. you couldn't have them." I said, "You cial institution, I can tell you that There are other issues. For exam- mean in this land of ours, the richest you can get rich, very rich, with- ple, we can all agree that health and country in the world, that I can live out stock options, without the CEO education are essential to a decent because I have money and someone earning more than 25 to 30 times and meaningful life. I'm reminded of who doesn't have money won't be what the lowest-paid employee earns one public servant who did. David able to live? I think that's a terrible (today CEOs make 1,000 to 1,500 Bonior was for years one of the lead- injustice." He responded, "I know times what the lowest-paid employee ers of the House of Representatives. that, but that's the way it is." makes). Or you could get rich before He is one of the most intelligent, Let's return to Weber's herd of the rules of the game—in particu- committed politicians I've known. He sheep. Rather than focus on a single lar the tax code—were rewritten. It is also pro-life. My wife, Audre, is issue easily exploited by the politi- wasn't so long ago that we were a totally committed to the pro-choice cal right, doesn't it make sense that society in which wealth—and the tax position. When David was running before we support a candidate, we burden—was more reasonably dis- for a Michigan House seat, we obvi- ask about his commitment to access tributed. So we should be mad. But ously couldn't vote for him. But we to good health care for everyone in we too often get mad in the wrong could contribute generously. And we this country? Doesn't it make sense way. Or we focus our legitimate politi- did. When people asked Audre how that we consider a candidate's com- cal anger on single issues easily someone so dedicated to women's mitment to quality public education exploited by the far right—whether reproductive rights could support a and adequate and equitable taxation it is reproductive rights or gay and "pro-life" candidate like Bonior, she to support it? Sure, I support good lesbian rights. had a simple response. "He's sort of education, just don't increase my Before you decide who you're for, like Ivory soap-99.5 percent pure." taxes to pay for it. That's the attitude decide what kind of world you want. Give or take a percentage point, that too many of us have, espe- Don't let a single issue—regardless it was a good assessment of David cially those of us in high tax brackets, of its importance—determine the Bonior, whose career was dedicated favored by a tax code that provides candidate you will support. My own to improving the lives of Americans all sorts of machinations to evade position is clear and unequivocal, living on the economic margins of our paying our fair share. as is Audre's, after whom Planned society. To deny him support based I think that before each of us con- Parenthood's Waco clinic is named. on a single issue was to fall into a siders how we're going to vote, we But because I love this country, I herd driven by single-issue politics. ask the candidate what her priorities have the courage to say that if we Or more accurately, a herd driven by are. And we refuse to accept mum- succumb to the virus of letting single right-wing political operatives who bling about "I'm for health" and "I'm issues determine our votes or domi- have mastered the emotional exploi- for education." Both have to be paid nate our political discourse, we will tation of single-issue politics. for. When a candidate says, I support have succumbed to an incurable I'm not writing to tell you what my political illness. personal position on this issue may I'm an optimist. I believe we can be, though I certainly believe it mat- AD COURTESY OF reassess what determines how we ters in the confirmation of Supreme THE BERNARD AND AUDRE cast our votes. I also believe a com- Court justices. But I am more con- mitment to a broad range of interests cerned about a society where too RAPOPORT fundamental to a genuine quality of FOUNDATION few have too much and too many life in this country ultimately allows have too little, an issue on which we 5400 Bosque Blvd., Suite 245 us to elect the candidates who will all should be able to agree. I went to Waco, Texas 76710 • (254) 741-0510 advance all the issues the progres- the drug store recently to get pre- Bernard Rapoport • Chairman of the Board sive community supports.

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11 BOOKS Si THE CULTURE Witnesses to History BY BARBARA BELEJACK

n the early 1940s, a young man from a rough Mexico by railway workers and students in 1958—a foreboding City neighborhood called La Candelaria de los Patos, of what would happen 10 years later when a university joined the thousands of his countrymen who were student movement culminated in the massacre of hundreds traveling north to the United States to fill jobs left at Mexico City's Plaza de Tlatelolco. In October 1968, no vacant and jobs that were created by the onset of newspaper would publish Garcia's courageous photograph of World War II. Some worked in factories, others in the soldiers toting guns in the Zocalo, the main plaza, of Mexico fields. Hector Garcia worked in railway construction. City. Two years later, cultural historian Carlos Monsivais After the war, he would make other trips to the United chose the image for the cover of his book Dias de guardar States—not as a migrant worker, but as a photographer. (Days to Remember), one of the first books written in Mexico During his career, Hector Garcia traveled the world for Time- about the 1968 student movement. Life, documented every aspect of political, cultural, and But few documentary photographs are as powerful as social life in his own country, and proved to be equally adept the images of street kids made by Garcia, who himself was at spot news, fashion shoots, and documentary photo essays. orphaned at an early age and spent time in a Mexico City Among his images of the United States: a statue of Popeye in "correctional institute." front of the municipal building in Crystal City, Texas—the Not everything, of course, is about politics and social so-called "Spinach Capital of the World"—and a haunting injustice. The curators have also selected images made from photograph of the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade the serendipity of ordinary life. Collectively, however, the Center, taken in the early 1970s. exhibit documents the great stories of the 20th and early 21st Now 82, Garcia lives with his wife, Maria del Carmen— centuries, not only in Mexico, but throughout the Americas: herself an accomplished photographer—in Mexico City's migration from the country to the city; the rise of the Colonia Navarte, a neighborhood also known as la colonia modern mega-city, with all of its wonders and horrors; the del periodista, the journalist's neighborhood. When I met tension between traditional culture and modernity; and the him there last November, he repeatedly told me that "the job tension between the haves and have-nots. of a journalist is to be a witness to history." Appropriately A growing number of younger photographers now focus enough, that's the title of the current exhibition at the on the northern border, such as Eniac Martinez, who has Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography at traveled by foot following campesinos from the Mixteca Texas State University: "Testigos de la Historia / Witnesses region of Oaxaca to the United States. Others, such as to History." From an archival collection of nearly 13,000 Antonio Turok, best known for his work during the 1994 images, the Wittliff Gallery has selected 59. Zapatista revolt in Chiapas, continue to live and work in "Witnesses" represents the work of 12 •photographers, southern Mexico. including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Nacho Lopez, Graciela As you view the remarkable work of these 12 photographers, Iturbide, and Rodrigo Moya, whose "Fotografos de prensa there is something important to keep in mind: They are / Press Photographers" and "El garrotero / The Brakeman" witnesses not only to the history of Mexico and Latin grace the front and back covers, respectively, of this issue. America—but also to our own. ■ The curators have included such well-known portraits as Moya's iconic "Melancholy Che" (Havana, Cuba, 1964) and Testigos de la Historia / Witnesses to History runs through Raul Ortega's "Subcomandante Marcos" (Chiapas, Mexico, February 12. The Wittliff Gallery is located on the seventh floor 1995). Many of the other images are inherently political. of the Alkek Library of Texas State University in San Marcos. Both Garcia and Moya, for example, recorded the repression For more information, see www.library.txstate.edu/swwc/wg or that occurred in Mexico in the wake of demonstrations call the Gallery at 512-245-2313.

12 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 "La Celestina," Hector Garcia, Mexico City, 1965. Woman from the barrio of La Candelaria de los Patos, the rough, working-class neighborhood where the photographer was born. Garcia published a photo essay on La Candelaria, documenting the neighborhood before its destruction under the orders of the mayor of Mexico City. The photograph takes its name from a famous character in a masterpiece of early Spanish literature—la Celestina, the (( go-between," a "repairer" of virgins.

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 13 •

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"Mexico City," Hector Garcia, 1960.

14 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 "Tlateloko, Mexico City, October 2, 1968," Hector Garcia

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 15 "Morisma de Bracho," Eniac Martinez Ulloa, Zacatecas, Mexico, 2001 Every year in late August, the city of Zacatecas observes a pageant commemorating the battles between the Moors and the Spaniards during the Reconquest of Spain.

"Don Felipe Alvarado y sus caballos," Eniac Martinez Ulloa, San Bernardino, California, 1989 Since 1986, Martinez has been following migrant workers from the impoverished Mixteca region of Oaxaca, and documented changes in the community—both in Oaxaca and in the United States.

16 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 "A Pedro con caririo," Yolanda Andrade, Mexico City, 1995 Remembering Pedro Infante, Mexican film star, who died in a plane crash in 1957.

"Semana Santa," Marco Antonio Cruz, Mexico City, 1985 The annual Holy Week pageant in the district of Iztapalapa.

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17 "Monumentos a la Revolucion," Rodrigo Moya, Mexico City, 1958 Labor strikes, student protests, and police repression—a precursor to the student movement that culminated in the massacre at Mexico City's Plaza de Tlatelolco in 1968.

18 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 —Violence, continued from page 9 to Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916 1915 Plan de San Diego, a proposed and how that investigation influenced was more "ordinary" than Bernstein armed uprising of Mexicans in that progressive movements in developing a would care to admit. Across the South, South Texas town that provoked vio- strategy to chip away at the legitimacy as muckraking journalist Ida B. Wells lent massacres and forced removals of Jim Crow justice. Bernstein has argued repeatedly, the charge that black of tens of thousands of Mexicans by heroes in this book: Elisabeth Freeman men raped and killed white women was white authorities. Indeed, Carrigan and the progressives, like W. E. B. Du a fallacy with fatal consequences, vio- suggests that Mexicans in South Texas Bois, who supported her. lence wrought with the effect of shor- faced a greater threat of lynching than Carrigan's research provides a more ing up a particular set of definitions of blacks in the Deep South. For East satisfactory answer to questions about white manhood. Texas, sociologists James Marquart, how ordinary Wacoans engaged in Jonathan Sorensen and Sheldon Ekland- lynching. While Bernstein sees lynch- y ancestors—the Texans Olson have demonstrated the racist ing as exceptional, partly because of and the Georgians— vagaries of that region's vigorous sup- its grotesquerie, Carrigan finds lynch- would undoubtedly have port for capital punishment through- ing to be an inextricable part of the been comfortable with out the 20th century. My Texan ances- region's history. Go back to the 1830s, theM racism behind lynching. Reading tors would have been a part of all of he explains, and you'll find that Central these books together substantiates the the processes minutely documented by Texans were anything but mild-man- point that Central Texans defined their Carrigan's and Bernstein's fine books. nered—that they perceived themselves "civilization" in racist and sexist ways. The traumatic effects of lynching rever- to live on a frontier, without recourse But we also know that a "culture of berate to the present and somehow, in to functioning courts, and deployed violence" cannot be restricted to one some way, I am still connected to this extreme violence against those who Texas region. Historians of the Texas legacy. ■ threatened them. The Washington Borderlands such as David Montejano, lynching was hardly the most grue- Neil Foley, Benjamin Heber Johnson, Patrick Timmons is Assistant Professor some, certainly not the last, and unique and James Sandos have documented of Latin American History at Augusta only for its being photographed in a instances of white extralegal violence State University in Georgia. He is a 2005 particular way. Indeed, what happened against Mexicans, culminating in the Mexico-North Transnationalism Fellow.

"How does a beautiful adventuress from Texas become one of America's finest writers? So many myths grew up around Katherine Anne 1<(1 Porter, often invented and l'of r encouraged by herself; that one often had to wonder if this magical being had a real life. Darlene Harbour It is close up and Unrue has made it her personal history daunting task to separate through the eyes of an extraordinary truth from fable and cast of characters. thereby reveal a con- It is "people's stantly exciting, change- history" able, baffling, always at its best.

interesting woman." — HOWARD ZINN —Elizabeth Spencer $30 hardback KATHERINE ANNE PORTER The Life of an Artist By Darlene Harbour Unrue Find at your favorite bookseller, visit www.upress.state.ms.us , or call 1-800-737-7788. P.UNTOS PRESS UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19 BOOKS & THE CULTURE I BY GREGG BARRIOS The Hummingbird's Great-Great Nephew

f there is such a thing as reincar- LAU: Both sides. When I was hanging $17 billion just to Mexico. When I nation, Luis Alberto Urrea pre- out with the Border Patrol for The Dev- was in Sonora with some of the Mexi- dicts, he will be back as Emiliano il's Highway, they made it very clear to can immigration cops, we were talking Zapata. In this lifetime, Urrea me that they felt there wouldn't be [an about this. And I asked, what is going was born in Tijuana—"Jewel of immigration] problem if it weren't for to happen? And they said nothing is the Border, The Great Walled the United States giving work to people, going to happen to stop this because CityI of the Barbarian Chichimeca drawing them north. They had a real- this is the second-largest source of Empire"—in 1955. He has lived in San istic political view of what they were income to Mexico—petroleum, remit- Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, Boulder, doing. It surprised me. But I think if tance money, and tourism. Tucson, Lafayette, Chicago, and Sinaloa, you live in that milieu day in and day And I asked, what about illegal drugs? Mexico. Currently he is a tenured profes- out, you know what is going on. The And all of the cops looked at each other sor of English at the University of Illinois- Mexican authorities would tell me the and started laughing. "Okay, this is the Chicago. He is also one of the finest same thing. And so would workers. If third largest source of income then. chroniclers of the U.S.-Mexico border— there were work in Mexico, if there First, cocaine and marijuana, then from his nonfiction collection of essays was some kind of justice, they wouldn't petroleum, and then remittance money Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times come. They don't want to leave home. or tourism." That's the big secret no on the Mexican Border to The Devil's But in the process of coming north, the one wants to talk about—drug money. Highway, his book about a group of 26 victimization and predation happens. I think that what is happening on the immigrants who tried to enter the United level of evil on the border is that the States from Sonora, Mexico, in the sum- TO: Carlos Fuentes recently asked what narcotraficantes' pattern of criminality mer of 2001; 14 of them died of dehy- the United States would do with all the is also taking over the coyotes' world. dration in the Arizona desert. Devil's jobs it wouldn't be able to fill it if closed Now, one thing that is hopeful about Highway received an American Book its borders. Mexicans sending money home is that Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination; LAU: Well, the United States would they are now targeting that money to production of a film version is scheduled be in trouble. Monetary figures speak do social engineering that the Mexican to begin in February. His latest book, loudly. The Center for Immigration government can't or won't do. So you're The Hummingbird's Daughter, is an Studies just released figures that "ille- seeing people with action groups in epic novel about his great aunt Teresita gal workers" are putting $6.4 billion places like Chicago, where I live, who Urrea, a faith healer whose influence into Social Security that they will target their home regions and they touched the Mexican Revolution. Urrea never collect. One of the deals with the are asking that the money be used for is now working on a sequel. While on devil that everybody at the government infrastructure. You see people—com- book tour last fall, he met with the level has done is turn a blind eye and munities—putting in sidewalks, stop- Observer. The following is an excerpt of even encourage it. It's one of the secret lights, rebuilding schools because the that conversation: formulas that is keeping Social Secu- gobierno won't do it. So they are using rity afloat. that money almost as homegrown for- Texas Observer: Is la frontera in need When I first heard those figures, I eign policy assistance. of a border brujo to give it a limpia, a didn't believe them. It was a Mexican cleansing? politician who told me, "Do you know TO: So if both sides are benefiting from why we're in the U.S.? We're taking care the present situation does that preclude Luis Alberto Urrea: Absolutely. We of your retirees. We're keeping Social any actual changes occurring on either need somebody, but I don't know any- Security afloat." And I thought, this side? one who is powerful enough to do the is propaganda, but then the numbers LAU: That's why I think on the job. The border is accumulating so started coming out, and it turns out to government level, you'll never see much bad energy—from Juarez to the be true. that change. American citizens are killing fields of Arizona. It's heartless panicking. And I always tell people and becoming more relentless than TO: On the other side of the border, you it's no sin to be worried about the when I was growing up as a kid. have remittances sent to Mexico by these security of your nation. People are workers. afraid of terrorists. I think there is a TO: Do you attribute this to one side or LAU: It's $45 billion to all of Latin racial component frankly. Some people both sides? America and the Caribbean. But it is don't appreciate mexicanos.

20 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 In my family, we were the first Latinos in our neighborhood. I had never been called greaser before, wetback or taco bender. You look at me—I'm a bubba- looking kid—and they were still calling me those things. So you can imagine people in Arkansas or Iowa with a bar- rio all of a sudden, and they don't know what to do. Outside of Chicago where I live, Naperville is the whitest town in the world, and there is a Mexican com- munity now. So I think there is a racial component in all this.

TO: From the titles of your border non- fiction, from the first book, Life on the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border to the more recent The Devil's Highway, it appears the situation on la frontera has gone from bad to worse. Has this taken a personal toll, burnout? LAU: I told people after Devil that I was going to write haiku from now on. You can't focus on that much pain and hopelessness without getting cynical .0144, yourself—which I don't want to do. But I also began to see glimmers of hope. HUMMINGBIRD'S When I finished Devil, especially, I felt completely hopeless. I was left feeling DAUGHTER a humanitarian tragedy that was never LUIS ALSEPTO UPREA going to go away. [An aspect] of the weirdness of our A8C1442L border policy is that people no longer migrate. They get here and stay because it is too hard to go back and forth. And that is why this remittance money is so big now. It's easier to go to Western Tijuanaclan, the Great Walled City of But they realized that there is an Union. And Western Union is making the Barbarian Chichimeca Empire. immense wave of trade and culture and a lot of money every time you wire Earlier generations in Mexico dis- power in Tijuana and Mexico behind money. So if they're sending $45 billion counted the border, really didn't like it. So Chula Vista, not being stupid, a year, they're getting a share of that; the border. They thought el norte wasn't is building a very elaborate shopping everyone's benefiting. really Mexico; the United States didn't center on la frontera with its entrances That's the thing Americans don't [like it] either. They were embarrassed from Mexico straight into the mall. understand. It's very easy to point a by it. The border was allowed to just And they realize they can interdict finger and say, "Look at these people fester. But what it did was it created this hundreds of millions of dollars of trade invading your country," while on the active, exciting can-do community. from San Diego. They're building, in other hand, you're making money. Look at San Antonio. This is a city cooperation with the Mexican univer- that seems to have found a hybrid sity system, a new campus right on the TO: Let's talk about the border itself It's between the two cultures that works border. They are also going to have a place that's ni aqui ni and, neither here pretty well. I don't know about El Paso, a binational university village. Again, nor there. but certainly San Diego, and the area taking hundreds of millions of dollars LAU: [The border] has its culture. It south of it. Chula Vista is a city that has away from San Diego and taking it back starts in Houston and goes down all been totally overlooked. People barely to the border. the way to Chihuahua City. It is a very even know it exists. It was seen as the It's worth noting that once a for- wide swath. I grew up in this area in poor, ugly stepsister of San Diego, so ward-thinking community realizes it Tijuana—Auntie Jane—but we called it close to Tijuana, so far from San Diego. can work with Mexico you can move

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 21 hand in hand ahead with these creative the United States. And they are rebuffed represent what's happening with our options to make the most of the border in return. So you stay in that little val- younger generation. instead of suffering and being ashamed ley and develop your own amazing The media want to focus on the MS- of the border. I think Vicente Fox's one language. But I think a lot of the youth 13 gang and gang-bangers, but the fact stroke of genius was pointing out that lost the root of the Spanish, [then] they is we have a wide range of humanity the border was a zone of possibility, didn't achieve enough in English and and a whole lot of our people afe not a zone of shame, and that it was the were reduced to only having slang. But accomplishing great things. It may have future of Mexico. Instead of disowning those are transitional moments we're taken an extra generation to stabilize it, they should embrace it and make coming through and coming out of. but we're experiencing great success. I the most of it. So what I dream of is a In the Chicano writing world, a always tell people that success is the type of border perestroika between the whole new generation of writers has best revenge. Excellence is the best two cultures. achieved stuff that the old-timers, and revenge. even mid-timers, like me, probably TO: More than just a geographical couldn't have dreamed of. They've TO: And for some, repopulating is the marker, the borderland was where the been to the Ivy League now, gone to best revenge. mythical pachuco was born. His influ- all these incredible schools. Chicanos LAU: Yeah, you always hear that recon- ence was seen in Mexican films shown are coming out of Alaska who are part quista argument. When I talk to young in Spanish-language theaters throughout indigenous [members of Alaskan native kids I always tell them you have to be the borderlands. groups], because now we're everywhere. aware of the way people use language— LAU: Well, you know [pachucos] gave There's a whole new generation of new on you. You're part of a propaganda birth to la rata, el movimiento, chi- perspectives. Gay writers can be out campaign. So when you hear about ille- canismo. That culture of the 1950s and and don't have to worry about hiding. gal immigration, beware. Illegal immi- 1960s degenerated to a certain extent. They don't have to suffer what [El Paso gration is not even a criminal act. It is A lot of my family is cholos and vatos. writer] John Rechy suffered—being not a misdemeanor. It is a civil infrac- But you get in a situation where they kept out of the community. So there tion. It's civil law. It's akin to getting a feel rejected by Mexico and they reject is this wave of very prepared, very speeding ticket. It is not even a misde- Mexico. But they also feel rebuffed by well educated, very savvy writers. They meanor crime. So we should take out that term illegal. I use it in my book just because it is so irritating that I hope it will irritate the reader too. [At the time this issue went to press, the U.S. House of Representatives had passed legislation that would make illegal immigration a criminal offense; the legislation had not been heard in the Senate.] And then you have some of the lan- guage they use on us: this "browning of America." Doesn't it sound like a detergent commercial? You have some- thing in your underpants you need to wash out? That is not necessarily a complimentary term even if you think it's a euphemism. Think about this: This continent was pretty damn brown before those guys got here. If anything, it has been the whitening of America. This was a brown continent.

TO: Recent Chicano literature has seen the release of longer novels like Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo, Luis Rodriguez's The Music of the Mill, Ben Alire Scienz's Carry Me Like Water, and your own book, The Hummingbird's Daughter. But Latin American writers seem to be

Luis Alberto Urrea photo courtesy of Little, Brown and Co. publishing smaller novels, even novellas.

22 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 LAU: For me, the bulk of my book first foreign sales with this new book. the time. But many say, "We are just was dictated by the epic nature of the white people, we don't have a culture." story. We are the generation who grew TO: Our earlier works were marginal- I said that is the strangest thing I ever up with James Michener and John ized as too regional, while Faulkner, who heard. You have the culture everybody Steinbeck. Maybe we are going through wrote about a little postage stamp county, else is ripping off so you better look at that tradition of the big American was considered universal. It wasn't until it and what you are going to do. And novel. Most of my books had been Garcia Marquez started writing about sure enough they had a grandma who pretty slender. But there was so much Macondo that a change occurred. healed warts or a grandpa who had a to tell about Teresita that I am doing a LAU: They didn't recognize some of the folk remedy. Everyone has a connection sequel, which will also be a fat book. It cultural markers. [Chicano writer] Rudy to the earth. is dictated by form—by the stories you Anaya used to tell me that your personal have to tell. world is very political. He would come TO: That brings us back to healing the under fire in the old Marxist days of border. TO: We have our Nino Fidencio, our the movement for not being political LAU: I used to think that the only thing Don Jaramillo and our Santa Teresita. enough. He told his critics, "What I that would be helpful, that the only What is it with our Chicano latter day, write is very political. If you can make thing I had to offer, was my art. To that counterculture saints? somebody from another culture think end, we wanted to make a concert on LAU: I think it is the same thing with your grandmother is their grandmother, one side of the river with Mexican musi- Guadalupe in her day. We need this you then teach them something about cians and gringos on the other side and Mexican sacredness—we need a new humanity they hadn't thought about." serenade each other. The only thing that world approach. I think it is interesting I always took that to heart and I think can pass the border without problems is that Mormonism has been very he is right. music—art as a symbolic bridge. interesting to Chicanos and mexicanos As we move out to a more univer- I think there is more brotherhood because it offers a new world theology, sal reading public, it's not a change than we understand. We are pro- a new world Christianity. However, our necessarily in us but in the reading grammed to think we are in competi- metaphors are different. public accepting it. The Hummingbird's tion. That we are against each other, One of the curanderos I studied with Daughter, is a universal book in that that we are xenophobes. But the fact is [while researching Hummingbird] kept it has a connection with anybody— we are often much more accepting of telling me, "You know the missionaries regardless of culture—who has some- each other and welcoming of each other came here and they didn't understand body in their recent past who was very than we get credit for. ■ this continent. And they thought snakes connected with the earth even in a were evil. We didn't think snakes were tribal way. Gregg Barrios is a Texas journalist and evil. They did. So they attributed our I talk about this with my students all playwright. He lives in San Antonio. belief to some kind of satanic demonic force, whereas the snake was holding the same metaphorical place for me and my tribe as for the Hebrews." For me, with Teresita, it's because it is personal. It is a family story. It is also taking ownership of our his- tory. Learning how to tell our history. I worked on Teresita for 20 years before I could feel that I could write it and do it justice. So I think it is the whole body of work coming to fruition for all of us. I think Caramelo is a pretty personal text. And The Hummingbird's Daughter is a personal text for me. Luis' book [Music of the Mill] is a very personal text too. Ben Saenz and Gary Soto do a lot of poetry and young adult books. We are now everywhere. I don't know what it means—I think we now have entry into the mainstream, and we will be taken seriously as American authors. I am still —oh we're out there seen as a regional writer, but I made my

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 23 BOOKS & THE CULTURE I BY DAVID ROMO Ringside Seat to a Revolution

The following excerpt is adapted from the underground cultural life of El hotel's Dome Bar every Saturday night Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Paso and Juarez. The first rule of psy- for tourists and hip Latinos. Villa didn't Underground Cultural History of El chogeography is to walk through the like that place too much though. He Paso and Juarez: 1893-1923 (Cinco streets without preconceived notions; thought too many perfumados—sweet Puntos Press, 2005) by David Romo. just drift and let the city's underground smelling dandies—stayed there, like currents take you where they will. The the Guggenheims (who owned one of was raised in both Juarez and El areas that drew me the most at first the ASARCO smelters Villa threatened Paso, but I've spent a large part were the Tex-Mex dives along Alameda to confiscate in Chihuahua), General of my life trying to get as far Avenue, neglected cemeteries, the Santa Pershing, Alvaro Obregon and the away from both of these cities Fe International Bridge, the seedy hang- Terrazas clan. as possible. If you walk through outs on Avenida Juarez, and the old He preferred to lodge at the Roma downtown El Paso after 5 p.m., buildings around downtown El Paso. Hotel, on the corner of Paisano and you'll find that the place is dead. Mostly Almost everywhere I went, Pancho El Paso Street, during his American there's just a lot of loan shark agencies Villa had been there before me. exile in 1913. It was a more down-to- and trinket shops inside neglected old I ordered an elote and a lemonade earth place. Villa and his number one buildings. There's more action in Juarez. near a Korean-owned store on Mesa wife Luz Corral stayed there after he But it didn't appeal to me either. There and Texas Streets where everything escaped from a Mexico City prison. She was too much suffering there. costs a dollar. It had once been the had a soft spot for El Paso too. Pancho So pretty much from an early age I Elite Confectionary. Villa and General would walk around coddling pigeons wanted out. I wanted to go some place Pascual Orozco, who headed Madero's in his arms. People thought he was a where things were happening—where troops during the Battle of Juarez, had little eccentric but he told them pigeons matters of significance occurred. I didn't been there in 1911. Pancho and Pascual were the only thing he could eat, on want to live on the border, on the edge didn't like each other very much, but account of his delicate stomach. The of the world. I wanted a cosmopolitan they had posed for Otis Aultman's cam- truth was he was using them as homing cultural center, a city with a busy night- era anyway, sitting stiffly next to each pigeons, to send messages to his rebel life, museums, bookstores, theaters, lots other. Pancho, famous for his sweet friends in Chihuahua. of history and no Border Patrol. I didn't tooth, had ordered the Elite Baseball, Almost every evening, Pancho know back then that the Border Patrol a scoop of chocolate-covered vanilla Villa would walk downstairs to the is everywhere. But as soon as I gradu- ice cream, for ten cents. Pascual didn't Emporium Bar, which was also a little ated from high school, I split. I spent want anything. strange since Pancho was a teetotaler. four years in northern California, two- I walked two blocks down from He would order nothing but strawberry and-a-half in Jerusalem and five years the Elite Confectionary to the First soda pop, his favorite drink, and hang in Florence. But something kept National Bank Building on the corner out with all kinds of characters. One drawing me back to this desert, this of Oregon and San Antonio. In 1914 evening, he met with alleged German place that so many consider nothing Villa had his Consulado de Mexico secret agent Maximilian Kloss at the more than a vast cultural wasteland. there. El Paso Detective Fred Delgado, bar. Apparently, the agent wanted to My family and friends had a lot to do who moonlighted as Villa's secret agent, buy the rights to some submarine bases with me coming back, of course. But worked out of Room 418. When the in Baja California just in case Germany there was something else. If geography U.S. recognized Venustiano Carranza went to war against the United States. is destiny, as they say, then I felt I had to in 1915, Pancho Villa shut the consul- After a few months of walking come to terms with my own geography. ate down. I looked around the place, through the city, I realized my aim- maybe something had been left behind. less wanderings had transformed them- 've been looking for Pancho Villa Villa's offices were empty. The whole selves into an obsessive, very focused for the last four years. I didn't building was empty. No one had even manhunt. I'd somehow entered a zone I intend to. When I began writing bothered to at least put up a little sign couldn't leave. I followed every clue, no this book, it was meant to be a reading: "Pancho Villa was here." matter how insignificant. I Pancho Villa had been across the I wanted to know about Villa's eating psychogeography, not a history. In 2001, I was the artistic director of El Paso's street at the El Paso del Norte Hotel as habits: He loved canned asparagus and Bridge Center for Contemporary Art well. That's where my Latin Jazz band, could eat a pound of peanut brittle at and had just received a grant to chart Fronteras No Mas, used to play at the a time.

24 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 Pancho Villa, posing with a motorcycle in 1914 photo courtesy of the El Paso Public Library

I wanted to know where his offic- viduals who were in El Paso and Juarez counterrevolutionaries. Ringside Seat es and headquarters were: the Mills during the revolution. Many crossed to a Revolution deals not so much with Building, the Toltec and the First Pancho Villa's path at one time or history as it does with microhistory. A National Bank in El Paso. In Juarez, another. More often than not, they surprisingly large number of the events his headquarters were in the Customs were both spectators and active partici- related to the Mexican Revolution took House and on Lerdo Street. pants during one of the most fascinat- place within a five-square-mile area How much money he had in the bank ing periods in the area's history. between downtown El Paso and the on this side of the line: $2,000,000. This book is about insurrection from Juarez customhouse. What kind of jewelry his wife wore to the point of view of those who official Microhistory at its best is more about high-toned Sunset Heights tea parties: historians have considered peripheral to small gestures and unexpected details five diamond rings, a double-chained the main events—military band musi- than grand explanations. It's a method gold necklace with a gold watch and cians who played Verdi operas during of study that focuses more on the mys- diamond-studded locket attached, a executions in Juarez; filmmakers who terious and the poetic than on the sche- brooch, a comb set and earrings with came to the border to make silent matic. It's like prospecting for gold or brilliants. flicks called The Greaser's Revenge and exploring underground mazes—those Villa's musical tastes: He enjoyed "El Guns and Greasers; female bullfight- honeycombed tunnels underneath Corrido de Tierra Blanca," "La Marcha ers; anarchists; poets; secret service Oregon Street in El Paso's Chinatown de Zacatecas," "La Adelita," and "La agents whose job it was to hang out in that the U.S. customs officials raided Cucaracha." every bar on both sides of the line; jazz during the turn of the century. Elderly Pancho Villa took me to places musicians on Avenida Juarez during Chinese immigrants opened secret where I never expected to go—I trav- Prohibition when Villa tried to cap- doors for them. In one underground eled throughout the United States and ture Juarez for a third time; spies with chamber the border agents found cans Mexico. But although Villa is every- Graflexes; Anglo pool hustlers reborn of opium; in another, they found a where in this book, it's ultimately not as postcard salesmen; Chinese illegal young man playing an exotic stringed about him. He's merely my tour guide. aliens; radical feminists; arms smug- instrument the American officials had Instead Ringside Seat to a Revolution glers; and, of course, revolutionaries, never heard before. is about an offbeat collection of indi- counterrevolutionaries and counter- Several excellent historical works

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 25 about the Mexican Revolution on the Ay, ay, ay! Talk about bomb-throw- first El Pasoan to launch a rebellion border served as my guides. But the ers. against the government of Porfirio one historian who is perhaps the most Them's fightin' words, as the Diaz in 1893, was the editor of El responsible for getting me to write Hollywood gunslingers used to say. Hispano Americano. In 1896, Teresita about my own city is Leon Metz. I've They're the kind of outrageous distor- Urrea was listed as the coeditor with run into him a few times at historical tions that would spur any self-respect- Lauro Aguirre of El Independiente. She conferences. The former law enforce- ing microhistorian worth the name to had moved to El Paso that year and ment officer turned historian is an reach for his laptop and write his own was already called the "Mexican Joan amiable man. He looks a little like John version of the past. Which I did. of Arc" because of the various upris- Wayne and a little like Jeff Bridges. But I guess I shouldn't be too irritat- ings her name had inspired throughout Everybody likes Leon Metz. He's ed by Metz' take on things. Historians northern Mexico. In 1907, Aguirre's almost as popular as the UTEP football are like the blind men who touched dif- press also printed La Voz de la Mujer. coach. His books sell very well too. If ferent parts of the elephant and thought It was a fiery, aggressive weekly, which you go to the history section at any it was either a wall, a snake, a tree trunk called itself "El Semanario de Combate," Barnes & Noble in El Paso you prob- or a rope, depending on what they written and edited by women who had ably won't find any of the books that touched. We all have our biases and no qualms about denouncing their served as my guides to the revolution. our limited viewpoints. It all depends political enemies as "eunuchs" and But you're likely to find more than a on where we stand. Microhistorians, "castrados" (castrated men). The anar- dozen books written by Leon Metz I think, are just a little more honest chist Praxedis Guerrero—who coined about local gunfighters, sheriffs and about it. We tend to believe that there is the phrase that is often attributed to Texas Rangers—John Wesley Hardin, no such thing as a definitive History— Emiliano Zapata, "It is better to die on Pat Garrett, John Selman and Dallas only a series of microhistories. your feet, than to live on your knees,"— Stoudenmire. Occasionally Metz writes published Punto Rojo out of El Paso about the Mexican Revolution too from 1 Paso probably had more in 1909. Silvestre Terrazas, the black that Wild, Wild West cowboy perspec- Spanish-language newspa- sheep of the Chihuahuan oligarchic tive of his. pers per capita during the family who at one time helped smuggle Let me give you an example. In E turn of the century than any weapons for Pancho Villa from El Paso, Turning Points of El Paso, Texas, he other city in the United States. Between published La Patria between 1919 and is highly critical of the revolutionary 1890 and 1925, there were more than 1924. It was one of the more success- Spanish-language newspapers that 40 Spanish-language newspapers pub- ful Spanish language papers in the flourished in South El Paso around the lished in El Paso. They provided a coun- border city. Silvestre Terrazas had been turn of the century. Metz—who doesn't ternarrative of the border not found in sued 150 times, imprisoned 12 and had read or speak Spanish—denounces the mainstream press on either side of received a death sentence under the many of them as badly written "hand- the line. The periodicals printed not government of Porfirio Diaz for his bills" full of "emotional, oftentimes only news and political manifestoes but writings. In Mexico, Diaz imprisoned hysterical overtones" whose content serial novels, poetry, essays and other Ricardo Flores Magni various times as "sounded impressive only to other social- literary works. The cultural milieu cre- well. Each time Magon and his fellow anarchists." He expresses displeasure ated by a large inflow of political refu- radicals got out of Mexican prison, they with these publications that "frequent- gees and exiles—which included some would stubbornly republish their old ly denounced the United States (which of Mexico's best journalists and writ- newspaper under a different name— protected their right to publish) as ers—set the stage for a renaissance of first as El Ahuizote, then El Hijo del savagely as they did Diaz." One of those Spanish-language journalism and lit- Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Son), El Nieto anarchistic newspapers he mentions is erature never before seen in the history del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Grandson), Regeneracion, which Metz claims was of the border. The first novel of the rev- El Bisnieto del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's published out of the Caples Building in olution, Los de Abajo, was published in Great-Grandson) and El Tataranieto del El Paso by Ricardo Flores Magon. (I'm serial form in 1915 in the Spanish-lan- Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Great-Great not sure how Magon—who established guage daily, El Paso del Norte. Mariano Grandson.) his headquarters in El Paso in 1906— Azuela, a former Villista doctor, wrote Things were somewhat better for could have published his newspaper it while he lived in the Segundo Barrio. journalists in El Paso. But that's not to out of the Caples Building. The Caples Yet politics was indeed most of these say that the U.S. was a paradise for free wasn't constructed until 1909.) The Old publications' bread and butter. Because speech either, as Leon Metz would have West historian describes Magon as a they were published on the American us believe. Spanish-language editors friend of "bomb-throwers," a man with side of the border, the Spanish-lan- were frequently harassed, censored, and

" enough real and imagined grievances guage press could be aggressively anti- imprisoned by the American authori- to warrant psychotherapy for a dozen Diaz. Many publications were openly ties for what they wrote. Flores Magon unhappy zealots." revolutionary. Victor L. Ochoa, the was sued and arrested several times

26 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 in the U.S. for his articles. Ultimately, to call for armed uprising. They drafted According to a Mexican official quoted censorship ended up being more severe the insurrection's blueprints. And usu- by the New York Times, Teresita was for him north of the border than south ally, the periodistas were also the first responsible for the death of more than of it. He died in an American prison to take up arms themselves. Yet these 1,000 people killed during those upris- in the 1920s while serving a 20-year fronterizo journalists were more than ings. At 19, Teresita was forced into sentence for questioning, in one of his mere agitators. Many lived lives full of exile by President Porfirio Diaz. publications, the needless loss of life of unexpected twists and turns; they were She first crossed the border in American soldiers during World War I. often revolutionary beyond just the Nogales, Arizona, in 1892, the year that Spanith-language newspapers were political sense of the term. the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz massacred suppressed on numerous occasions in and burned down the entire village of El Paso during the revolution. In March espite being listed as coeditor TomOchic, a Chihuahuan village about 1916, Mayor Tom Lea, Sr., ordered the of El Independiente, Teresita 200 miles south of El Paso. Four years suspension of four "Mexican dailies" Urrea was not exactly a jour- later Teresita Urrea passed through El published in the city: El Rio Bravo, La D nalist. She also never public- Paso like a comet—a heavenly portent Justicia, Mexico Nuevo and El Paso del ly called herself a revolutionary. Yet she that shone brightly for a brief period Norte. Their crime was to report on inspired journalists and revolutionar- then vanished. and give their own version of Pancho ies in El Paso for many years to come. In March 1896, hundreds gathered Villa's raid of Columbus a few days In many ways, the revolution on the at the Union Depot train station to before. The editor of El Paso del Norte, border began with her. wait for the 22-year-old miracle worker Fernando Gamiochipi, a resident of A woman of many contradictions, known on both sides of the line as the American border city for 14 years, she defied all the reigning stereo- "Santa Teresa." "But the young lady," was thrown in jail for having written types of a 19th-century mexicana. the El Paso Evening Telegraph report- "something of a political nature." She was the illegitimate daughter of a ed, "did not come." When she finally That same month, the El Paso City rich Sonoran hacendado, Don Tomas did arrive on June 13, 1896, about Council passed an emergency ordi- Urrea. Her mother, Cayetana Chavez, 3,000 pilgrims camped outside her new nance which stated: was a poor Tahueco—part Cahita, home on the corner of Overland and part Tarahumara Indian—woman Campbell Streets. They had traveled by It shall be unlawful for any persons who had once been employed as Don foot, wagon and train from all over the within the city of El Paso to transmit Tomas' maid. Don Tomas impregnated U.S.-Mexico border. for the purpose of publication any Cayetana when she was 14 years-old. Soon the El Paso Herald was compar- report about the conditions existing Teresita dedicated her life to healing ing her to Jesus Christ. "El Paso has the in the city of El Paso which would the poor. She had been a healer since distinction of having a live saint within be calculated to injure the general her early adolescence. While at her its borders. It is understood that she business or reputation of the city of father's ranch, Teresita had been the has commenced her work of healing, El Paso. apprentice of a Yaqui curandera named but here comes the rub. Strange as it Huila. From her, Teresita learned the may seem, dominant religions never Newspaper reporters who wrote nega- medicinal uses of more than 200 herbs welcome one that comes to do good in tive articles about the city that the and folk remedies, many of which are individual lives. The Nazarene had the authorities deemed false were to be still used among the Indian commu- experience, and Santa Teresa will find "punished with a fine of not less than nities along Mexico's northern bor- that she is no exception to this rule," $25 nor more than $200." der today. One observer claimed that the evening newspaper predicted. In June 1919, the editor and busi- more than 200,000 people had visited The El Paso Herald's prophecies ness manager of El Paso's La Republica her home in Rancho Cabora, Sonora; weren't far off the mark. Within a year, were arrested for failing to provide an she had healed 50,000 of them. Most Teresita would suffer three assassina- English translation of their newspaper. of them couldn't afford a physician. tion attempts and be forced to leave the They were subsequently deported to Yet she intermingled comfortably with city in search of safer grounds. Mexico. high society on both sides of the bor- The El Paso that Teresita passed Despite this kind of repression, the der although she had practically no through in 1896 was a booming border proliferation of radical journalism in El formal schooling. town. Railroad lines from the four Paso helps explain why the border city The Catholic church considered her cardinal directions—connecting it to was such a hotbed of insurrection. On a heretic, and the Mexican government Mexico City, Santa Fe, Los Angeles and the border, journalist and revolution- considered her a dangerous subver- San Antonio—had transformed the ary were often synonymous. Journalists sive. She was opposed to the spilling town into the main gateway between the planted the ideological seeds of rebel- of blood, yet the rallying cry "Viva United States and Mexico and a major lion. They held secret meetings in their Santa Teresa" was heard during several center for smelting, cattle, mining and newspaper offices. They were the first uprisings throughout northern Mexico. —continued on page 37

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 27 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Truth of the Matter BY DEBBIE NATHAN presumably in the mountains. Rivard future included monogamy, fatherhood, is still offering reward money to nab and—Rivard implies—a nose-to-the- Trail of Feathers: Searching for them: money he's advertised by drop- grindstone loyalty to the paper that Phil True. A Reporter's Murder ping flyers from airplanes, and by dis- presumably would lead True to trade in Mexico and His Editor's tributing to destitute Huichol children his Levis and sandals for Dockers and Search for Justice basketballs emblazoned with the logo of sensible shoes. by Robert Rivard the San Antonio Spurs. Why had he waited so long to get with Public Affairs All this is recounted in Trail of the program? More to the point, why 400 pages, $27.50 Feathers, which takes its title from the had he left his five-months pregnant goosedown that seeped from True's wife at home in Mexico City to venture n 1998 Phil True, a good-look- ripped sleeping bag as the killers into the hostile Sierra? And why by ing, hippie-ish foreign corre- dragged his enshrouded body while himself, with no one to watch his back? spondent for the San Antonio searching for a burial place. Hansel- According to Rivard, these questions

Express - News, vanished while and-Gretel-like, the feathers led Rivard are answered by the third, and most backpacking alone in the Sierra to the site. The feather image has salient, factor in True's life: his rotten Madre Occidental north of mythic appeal and Rivard provides a childhood. Feathers' entire first section Guadalajara.I This is one of Mexico's protagonist with a mythical, tragic flaw: consists of extraordinarily sleazy dirt wildest, most isolated regions, and if True's supposed compulsion to go into that Rivard unearthed about True's

it hadn't been for Express - News editor the wild by himself, even if doing so family posthumously. His father was Robert Rivard's search after True went proved irredeemably dangerous. a closet bisexual who photographed missing, evidence suggesting he'd been Where did this need come from? himself fooling around with men and murdered might never have been found. Three places, according to Feathers. One who molested Philip's younger sister. True's body was located after Rivard was True's working-class background: The elder True was eventually kicked enlisted Mexican politicos and military When he was young, his father had out of the house; Mrs. True divorced forces to take him into the Sierra. There operated a gas station. That upbringing him, then remarried and divorced he personally helped dig True out of a gave him a yen for leaving the beaten a string of losers. Years later, we are shallow grave. With his own hands, he track to report on underdogs— informed, Philip went to therapy and touched his reporter's rotting corpse. including poor, marginalized Mexicans recovered "memories" (whose truth he Hours later, he was in the autopsy room like the Huichols. More important was apparently didn't question, and neither when a coroner determined that the his longtime failure to settle down as does Rivard) of himself having been cause of death was homicide. a responsible adult. Until a few years molested: by his mother. Few would be able to walk away from before he died, at age 50, True had That's why Philip True marched such an experience, and Rivard vowed led an "unfulfilled" life, according to against the war in Vietnam, knocked to find the culprits and bring them to Rivard. He'd been a '60s-era campus around the hemisphere on a bicycle, justice. Starting just after the murder radical and later a union organizer backpacked in the wilderness, hung and continuing for years, he used his and college degree-holder who chose around Central America in solidarity power as a Hearst Corp. newspaper wallpaper hanging over white-collar with revolutionaries during the 1980s, editor to exert pressure. He pushed the work. He'd attended Marxist study and otherwise rejected the usual trap- Mexican government to send soldiers groups in the home of socialist-feminist pings of corporate, yuppie U.S. life. to flush out suspects—who turned out Barbara Ehrenreich. He'd harbored (Never mind that millions of young to be two members of the Huichols, a a Marxist aversion to marriage. His people his age all over the world did destitute, indigenous group native to wardrobe invariably consisted of blue these same lefty and artsy things.) the Sierra. They confessed to the crime, jeans and huaraches. Furthermore, explains Rivard, it was but no clear motive was ever estab- But by the time he hiked into the psychological damage that kept True so lished. When the accused Indians were Sierra, True had become an Express- long from journalism. His first main- acquitted, convicted, and acquitted News reporter with a wife, and a baby stream reporting job didn't come until again during various legal proceedings was on the way. According to Rivard, his early forties, when he got hired at and appeals, Rivard continued to press his trip to the mountains was "the last the border-rat Brownsville Herald. Later, for a guilty verdict. After five years the solo trek in a lifelong journey to leave after moving to the more prestigious Huichols were convicted once and for behind" his pre-newspaper past, "a final Express - News, he was skeptical of "any- all, though today they're still at large, walk before embracing his future." That one in power, in government, and even

28 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 at his own newspaper"; meanwhile, his clothing was "hardly the uniform of a HE PREFERRED REPORTING professional." As Mexico correspondent, he "was not interested in the latest Wal- ... ABOUT GRASSROOTS Mart opening, the growing use of cell phones ... or ... the increasingly active and growing Mexican stock exchange." PEOPLE FIGHTING THEIR He preferred reporting from places like Jalisco and Chiapas, where he could GOVERNMENT'S LABYRINTHINE write about grassroots people fighting their government's labyrinthine cor- OF CORRUPTION AND INTRIGUE. ruption and intrigue. On his periodic trips to HQ in San Antonio, he disliked submit the article later without the when the [Zapatista] guerrilla uprising the institutionalization and politics of paper's previously having committed to first broke out four years earlier or when the newsroom. They had a name for publish it. the free trade agreement was signed in him in the home office: "Agent True." Shortly after the murder story broke, the early 1990s." If it wasn't green or it I looked up an anthropologist who'd didn't bleed, it didn't lead. True was thus was working at The Current, San spent two decades among the Huichols. understandably angry at the "decline in Antonio's "weekly alternative," "True went to their territory alone?" he front-page play of Mexico and border when the news hit about True's said incredulously, then noted that the stories. The clique of bilingual report- I murder. At first, the Express -News Indians were neither joyful nor wel- ers in the San Antonio newsroom ... intimated that True had been killed in coming to strangers. On the contrary, shared his view." the line of duty, while on assignment to they were roiling with anger at being True was so pissed that in late do a story about the Huichol Indians. exploited and harassed by peyote-seek- November 1998, just days before he left According to an editor's note published ing, Carlos- Castarieda-inspired tourists, for the Sierra, he sent the managing edi- on the newspaper's website, when he abusive Mexican soldiers, and an influx tor and several other editors an e-mail died, True "was doing two things he of mestizos who were terrorizing them challenging their news judgment. "[I] t loved: hiking through territory new to in order to chop down their forests for seems that the paper's Mexico news him, and pursuing what he knew to profit. Here's how bad it was, said the hole is closer to page nineteen than page be a significant story." Citing it as an anthropologist: Even though he was one," he complained. "Thoughtful and example of his dedication and journal- a Huichol-approved holy man who'd provocative project ideas go without istic excellence, the paper published the come and gone freely for years, lately he response ... little interest is evidenced story proposal that True had submitted no longer dared enter the Sierra unless in longer pieces ... What is wrong with months earlier. "A day near a Huichol he carried written authorization from this picture?" community is marked by the nearly community elders and was accompa- At the end of his e-mail, he men- constant sound of children laughing nied by a Huichol guide. If Indians tioned his plan to visit the San Antonio and playing," he had written in March really had killed True, he surmised, office in December to take up these 1998. "This kind of joy gives them a cer- they'd done it because he'd come on questions. According to Rivard, all the tain integrity in their being that allows their land without permission. As well, message did was irritate True's superi- them to welcome in strangers." maybe he'd taken photographs. "That's ors. As for Rivard, he was completely True was an amazingly prolific also taboo. It's serious." removed from the discussion. Further, reporter who had won accolades from Trail ofFeathers would have you believe "No one ever brought [True's Huichol other publications for his insightful True was in la-la land and divorced from story] proposal to my attention," he writing about Mexico's socio-economic critical thought processes because he writes. Nor did subordinate editors tell nooks and crannies. But the language of was bidding farewell to the demons of him about True's plans to go into the his proposal was dangerously romantic. his youth. I think it's likely that instead, Sierra solo. It read like the ideations of a gringo he was grappling with a demon of his Rivard is known as a smart, charm-

Mexicanophile on Valium and headed adulthood: the Express - News. Rivard ing guy who likes to curry a public for trouble. Yet the paper described it as tells us that True was ready to come out image as a respecter of great journalism. "a classic" that showed "the intensity of of the Sierra and into Oxford shirts and Right around the time True died, he [True's] feelings for the Huichol Indians 401(k) s. But he also says that True was was talking about spending whatever and his enthusiasm for this story." making plans for a "showdown" with money it took to hire good people for

The Express - News later admitted that the home office; he felt that his work the Express - News. He assembled a sta- the proposal had never been accepted. was being marginalized. Rivard admits ble of middle-aged reporters and col- Nonetheless, True had decided to use that by 1998, "Mexico simply wasn't umnists with varied, often bohemian his vacation time to visit the Sierra and generating the kind of headlines it did —continued on page 32

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 29 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Elegy for the Living BY CARRIE FOUNTAIN successful of these poems is Luna's ease with a working moral compass, even with her subjects, her ability to capture as we succumb to apathy, self-pity, rage, Pity the Drowned Horses moments of great weight with a relative vengefulness, and other human weak- by Sheryl Luna simplicity of phrasing. She's good at nesses. In the luminous last lines of the University of Notre Dame Press this kind of poetic maneuver: By main- collection's title poem, Luna snags this 72 pages, $15 taining an unimpressed, seen-it-all thread with great success: gaze, she captures the true depth of an IR eading Pity the exchange, or a silence. Luna imbues her The moon waltzes with the veil Drowned Horses, the poems with muted tragedy, as in this, of night clouds and finally water debut collection of the first stanza of "Organ Failure": gushes and the tree's roots drink poems from El Paso the last waters, the first waters, holy native Sheryl Luna, I When my grandfather drew his last waters brought down from sky, had the uncomfort- breath and you still may think of Moses and able sensation I was reading an elegy he turned to my mother's pink face, mist like you did when you to something that hasn't quite died yet. her beehive were twelve, and may still imagine Certainly there's a weighty mournful- prom-hair. He whispered fire, god's waters crashing down ness to Luna's borderlands, where the "There's no such thing on the heads of your enemies, yet stark poverty of Mexico butts against as a friend mijita." His heart then pity the drowned horses. the brash, unyielding sprawl of her gave out. American city. Yet things remain unset- While one of her main objectives seems tled. A grave precariousness hangs over As well, many of her images achieve a to be to prove the redemptive power these poems. Bones empty, but don't similarly subdued, local magnificence: of language—"singing" as she's fond break. The river, long expired as a of calling it—Luna's own language metaphor, refuses to die. The El Paso Roosters sometimes fails to lift off. She's lax Luna writes about is alive yet wasted, pranced across a lawn of shit, in her use of wieldy words like "rage" fraught with contradictions, full of proudly plumed and "loss" and "beauty." Images of wounds and absences. Pity the Drowned in black feathers, bobbing before the bones and blood and blue mountains Horses takes its reader across a ravaged gray goats. begin to run together, and their pow- landscape where "...the last few hares ers diminish rather than accumulate. sprint across a bloodied/highway" and Is it just me, or is there something of Flimsily constructed sentences, rather "there are women everywhere/who have William Carlos Williams' white chick- than adding to the rhythm, are jarring half-lost their souls/in sewing needles ens to be conjured up in this fine image, and imprecise. I found myself hung up and vacuum-cleaner parts." In this and in the syntax Luna uses to unwind on fragments such as those that begin world of little comfort, Luna is intent it? I get the sense Luna is cleverly turn- "Sonata on Original Sin": on seeking meaning—however bitter— ing Williams' pastoral image on its in the emptiness and meditating on head. She finds her beauty among dung- It was all gone: memory, time, trees. the redeeming power of language. covered roosters, and seems to be ask- The sea an imagined. Music Amidst sadness and poverty, we dis- ing coyly: How much depends on these a fog, and although unwhole, cover the poet singing, Whitmanesque, roosters, covered in feces, beside the I'm quiet night. No red cauldron, holding tight to a smart and stubborn gray goats? This unwaveringly exalted no lightening eye, no quick Jesus. hope that: view of common, even rotten, things pervades the collection. Luna sings of Furthermore, Luna has a tendency to if I sing long enough, I'll grow "the cadence of bees around garbage restate certain sentiments within a dreamlike cans," describes love appearing as "a poem, and in doing so lessens their and find a flock of pigeons, white shot of piss/against the night." power. In "Pity the Drowned Horses" under Throughout, Luna juxtaposes the the speaker is watering plants: wings lifting awkward bodies like high and the low, and explores other doves complications, such as the human ten- The stars hum still & blessed. You across the silky blue-white sky. dency to feel deeply while, at the same carry the cracked hose time, recoiling from pain and suffer- to water the drying tree, & the dead What's most remarkable in the most ing, our desire to navigate the world grass sings a silent hymn,

30 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 the water's dribble makes you want to cry, not because the At a loss for an answer, con- pipes flicted, the speaker turns swift- are dry like your grandmother's ly, surprisingly away from the bones, but because the sky self, to a careful description of is still, yet moves like the night the girls: you turned seven. One wears an electronic This is a lovely set of lines: pre- bracelet around her ankle. cise and surprising in syntax. The other's cheeks are red However, Luna undoes the power with too much rouge. of these lines with the next cou- I imagine they live nights ple, which only restate the action dangerously and overstate the sentiment: in an Oldsmobile near the Rio Grande, Here, that they love for real and the dry garden hose brings tears they love for love. to your eyes, and you weep your insignificance. The poem ends with subtle power, with the speaker admit- In another poem, "Bayou ting: Trolling," Luna's speaker finds that, after an afternoon troll- I lost answers ing the bayou with colorful new long ago and the faces of my friends, her spirits have been colleagues grew ghost-like lifted, her self renewed. I found and words fell away and the myself startled and moved by the poetry cancer came last stanza on the page: like a priest for the sacrifice.

"You're a tough woman." I Undoubtedly, the best of should've kissed him after I Luna's poems create this kind jumped leaps are best made in poems that are of complicated and unresolved ten- off his boat and later returned to New well grounded in time and space. The sion. Unnervingly, Luna's powers lie Orleans, where a silver-painted dazzling short poem "Two Girls from in creating landscapes—internal and mime strewn in Mardi Gras beads Juarez" begins in just this way: external—filled with this precarious- stood, a statue, winking. ness, this conflict, where the tables are "I see you," the white-faced jester Two girls from Juarez hesitantly step constantly being turned, and where sang. toward my desk. her reader is forced into uncomfort- "Ms.," one says with a paperback of able contact with a wild, frightening, And so I was disappointed when, turn- Plath 's Ariel, humanity. ■ ing the page, I found the poem contin- corners folded and coffee stained. ued for two more stanzas, soupy with "Was she white Carrie Fountain is a writer in Austin. poetic language, and ending with an or black?" overwrought sentiment: Here we find Luna's voice sharpened We are all of such shine, by restraint. In its neatness of syntax brandy in the open throat or the and casual twist of narrative, the poem WRITE moving white-eyes of a mime swings its door open wide. The two performing. Our word-wounds heal, students, having read "Daddy," accuse DIALOGUE burn, as fresh water Plath of being prejudiced. Luna's speak- meets the salt and magnolias weep er thinks to herself: 307. W 7th Street light. Austin, TX 78701 a black man bites a woman's heart, Luna's linguistic powers are most keen and all the wit [email protected] when she resists the inclination to let and the wordplay between darkness loose a deluge of language. Her poetic and light shrugs.

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 31

I. —Trail, continued from page 29 and resources to the Huichol story that The book narrates tale after tale of his careers like True's and stellar writing his reporter could never have imagined. besuited meetings with Mexican presi- reputations. Within a few years most Moreover, had True been given the dents and luminaries, and his extensive had left on their own or been fired. Huichol assignment instead of being efforts to have True honored by media Like so many mainstream editors ignored, he would have been joined by organizations as a martyr to journalism. these days, Rivard keeps his eyes sharp a staff photographer. When working in (According to the New York City-based on the corporate bottom line and the a foreign country, Rivard writes, "one Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), extent to which the contents of the rule is that there is strength in num- Mexico is indeed one of the world's news hole advance that line—or not. bers. ... People with bad intentions most dangerous countries for report- "If you are going to be an editor in are less likely to act against a pair or ers, editors and commentators. Besides today's newspaper world," he told a groups than an unwary individual." True, CPJ counts at least 11 victims in national media conference not long Had True gone to the Sierra with a pho- the past decade. Except for True, all of ago, "you have to not only be a jour- tographer, it's likely that they would the victims were Mexican journalists. nalist, but you have to have a fluency have kept their journalists' wits about Most of their murders seem directly in the language of the business side. .... them, obtained all the required per- attributable to their investigations and We came to this calling because we're mits from the leaders of each Huichol criticisms of corrupt officials and nar- people of words, but, in fact, the wars community, and True would still be cotraffickers. In other words, they were for good newspaper budgets are fought alive. Instead, he seems to have ended assassinated in the line of professional over spreadsheets and numbers." up thinking of the trip as a retreat. duty, and not because of dumb, bad Obsessive market research is an Thanks to former Newsweek correspon- luck on a vacation.) important component of those num- dent Alan Zarembo, True's journal was In a recent review of Trail of Feathers bers, as corporate media outlets con- later found in a Guadalajara police that he wrote for the Columbia tinually poll the public about what they warehouse. The journal contained vir- Journalism Review, Los Angeles Times like and don't like. Anything deemed tually no reporter's notes; instead it was reporter Sam Quinones, who worked unpopular tends to get dropped from filled with love letters to his wife. as a freelance journalist in Mexico coverage—and in most surveys, inter- City for many years, recalls how when national news comes in at the bottom. o what about that trail of Phil True was still alive, he and other This was especially true in the 1990s, feathers? It points not just to foreign correspondents had a habit of when foreign reporting virtually disap- human remains, but also to meeting each Friday for drinks at a peared from TV and many newspapers. the heart of Robert Rivard, bar called the Nuevo Leon. "It was a whoS seems to feel guilty about how True vibrant group," Quinones writes, "one, That's when True's Huichol proposal was turned down. got treated on his watch. Unfortunately, I felt, that was becoming aware that a Imagine if, instead, an editor had he responded with a tawdry, pop-psy- historic story of Mexico's change was appreciated his pitch. That editor would chology number on True's past, while slowly unfolding before it." have looked at True's flaky descrip- at the same time claiming that he and But by the time True died, foreign tions of joyful Indians and known True were kindred spirits in bohemian- journalists were already leaving the enough about Latin America to see a ism and suffering. country due to corporate U.S. media's real story. It's the one described by the Rivard tells his readers that he was declining interest in Latin America anthropologist, and it really is about a blue-collar kid like True. Indeed, coverage. The Nuevo Leon salon was Mexicans—even Huichols—having both were reporters in Brownsville; further doomed by September 11, their lives turned around by "newswor- both worked south of the border early which "finished it off as the world's thy" things like free trade and political in their journalism careers. But True focus turned elsewhere." Quinones change. (More neo-liberal democracy didn't get his first real reporting job associates True's demise with the end means more tourism and more of those until he was in his 40s. Rivard had of lively journalism in a place long rich, peyote-seeking tourists. Opening entered the corporate media world loved by U.S. seekers who dress in markets for export of raw materials while still in his 20s. Not only do the Levis and sandals. Or who, if they favor means more deforestation of the Sierra, parallels not hold up, Rivard's attempts suits, still love to drink cervezas with as does the pervasive drug trade.) to commune therapeutically with the idealists in huaraches. Despite what An editor who appreciated True's dead reporter—by casting himself as a Trail of Feathers implies, it was probably work would have okayed the story after fellow casualty of bad parenting—ring the decline of this fine sensibility, and helping him retool the proposal and embarrassingly false. (When he misbe- not some tawdry psychodrama, that contact the anthropologists. Is that haved as a child in the 1950s, he writes, pushed a good reporter irreversibly asking too much of the mainstream his mother whipped him and sent him into the wild. ■ media? Maybe so. Ironically, however, to his room.) in his pursuit of the story of True's Feathers serves mainly as an attempt Contributing writer Debbie Nathan lives death, Rivard ended up devoting time to aggrandize Rivard professionally. in New York City.

32 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 Austin's Only Progressive Radio Station

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JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 33 BOOKS & THE CULTURE I BY RUPERTO GARCIA Weddings

11) orotea Jimenez liked she liked to spell their names with the his fingers up and down as if he had just weddings until she letters in the bowl. touched a hot stove with his fingertips died. When her first husband died, she and was trying to shake it off. She died at one in approached the coffin quietly with dig- "(Ta bueno, abuelita." "All right, fact. Not wanting to nity and left him a love letter she had grandma," he had replied. cause any unpleasant- perfumed herself, It was perfume, she Dorotea Jimenez had watched them ness, she did it only after the bride and explained to her friends who asked her all walk away laughing, but looking at groom and most of the others had left years later, that he had liked when he her with admiration and a new respect. the church. When the wedding was held her. The lipstick that she sealed None of them ever asked again. And over, she went back inside the church the envelope and dotted her signature she knew that the other women she and sat in the same place where she had with was his favorite kind. The enve- spoke with would never hear of it, but sat for many years—always toward the lope, which had been made some time that the young people of the church she front and to the right, about the fourth in the 50s, was made of paper soft to attended would all know what she had pew. And then she clutched her little the touch and was beautiful enough said by that afternoon. bag of wrapped rice—an extra one she that the neighbor's children liked to To the amusement of both of her had decided to keep for herself—and pull the stationery out of the small box husbands, who were secure in her love calmly and quietly died. She was 92. where she kept it on her dresser just to for them, she always introduced herself She had had her own weddings, two look at it. to all the young men in church who of them. It wasn't as if she had been She had never had any children of her had reached puberty and had begun to deprived of love and affection from own. No one knew why. They imagined develop firm muscular builds. anyone. Both her husbands—the first of that she would have been a wonderful "Just let me say hello to little Johnny whom had been killed in an auto acci- mother, but she never discussed moth- over there," she would tell her husbands. dent in 1968, when the Robert Kennedy erhood with them. Many of the ladies And both of them, when their turn assassination was being televised, and thought that she practiced birth con- came, would walk faithfully beside her the second of whom died of a family trol, contrary to local Catholic teach- to say hello to the new local football or illness she didn't know he had until he ings, but she herself never explained it. baseball star. After saying hello, and died—had loved her immensely. Dorotea Jimenez liked to describe before she left, she was always sure to The latter had been with her until her private life, but only its positive grab them with her hand on one side or almost the year that she died; he was side. And, as if she perceived that her another of their young, firm waist and 86. She had married young, she told her non-production of children might be utter, "Muscle," followed by a moaning friends, for the lovemaking. considered a negative, she never once "umm" sound. "Esos otros viejitos," she had told her mentioned it to anyone or explained Her husbands, always amused by her friends, "no tienen pasion." Those other herself to anyone she met. antics, had rolled their eyes and told old men have no passion. She had mar- Once, at a church function, a young the young men not to worry, "No to va ried her second husband in her 60s. boy brash enough to inquire brought hacer nada. Aqui estoy." "She won't do He was younger by a few years, but up the topic. Other young men were anything to you. I'm right here." when she spoke of his body in bed she present when he had asked. She looked Neither of her husbands ever went referred to him as if he was in his 20s. at him with her shiny eyes, lowering to weddings with her, at least not after "And down there," she added with a her glasses just enough to look at him a while. gleam, "18." in front of the others with an amused The first one had gone to five or so, When her husbands had spoken to frown, and told him just loud enough but realized—as much as he liked to women her age, they only said that she for the others to hear, "Mira, mi Juju-0. go anywhere with her—that a wedding never lost her romance. She insisted, No es cuando viene el nino, pero cuando was one place that she really didn't want both of the husbands had reported, in viene el hombre lo que me ha interesado." him to accompany her after all. Having serving them alphabet cereal at least "It's not the coming of the child, but realized that, he contented himself by once a week—not because she thought the coming of the man that has always searching small-town papers within a they would like it or because she was interested me." 30-mile radius—a one-hour drive back lazy in the kitchen—she was a tradi- She was 55 then, and the young men and forth—for church weddings. There tional Hispanic woman who believed who had overheard her had laughed, was almost one every week during cer- she should cook faithfully—but because and the insolent inquirer had shaken tain times of the year. He would then

34 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006

• mention them when they were sitting at breakfast, making it sound as if he was only doing it in passing, and not letting her know that he had scoured the racks of local vendors for newspapers from other small towns located nearby. "Se va a casar una muchachita que se llama Elizabeth Montemayor con Luis Placencia en Alice," he would say casually over coffee. "A young girl named Elizabeth Montemayor is going to marry a young man named Luis Placencia in Alice." Then he would casu- ally mention the hours and the name of the church. She preferred church weddings, he had realized, and avoided those held in city or other public buildings. Once mentioned, he always thought she had forgotten the details of time and place until he would notice, some two hours before the wedding was scheduled to begin, that she would start to get dressed and ask him to get ready to take her. He was her driver during those occasions. In the beginning, when he used to go with her, he would sit beside her quietly, watching some young couple getting married whom nei- ther had ever seen before, wondering what the family thought of them sitting so close to the front, or of her tears when the young couple exchanged vows. Dorotea Jimenez had finally told him, alleviating his sense of obligation, that he didn't have to go inside with her anymore. The way she patted his forearm, and the way she smiled at him, made him realize that it was okay—and that she meant it. Her second husband was given that speech—with much the same delivery—the first time he took her to a wedding. He had bought a jacket for the occasion, and she had stopped him outside, by the car, and let him know it was okay not to go in. He seemed relieved when she smiled at him, patting his arm as she spoke. They didn't know the couple, she explained, and "you look uncomfortable in a jacket right now." That day he waited patiently in the heat, sitting on the passenger's side and occasionally leaning against the outside of their car, until she had come out beaming. The look on her face had convinced him to do what his predecessor had done—search the newspapers for wedding announcements until the day he died. Illustration by Mike Krone

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 35 "ESOS OTROS VIEJITOS," SHE HAD TOLD HER FRIENDS, "NO TIENEN PASION." THOSE OTHER OLD MEN HAVE NO PASSION.

oth of her husbands had husband. As much as he had tried, and vial of perfume her first husband had been laborers of one kind or as much as he apologized to her for given her, and the savings her second another. Before her, none of many years, he could never afford to husband had kept to eventually get her B them had owned a jacket or get her a real diamond wedding ring. a wedding band. a suit, and the one jacket each of them Because she had wanted to marry him He had always tried, he said, because bought had been for her weddings. so quickly, they had used the rings she he wanted the best for her. And the lit- When they married her, more had had from her first husband. It had tle paper bag in which he kept the sav- because they knew that's the way she hurt him deeply, everyone had said ings—which Dorotea Jimenez would would have wanted it, they had each later, but he had told them all, indi- occasionally carry in her purse without worn a tux. All of the men around vidually and in small groups, "Dorotea his knowledge—was one that most of them, who had worked and dirtied Jimenez wants to marry me, and for the men had already seen. themselves with field work as much as that, I will swallow anything, includ- He had shown all of them his efforts her husbands, had contributed two or ing any trace of my pride." and had asked many of them if he was three dollars each to help them rent it. Everyone knew at their wedding getting close enough, not knowing the "For any other woman," they had where the rings had come from, and no price of a ring himself. (He had been told them, "you could wear anything one, not even the other men who could too embarrassed to walk into a jewelry you wanted, but this is Dorotea have afforded to help him, criticized store too early, without enough money, Jimenez, and you should wear a tux. any part of it. he had explained.) Dorotea Jimenez is in love with you, "Se esta casando con Dorotea Jimenez, And Dorotea Jimenez knew all of and you should wear a tux." At the y Para eso, uno se puede comer lo que sea." it—about the savings that he never weddings, each of the men who had "He is marrying Dorotea Jimenez, and mentioned to her; about him showing contributed sat toward the front, each for that, one can swallow anything." the small bag to the others, at work and holding hands with his wife, with their At her last wedding, the day she died, elsewhere; about the jackets and the children in other parts of the church Dorotea Jimenez wore her husbands' tuxedoes; about the heat outside while looking at the rare spectacle. In front wedding ring. She was leaning on the they waited; about the men holding of their own children, and in front of end of the pew, all the way to the right, hands with their wives at her wed- the whole church, each husband and when they found her. One of the older, dings; and about the contributions wife behaved as if Dorotea Jimenez's but still strong, men, carried her out to everyone made. weddings brought them love and life the car from the wedding, explaining Until the day she died at 92, when again. to the people there that she had gone she leaned against the end of the pew Dorotea Jimenez died at 92. When to sleep. after her last wedding, Dorotea Jimenez she arrived at her last wedding, she A few of her friends followed him knew all of it. ■ was wearing a smock a young man had along in their cars to her home, where given her for her birthday, December the women found the keys to her house Ruperto Garcia is a former . Observer 20, the year before. The dress she wore in her purse. Along with her keys, they staff writer. He practices law in San was tastefully and elegantly decorated found a few small envelopes of the Antonio and is working on a book of with a pin—a present from her second kind that she had always liked, a small short stories.

36 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 —Ringside, continued from page 27 miracle worker. Later, when she left she could have ever blessed rifles, he other products of binational trade. City El Paso and toured throughout the argued. He warned me to be careful of boosters claimed El Paso's geographic United States, she also made headlines what I wrote. He's seen terrible things location made it "the best pass across wherever she went. Many of the out-of- happen to people who have written the Continental Divide between the town journalists that visited Teresita about her in the past. One woman who equator and the North Pole." It was in the Segundo Barrio reported that wrote a fictionalized novel about his one of the fastest growing cities in they thought some kind of healing great-aunt—with a few passages that the Southwest and had a population— was actually taking place, but they weren't entirely flattering—ended up according to the 1896 El Paso City all had different explanations for this getting kidnapped in Mexico. Others Directory—of 15,568. About 60 phenomenon. A news correspondent have suffered serious injury. It must be percent were of Mexican descent. For from Austin, for example, declared that the avenging spirit of the Yaquis, who the next few decades, El Paso's railroad without knowing it, Teresita was using were devout followers of Teresita dur- connections and the concentration of the techniques of some of the best ing her life, Luis Alberto explained. Mexican residents would make the city known hypnotists in the world. Many With Luis Alberto, it's not always an ideal location from which to plot a of her healing methods, however, were easy to tell how much of his rollo—that revolution. grounded on the indigenous culture part-college professor and part-mixed- Teresita soon became the most that she had grown up with. When blood-vato-loco spiel of his—is up front famous woman in El Paso. Her name many of her predictions came to pass, and how much is tongue in cheek. I appeared regularly in the gossip col- the villagers took it as another sign that thanked him anyhow for the warning umns of the local newspapers. El Teresita was divinely inspired. about the curse of the Yaquis. I assured Pasoans couldn't get enough of her. In the fall of 1896, when a rebellion him that I wasn't about to libel his Great One postcard salesman did a "hefty broke out in several towns along the TIa. I told him I thought his TIa Abuela business" selling pictures of Teresita U.S.-Mexico border waged in Teresita's comes off smelling like roses—liter- throughout the area, as far as the name, rumor had it that the young ally. (People said that during a healing neighboring town of Las Cruces. It miracle worker had used her powers Teresita smelled like roses.) wasn't just "Mexican peons"—as the of astral projection to lead the revolt But at the same time Santa Teresita Anglo press called them—who gath- against the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz. is a lot more complex than some of the ered around Teresita. The sick of all Although she was hundreds of miles hagiographical accounts that have been races, the curious, the insane, thieves, away in El Paso, federal soldiers claimed written about her in the past. Teresita peddlers, upper-class admirers, anti- they saw Santa Teresa leading a group may have been a pacifist during her Diaz rebels, newspaper reporters, law- of rebels at Nogales, Sonora. They said Mexican period, but by the time she enforcement officers and paid govern- she was riding upon a white horse that reached El Paso she was no longer the ment informants from both sides of the hovered above the ground. same woman. It appears that the mas- border, all hovered around Teresita's sacre of Tomochic radicalized her, like Segundo Barrio home. The newspapers cclaimed Chicano-Irish- it did many other fronterizos. There kept their readers informed about every German-American author are just too many firsthand accounts— new development. They published reg- Luis Alberto Urrea—a fel- from many different sources—about ular dispatches about her healings, her A low research freak whom I her underground activities in support dress, and about every important guest consider a friend—sent me an e-mail of the revolution. It could be that they're who stopped by to chat with her—such when he found out that I was going mostly just rumors, puro chisme. But as El Paso Mayor Richard Campbell or to write about Teresita Urrea's revo- those historians who completely excise the ex-governor of Chihuahua, Lauro lutionary activities in El Paso. He's this chisme from their accounts leave Carrillo. Teresita's great-nephew and was work- out an important part of the picture. Reading about Teresita in the El Paso ing at the time on a historical novel, The With Teresita Urrea, fact and rumor newspapers was almost like watching Hummingbird's Daughter, that focuses often blend into one. I've explored the a modern day soap opera, except with on Teresita's life before her American zones where Teresita left her mark as an added dose of international politi- exile. He heard that I was looking carefully as I could, but I must admit cal intrigue. News of the young lady's into rumors that Teresita, while in El that I can't always distinguish clearly suitors immediately made the front Paso, not only helped prepare an upris- between the two. At the risk of life, limb, pages. But Teresita was not just a celeb- ing against the government of Porfirio and incurring the wrath of the Yaquis, rity at the local level. Her fame spread Diaz but even blessed the revolutionar- I've given it my best shot. ■ like wildfire throughout the rest of ies' rifles. Luis Alberto didn't believe the United States as well. Newspaper that Teresita could have ever done such David Romo, the son of Mexican correspondents came to the border a thing. In Mexico she was all about immigrants, is an essayist, historian, from San Francisco, Austin and New compassion and healing. She opposed musician and cultural activist. He lives in York to interview the young Mexican bloodshed. It's just not possible that El Paso. This is his first book.

JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 37 AFTERWORD I BY GREGG BARRIOS The Kindness of Strangers

fter the success of hate relationship between Stanley man asks Miss Alma Winemiller if she The Glass Menagerie, and Blanche in a play now considered speaks Spanish. Poquito, she answers, Thomas Lanier among the best of the 20th century. But to which he replies, "Sometimes poqui- Williams, later known it all became clear when he witnessed to is enough." as Tennessee, spent an altercation between Williams and Searching in other critical and bio- time in Mexico in late Rodriguez: "If Tennessee was Blanche, graphical works proved more daunt- A1945. "I feel I was born in Mexico in Pancho was Stanley." ing: Pancho's name wasn't even listed another life," he wrote in a letter from That became my mantra as I traveled in the index of Tennessee Williams: Mexico City. Over the years, other to interview those who had known the Memoirs. The playwright informed his writers—from Katherine Anne Porter two during the years they lived together readers that he couldn't use his former to Williams' mentor, Hart Crane— (1945-1947). Most roads led to New lover's name for fear of legal action. had expressed the same sentiment. But Orleans. Coincidentally, their relation- Nevertheless, he managed to tell their luck was with Williams as he crossed la ship ended when Streetcar opened on story by renaming Pancho as "Santo." frontera at Piedras Negras/Eagle Pass: Broadway. By then Williams had a new Other writers have also referred to He met Pancho Rodriguez, a young muse, Frank Merlo. "Santo" and to Williams' other sobri- Mexican American. The tale of that At first it seemed I was going nowhere. quet for Rodriguez: the Princess. meeting would later be embellished— Regulars at the annual Tennessee These clues led me to Tennessee with Williams' car breaking down and Williams Festival in New Orleans Williams' Letters to Donald Windham: a border guard's son helping to rescue shrugged. Some asked if I was confus- 1940-1965. I then received an e-mail a manuscript that border guards had ing Pancho with Merlo. Others felt from Williams collector Joe De Salvo confiscated. there was nothing of import to be of Faulkner House, the famed book- The rising 34-year-old playwright gleaned. Finally, through friends at store in Pirate's Alley in New Orleans. was immediately smitten with the 24- Loyola, I reconnected with Pancho's Johnny left all the materials from year-old Pancho—the border guard's brother Johnny. At first he declined an Pancho's estate to a nephew. For the son—and invited him to New Orleans interview; he had promised Pancho he most part, the family had been in the as his live-in muse. The rest, as they would never reveal details of the pain- dark about Rodriguez's relationship say, is history. But the chronicle of ful affair. Then he warmed up after I with Williams; the nephew showed their relationship was forgotten and, reminded him of our Texas connection. little interest. But a sister, whom nei- to a large extent, whitewashed from We did two short phone conversations, ther Pancho nor Johnny had ever men- Williams' life story. but Johnny died before we could do a tioned, then called. "I have the letters, I met Pancho Rodriguez in the mid- sit-down interview. photos, and other items that might 1970s, when I was teaching summer I did, however, hear from Virginia interest you," she said, tantalizing me. classes at Loyola University in New Spenser Carr, a biographer of Katherine The pieces of the puzzle were begin- Orleans. I knew that he had been a Anne Porter and Carson McCullers. ning to come together. A friend of close friend of Williams, but Pancho Carr had interviewed Pancho at length Windham's informed me that Williams and his brother Johnny were more about the summer of 1946, when he and Pancho had made several cheap, interested in news of relatives in the and Williams entertained McCullers personal recordings at the Pennyland Eagle Pass/Crystal City area, where I at their Nantucket bungalow, which Arcade on Royal Street back in the used to live. Williams had dubbed "Rancho Pancho." 1940s—and that they were now part Years later, I was a neophyte play- Both writers worked together during of the New York Public Library theater wright with a few credits to my name that summer: McCullers on a stage collection. One featured Williams as and a fellowship to write Tejano stories version of her novel, The Member of the reporter Vanilla Williams interview- for the theater. While exploring the pos- Wedding, and Williams on a rewrite ing the visiting Princess Rodriguez sibility that the Williams-Rodriguez of Summer and Smoke, which now (Pancho) of Monterrey on Decatur affair had the stuff for good theater, included a Mexican family in Eagle Street. "Oh Princess, don't cruise there," I came upon My Life, Elia Kazan's Pass/Piedras Negras named Gonzalez Vanilla warns. autobiography. Kazan, who directed (Pancho's maternal last name). "But I thought that was where the both the stage and film versions of A Even through poetic language, it was action was," the Princess retorts. Streetcar Named Desire, writes about easy to identify the play's inspiration. Other discs feature Pancho sing- his difficulty understanding the love- In its final scene, a traveling sales- ing in Spanish and Williams reciting

38 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JANUARY 13, 2006 Pancho Rodriguez and Tennessee Williams photo from the estate of Johnny Rodriguez poetry. However, the piece de resis- and New York; and correspondence named the character after a friend in tance is a scene from Streetcar (nearly from Streetcar producer Irene Mayer St. Louis.) Pancho further argued that two years before its Broadway open- Selznick, literary agent Audrey Wood, the part should go to a Latino because ing) in which Pancho plays Stanley to and from Williams himself. The diaries Marlon Brando was unknown. The par- Williams' Blanche. My mantra sud- of their trip to Rancho Pancho and of ticular Latino he had in mind: Mexican denly took new life. their final visit shortly before Williams' American actor Anthony Quinn (who, Both Windham and Williams' biog- death proved invaluable. indeed, was cast as Stanley Kowalski on rapher Lyle Leverich claimed that Recently, I found two other Broadway when Brando left to do the Streetcar's most famous line, "I have Rodriguez sisters willing to speak about film version). always depended on the kindness of their brother, who had remained a In one of his letters from Hollywood, strangers," originated with Pancho. muse for Williams until the very end. Pancho had urged Johnny not to aban- According to Johnny, the Mexican During one of their last visits, don New Orleans. street vendor in Streetcar who hawks Williams informed Pancho that he "Don't come to California," he warned. "ji— ores para los muertos" was based on had selected Anthony Quinn and Katy " [H] ere in Los Angeles, we are consid- their mother. Jurado to star in The Red Devil Battery ered peons like we were in Texas. In Others, including Gore Vidal, recall Sign, set on the Texas border in Eagle New Orleans, we live in an international that Williams would use Rodriguez Pass. Apparently, the news had moved city, and we are treated with respect and to create situations that he would later Pancho to tears. Decades earlier, he had good jobs. Both Tenn and I can't wait to incorporate into his plays and short argued that the lead character of Stanley get back to work, to be back home." ■ stories. in Streetcar should have been Mexican Johnny's estate contained a treasure American and not Polish, since there Gregg Barrios is a playwright and trove of materials: photographs of were more Latinos than Poles in New journalist who lives in San Antonio. Williams and Pancho as young men Orleans. Moreover, he pointed to the His play Rancho Pancho will premiere and as middle-aged gentlemen; letters wrought-iron balconies and grand later this year. He is also completing a from Pancho to Johnny, written dur- courtyards as a legacy of 40 years of biography of the life and times of Pancho ing trips with Williams to Hollywood Spanish rule. (Scholars say Williams Rodriguez.

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