Las True Stories of San Antonio

First Children's video on the life of Willie Velasquez/The boy made of lightning

2011-12-03T23:37:00.002-06:00

Willie Velasquez was a voting rights pioneer, and is one of three Latinos to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

When I tell this story to children, they cry and cheer -- and want to vote.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/willievelasquez/the-boy-made-of-lightning

For more information:
http://www.wix.com/anabarbararenaud/willie

I was sexually harrassed and millions more

2011-11-03T21:18:00.004-05:00

When I was in my twenties, I was fresh out of a graduate program, newly married and totally stupid about professional men in the office. Daddy just didn't prepare me enough, as I suspect happened to Anita Hill. Sad but so true.

It was the late seventies, and my boss, who headed a non-profit organization in Austin, Texas, said so many things I don't know where to begin. Here is a sampling:

1. "I'm gonna sleep with every woman in this organization." (I guess this included me).
2. "Did you have good sex over the weekend with your husband?"
3.   "Can you get her for me?" (On a return trip from Washington D.C. to Dallas)
4. "We call you Miss Prim and Proper." Because I had told the young women in the office about
the sexual harrassment legislation, how they didn't have to sleep with him or any other "boss."
5. "Your problem is that you aren't nice to the boardmembers." (Mostly men and mostly lechers)
And here is when I should have sued immediately:
6. "I don't want blood in this office." My boss's sexualized culture was such that one of his underlings had posted a newspaper cartoon of the increasingly bikini-clad Texas A&M cheerleaders -- with their behinds totally Barshamian-naked -- this creative guy had written my name on one pair, and two other female colleagues, each got her own nalga. Because I had the support of one of my colleagues -- the third woman, a secretary who was enthralled by him would not, could not, pobrecita, though she was silenced by the incident.   Since there were two women complaining -- my boss took the photograph down, refused to give it to me -- he was a graduate of Princeton, after all, and that's when he stated that "he didn't want blood." Of course he was as glib and funny and charming as Herman Cain. In his early thirties at the time, married, with two daughters.

I wish I had sued him. I'm this close to giving you his name. Hell with it, his name was Pedro Ruiz Garza, and he owes me an apology. I never slept with any man in my office, nor did I encourage them in any way. I think the real story about sexual harrassment is how millions of women can't tell their story cause they're afraid of losing their job, or what does it mean? Am I a puta? Did I ask for it?   My story isn't new, it's the oldest story of all. And it happens to millions of women, especially in their twenties and thirties. It's happening right now.

There are lots of Herman Cains out there -- and many times their wives are the last to know. This is a story of men because they have privilege -- and I suspect that brown and black men are more easily snared in the dragnet of race. Of course men are gonna fight back, who wants to lose this kind of power, this sexy thrilling fantasy that men have made for themselves -- because we women let them.

I'm sure that Pedro has raised his daughters to fight back, but he owes me and every other woman he worked with an apology for his abhorrent language and falta de respeto. I"m sure he's taught his daughters not to put up with men like him.

But it's my fault too, because I should have sued the bastard.

Telling the stories of Tejas

2011-11-01T17:39:00.000-05:00

www.wix.com/anabarbararenaud/willie

Children deserve to know their stories, especially the stories of struggle,
faith, love, and sacrifice. It's time that writers tell great stories, and may this be just the
beginning.

Found and Lost and Found again: Fluffie arrives in the barrio two weeks later

2011-09-08T13:24:00.003-05:00

A miracle happened.

Fluffie, the maltese-poodle mix, escaped the Dog Pound some weeks ago: He was my dog, cause after the Dog Pound picked him up -- looking like a rastafarian with very bad hair, it cost me $50 to save him from death row at the Pound. Why do you want this dog, lady? Fluffie isn't tame you see. He's Street. Not a bad type, just keeps a safe distance from people. At the pound, on Death Row, I explained my whole year of trying to catch this cabron. So, they felt sorry for the little hellion, and he got registered, neutered, shots, micro-chipped, and shaved down to his nakedness.

I guess Lady Destiny had something to show me, cause when I went to get him the next day, he slipped under his collar and ran for the hills as he was getting into the back of my car, thanks to the help of a Dog Pound staffer who thought I was abusing Fluffie who was doing some twisty-tango moves. It wasn't all my fault, I asked the Dog Pound Clinic to make that collar tight, the assistant swore he'd never get out. I've seen this dog on the street for a year, I told her. Tried dog traps, barely legal drugs, and weinies. He takes the weinies, eats the drugs, ignores the traps. This dog came from a family that ran with the mustangs. He's the boss of the barrio, trust me.

The dog will not be able to get out of this collar, she repeated. Five minutes, later, he was running across the lot toward the Food Bank, at the corner of 90 and 151, on the far westside of town.

The dispatchers came out, the big guys with the bigger hooks, who all ran toward the lot after a dog that weighed maybe 15 pounds and bare-assed. I didn't even try, had to go to work, and cried myself that night with guilt, anger at ACS, Fluffie, and my checkbook.

The next day I got on the phone and called everyone I could at the Dog Pound and blamed them. Got a personal call from the Director, the Protector and Killer of Dogs, depending on how you look at it, and he assured me that the Dog Pound had two dispatchers looking, a trap set up outside the Dog Pound, that Fluffie would be back, they always do. Don't worry, ma'm, we're gonna catch this dog.

Yesterday I got a call from Michael, from Fluffie's barrio, Ruiz and San Jacinto, way across town from the Dog Pound. "Hey, I barely recognize him, you really shaved him, didn'tcha? Sure good to get him back."

Fluffie travelled about fifteen miles through traffic, scorching heat, and big dogs that could mistake him for a live weinie. Gave him some smoked ones today, and said hello. He's happy, and I have to figure out what to do now. Here's the before and after pics:

Fluffie says, Come Get me Now, Fools.

How I found and lost Fluffie in San Antonio

2011-08-25T13:33:00.000-05:00

This is Fluffie, a dog from the Westside that I've been trying to catch for a year. He's a mustang-poodle. I've tried dog traps from the Animal Defense League, dozens of weinies, and almost illegal drugs. Nothing worked. He's a sweet dog, but afraid of people. Two days ago he finally got trapped in a yard on Colorado Street, and Mike, a man who was my lookout called me and I went right over the next morning. He was already on Death Row, curled up in a corner. I paid to get him fixed, his shots, microchipped, the works. I went yesterday to get him, ready with weinies, a training leash, a collar and leash. He's a Maltese Poodle, apparently, but who knew? Weighs about 15 pounds, so the dreadlocks weighed more than him. I told the woman in the Clinic to please make the collar tight so that he wouldn't get away, told her he was a wild one. She told me that no way could he get away from the collar, though it wasn't as snug as I would have liked, but these are the people who work with dogs, and maybe they know something? I walked out slowly with the Fluffie and he dragged, then walked some, let me pet him a little, let me carry him a little before he made signs he wanted to bite me, got back on the ground, then dragged and started wrestling with the leash. A guy came out to help me, and we walked to the car where I opened the back, and by this time because Fluffie was wiggling like the little maniac he is, slipped out of the collar that was supposed to be "tight" and got away. Went under the van, and the guy called for help from ACS but no one came. Then Fluffie was about to take off to the freeway, but the guy did some kind of football defense-move, and cut him off. Fluffie ran off to the dried grass between the ACS and the Food Bank. Finally the ACS truck came and they told me they would find him for sure and call me. Of course they haven't. The really sad thing in all this is that they are blaming me. They get paid to save dogs, and some of us just do it because who could resist el Fluffie? If they only knew how hard I tried. Now he's buck-naked and furless out there, I hope someone can trap him and save him. He's a good little dog, with some weinies and patience, he can make it. He's two years old according to my ACS papers. They say he could've been abused in the past, and that's why he's so skittish around people.

Governor Perry wants Latina girls in Texas to not have sex

2011-07-22T13:31:00.001-05:00

Ay, let's come together and behold the cemented and unforgiving mind of our Governor in Texas. There are pregnant teenage girls everywhere, sometimes you see girls with a baby and pregnant again. Sometimes you see them on the bus with three children. These are girls who look like they're 14, 15, 16 years old.
Can't get birth control in Texas, thanks to our Governor who wants to be President, and says our abstinence policies work -- well, they worked for him.

The only reason I didn't have sex in high school was because I was afraid of Daddy's wrath -- but even that doesn't stop the young from the conspiracy of nature and hip-hop.

The Bad Dream-State of Texas

2011-07-07T19:10:00.000-05:00

I'm a Chicana, a Mexican-American, an American citizen born in this embarrassing land called Texas who is rendered almost speechless by the continued impoverished, dream-toppling politics of the chosen tribe they call conservatives in this state. Are these people on drugs? Only legal ones, probly. But they're living in the dreams of the past, the myths, the legends, the belief they would always have Texas as theirs, when, surprise! It belongs to all of us.

I have not been able to write about it cause the continued legislative hate is worser than a tsunami, a Joplin-category tornado, a Gulf Coast oil spill, it's been a series of Katrinaesque pendejadas coming out of that big-hair empty-headed Governor Perry and his ilk that make me....wanna cuss and spit.

So I will. Like who could possibly vote for a man who is proud of giving us a state when we could be the next silicon valley, but instead we're building more pulgas and jails? Of course corporations like to come here, we don't like unions and if you want to spew your basura, go for it. And get a gun while you're at it, and take it to college too. We've now returned to the past behind John Wayne, and it won't be over until somebody shoots at this movie. Bam-bam.

Is that progress or what?

This tribe of fear and John Wayne wannabes have beaten me up. Yes, I am bruised, battered, poor for daring to write in a state that dares to deny children the love of reading, denies the best immigrant-born children the right to go to college and treats them like criminals, and if they could, they'd deport me too. But I'm not out yet.

Confession: My birth certificate was misspelled in the fifties when I was born -- they don't know how to write French names in this state -- and if my late mother hadn't sworn on a stack of Bibles in Austin that yes, she remembered my birth and the midwife, as I was getting my passport, who knows, who friggin knows what the next legislature will do.

Where to start talking about Texas? How to stop? We're at the bottom of everything, you name it. Pollution. Education. Millions in prisons and we spend zillions for that. Obese, a nice word for gorditos. We have the biggest guts and that's because we won't tolerate mass transit so we can walk. Hell no! This is Texas, and real men have trucks. If it wasn't for all the Mexican immigration, legal and otherwise, I don't know who'd work on our tires, roofs, restaurants and clean our hotels, but let's pretend the brown ones aren't over 40% of the state population and that your children and grandchildren will be brown too. Dream on...And what kind of state will we become then? Ask Steve Murdock, the demographer whose work I admire and if the legislature can't read, then why bother? We don't have a state insurance tax now, depending on property taxes, and live in the dark ages with our regressive sales taxes. I probably pay more taxes than the Governor, cause he gets loopholes.

I could go on, but I won't. I do know our oppressive laws may blunt the inevitable changes, but change is comin'. Like it or not, baby. I got my degree outside this state no thanks to Texas, and
there's just enough of us who can write and think and have also read the Bible and agree on the profound story of it, unlike our Governor, who has turned it into a prop and carries it with his coyote-killing gun. Or maybe the money he's made stealing this land for himself and his cronies gets him real good hairspray. Or maybe he's got just enough Mexican or Black in that hair, and this is what happens when you forget how we are all descended from the same tribe.

Transforming the Alamo, Making Historia

2011-03-17T19:18:00.002-05:00

Yes, Blame the Arizona shooting on Sarah Palin

2011-01-08T16:32:00.003-06:00

It is the inchoate fear of the increasingly virulent language and actions of the right-wing that led to this "senseless" shooting in Arizona today of the Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the killing of half-a-dozen people, including an aide and Judge Roll, along with injuring more than a dozen others.

After listening to Limbaugh, Palin, and their arch-conservative cohorts, it has been clear to me they have encouraged hate, fear, and violence in their attacks against the President, with lies, distortions, a total ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, all with a crucifix around her neck.

I want our Democratic leaders and our President to call this for what it is: Fear of how the world is changing, and how it must change, how it was destined to change. In the next days, you will hear about the "senseless" killer(s). Not true. Everything is connected -- and the fearmongerers in this country who are making millions for their lies and hypocrisy need to be challenged by our leadership who understand that we must be tolerant, peacemaking, inclusive.

But of course, many of them won't -- they want to appeal to the "mainstream" who is also afraid of the changing demographics in this country, the economic and cultural impact of globalization, climate change, the aging economics of this country -- but please, they don't want things to change right now.

So it will be up to us to call our representatives and demand that they take a stand on this shooting that is not senseless at all.

Better yet, I hope that women around the country take these guns away from the boys and the girls who think that being a boy is somehow special, once and for all.

Power doesn't come from a loaded gun, Ms. Palin. It comes from a woman who recognizes that we are here to heal the world. A woman who stands up for Peace, Love, Forgiveness, Healing. That kind of woman is truly fearless, it is not weak at all. And that kind of woman is inside each and every one of us if we're not afraid to listen.

The revolution has begun: Dream Act Fails in Senate/Immigrant Students Eyes Now Open

2010-12-19T09:00:00.005-06:00

Back in the late eighties, when most of the Dream Act Activists weren't yet born, and their parents were on the way to the baile to meet each other, the middle and upper-class in Dallas was sloshy with Christmas money. I saw the Dreamer's parents everywhere: landscapers; roofers; the coolest restaurants; carwashes; nannies in the park; janitors; and if you were up and around in the early morning, you could see packed cars leaving the warehouses, a working-class flood of brown people -- all over Dallas where they'd just completed a late-night shift in some kind of assembly work.

I'm glad, painful as it is for me to say this -- that the Dream Act failed. Now these beautiful, idealistic, dreamers, are awake to the powerful interests in this country. Now they will see beyond the hip-hop, Shakiraness of brown commercials to their destiny. And what is that? To lead this country, to educate our community, and to teach all of us to vote as never before. To be different. To do better than what my civil rights generation has done for you.

Now they surely see how my mostly white generation and their followers is a tribe of fear -- of these Dreamers and how they will deny them --- as they tried to deny the Blacks in my youth, Cesar Chavez, Vietnam, La Raza, anyone who wanted justice, equality, dignity not defined by the status quo. Now they see how we have got to do more than show what good, loyal, Americans we are.

Bullshit. Patriotic Americans do not start wars that are nightmares, good Americans do not invade other countries, loyalty is a blood-soaked word if it means that we will send the children of the working-class to wars so that we can save our oil and prestige, rewarding the parents with front-page stories of mijitos, medals, and big checks. So that we can be proud of killing other people and getting killed themselves. That's not my kind of loyalty.

I want the Dreamers to be the leaders that our President won't be -- and that your parents didn't want, because their dream is for you to have a nice home, new car, and to live in the suburbs. That is exactly what my immigrant mother wanted for me, and how I disappointed her. But I have not disappointed myself. In other words, once your "dream" is realized, our parents want us to forget the past. Live for yourself and your family only. And in time, as happened too often in my generation, the powerful might just might invite you to join them. How proud your parents will be. And then you will compromise all that has happened, because you want to belong.

This is the price of the American dream. But you are getting a bigger gift for Christmas.

I am telling you not to belong to anyone or anything except your soul that is not starving, but the richest ocean of all, the deepest gold mine, the bluest sky, and the greenest land of all. You are the dream of this country. You are the American dream. The American dream is not about money, or cars, or fame. It is about justice. In your group, and the next 65,000 high school undocumented graduating this spring, is a better Jefferson. A working-class Bolivar. A Nobel-prize winner. I know this, I feel it in my bones.

Those Senators who voted against you are afraid of you, your parents, and your potential to change this country. Of course it was supposed to change. It was supposed to change the moment our collective ancestor, el Cristobal Colon, arrived and showed how savage we can be with each other.

So change the world. Change everything. Walk in truth and tell your hard-working parents and neighbors that you are exactly what this country has been waiting for. Change this picture.

This is your destiny.

photo: Former San Antonio city councilwoman Maria Antonietta Berriozabal getting
arrested at Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office in San Antonio. She and esteemed
professor Antonia Castaneda were arrested along with almost a dozen student-dreamers that night.
mysanantonio.com

They are starving and getting arrested to go to college/Dream Act in San Antonio, Texas

2010-11-30T18:20:00.003-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKj5njkUhdg&feature=player_embeddedLast night at the offices of our Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, over a dozen starving college students (20 days now without eating), were arrested, along with former City Councilwoman and spiritual leader Maria Antonietta Berriozabal, and labor scholar and activist Dr. Antonia Castaneda.

I am frankly dismayed at the lack of courage from our political leadership -- where are they? Should I name names? (Congressmen Ciro Rodriguez and Charlie Gonzalez, Mayor Julian Castro).

But the political leaders want to win elections (though Congressman Rodriguez lost his due to his pandering for independents instead of hell-with-the-consequences truth-telling). So they wait, and they mollify, and they hope the tide will change. It's gonna get alot worse before it gets better, and no thanks to the ambitions of those who live for what they think matters, instead of getting on the train to destiny.

We need leaders. And so here they are. No fancy titles, status, or campaigns. Just women speaking truth to power.

I am proud to know both Maria Antonietta Berriozabal and Antonia Castaneda. I am proud of these students who are so desperate to get a degree and make this world a better place. I am proud they want to learn so much it hurts just to look at them. And so they will change the world, this I know.

The world is changing, and if the conservative forces out there don't want to see it, then we must talk to them and sometimes starve if that's what it takes to show them that we belong here, as much as their forefathers and mother wanted to come here, to these lands so long ago. These young people are the best we have, and to deny them is to deny our greatest beauty, and the truth that we were meant to be here here together.

Dog Whisperer of San Antonio/Andres Valdez

2010-11-21T14:35:00.001-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKPwedfalXc

He's from San Antonio's southside, and he's the
real thing. I've watched him handle three big dogs at once, and at his camp, he's got 16 dogs, many who were abandoned. On this day, he made a friend of "Donkey," who's been chained up all his three years. Donkey mauled my dog months ago, but now he's my buddy,
thanks to Andres, who helped me learn to
understand what dogs want.

With 100,000 stray dogs in San Antonio, it's good to know that Andres can help people with their pets, and also find a way to reach people who have forgotten what it is to love a dog on the streets.

To reach him, email him at fourkninekamp@yahoo.com

La Perra died and it's my fault

2010-11-07T10:53:00.001-06:00

I found her this morning. La Perra was lying besides one of the creek's pillars under San Jacinto. I don't
think she had been dead too long because her body was not very cold.
The men at the Picnic tienda where I fed her last Sunday across the street tell me that she's been going down for a month. I know that she starved to death, and that is the worst death of all.
Last Sunday I wanted to take her to the dog shelter here in San Anto, but they're closed on Sunday. I have two dogs in my tiny yard, and I was afraid to keep her with me. On Monday I had to deal with my 91 year-old father's pre-funeral wishes in Raymondville, four hours away, and I was afraid to delay his wishes. La Perra ate a little barbacoa on Sunday morning and I left food with the men, who promised to feed her. I looked for her on Monday night, Tuesday, Wednesday, all week. She must have been alive, just waiting to die. I should have pressed Juanillo the homeless man when he told me that La Perra slept with him to help me find her right now. I should have taken her to the Animal Defense League last Sunday, which is way north on Nacogdoches here, except they are very hard to reach, and the last time I needed their help with the dog I have at home now, they refused.
Still, this is my fault. I didn't think my girlfriends would help me. They just tease me and don't really want to know.
La Perra died because I was afraid of my landlord, of rejection from the ADL, giving up on my friends who don't want to see that a starving dog is the most vulnerable creature in a world of social injustice.
I"m so sorry, La Perra. I should have, I should have loved you more. Please forgive me.

She wants to die, the homeless man told me

2010-11-04T21:46:00.001-05:00

I've been looking for La Perra since Tuesday. The men who hang out at the Picnic on San Jacinto and Martin told me she had died. That the owner had poisoned her. That she was lying in the creek that runs under the Picnic where I first saw her.
Today, a small miracle.
At dark, I drove by again, and stopped. I stepped out a bag of dogfood in my hand. A homeless man came up to me, said "don't you remember me?"
He's one of the men who sleeps under the street, at the creek where La Perra walks. Told me that she'd slept with him last night, that he tried to feed her but she refused to eat.
The owner bred her for puppies and then dumped her, he said, that he is a cruel man. The homeless man's name is Juanillo, and he sleeps on a mattress with some blankets, and yes, I remember him now.
I gave him some food for La Perra, a leash, and my cell number. And some money for him, too, he said that he works as a custodian for the store.
He says that La Perra wants to die.

La Perra de San Antonio

2010-10-31T11:40:00.001-05:00

I saw her four days ago on San Jacinto and Martin, here on the westside. She was crossing a tiendita filled with men drinking outside. I followed La Perra as she crossed the street to the creek below where a couple of homeless men have their mattresses. She let me touch her, and ate just a little wet food, wagged her tail, and left.

If I take her to the Dog Pound she will be put down because there are 100,000 stray dogs already in San Antonio.

Today, Sunday, she ate a little barbacoa. She could barely walk. Neither the Alamo nor the Riverwalk is the true symbol of San Antonio, it's dogs like this that roam the city.
So many of the people in my neighborhood are working-class, and they don't believe in taking
care of animals when they are hurting to take care of themselves.

Son criaturas de Dios, my father told me. Animals are divine, my father taught me. They are angels, and they carry messages from God to us.
San Antonio is a beautiful city, but equally poor and struggling. This is San Antonio. Take a good look. Because it's gonna get worse.
A mile from the Riverwalk.

SAVING OUR STORIES IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

2010-10-21T19:10:00.002-05:00

For the first time in history, more than half of all the students attending public schools in the 15 Southern states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia) are children of color -- predominantly African American, Hispanic and Native American.

The Texas State Board of Education has denied our stories in the public schools for the next ten years. Our children are growing up without knowing who their heroes and heroines are. It is up to the artists to tell the story.

If you live in San Antonio and south, get 5 people to vote on November 2nd!
Because the Stories can save us

This is for Emma Tenayuca. Willie Velasquez. Lydia Mendoza. Americo Paredes. Gloria Anzaldua. And hundreds, thousands more, heroes and heroines whose stories
must be shared with the children.

Fundraiser: Wednesday, October 27th
Gallista Gallery Courtyard
1916 S. Flores Street, San Antonio, Tejastzlan
8:00 - 10:00 pm
With Readings, Watos, and Laberintos by Selected Artists
Organized by Artistas for Michael Soto
David Zamora Casas and Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, hosts with the mostest
$5.00 Contribution and mas if you can

*******************************************************************************************
‘Stoy ganando!
Willie Velásquez loved the rain.
It made the bluejays sing with gusto, like the fire and honey of his mother’s Spanish words. The rain made the frogs jump for gold medals, and the weeping willow tree in front of his house cried happy tears with so much green.

But the rain also made Willie sad.

---from The boy made of lightning/Willie Velasquez, American Hero, to be published 2011
Written by Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, illustrated by a San Antonio artist TBA

The story of Adonis, the dog who was supposed to die

2010-10-18T10:04:00.002-05:00

It happened in April. There are 100,000 stray dogs wandering in San Antonio -- more
common than graffiti. But I'd never seen anything this bad.

He was stumbling down the street, covered in bloody sores with flem streaming down his eyes. It was a wonder that he was still alive, a dog made of ravaged fur, mange, abandoned who-knows-when. And yet -- something told me to feed him, to save him. That he would be alright.

I always carry dogfood in my car, and yes, he came to the bowl, a good sign. A man in a pickup truck stopped and helped me wrap a moving rope around his neck, and then I lifted him into the back of my van. He didn't resist. He was even more repulsive up close, yet it hurt me more to leave him behind, so I didn't.

Once I got him home, the neighbors gathered to talk about how crazy I am, watched me feed him more bathe him. I think they felt more sorry for me than the dog.

What was crazy was that I didn't have a cent at the time -- only blind faith that
I could get him to a veternarian and then the City's animal clinic here that does
low-cost sterilization and shots.

The other thing is that I live in a shotgun house in the barrio, a house that is about 650 sq ft, and I've already got seven cats from the neighborhood -- all sterilized with their shots. Can't afford to keep middle-sized dogs around for
too long, and my house is a rental, besides.

I named the dog Adonis, which means God of Love. It was the least I could do, and the only place I had for him was in the outdoor utility room,
where he stayed, and thrived for three days and nights until I remembered that I have a friend who had some antibiotic for dogs. Another friend gave me some medicine for his conjunctivitis. Of course this isn't the way it should be done...

Adonis got better every day. My friends told me he had the mange, and that it was probably curable. Sure enough, three weeks after I found him I took him to a vet who confirmed our diagnosis, gave me a discounted deal, along with the good news that Adonis didn't have heartworm! Adonis ended up having 6 weekly dips along with medications, sterilized, shots, microchipped. He's gone from 32 pounds to 52 pounds, and is now 11 months old.

I think he's an Akita/pit bull/shar-pei mix, and he's about 10 months old.
He loves playing loves, children and is very attached to one of my cats, Baby Kitty.

I can't keep him in my rental house forever. He deserves a family, and if you know someone, let me know. He's an excellent watchdog and good at walks.

His fur is now turning from off-black to brown-gray with blonde patches and streaks.

Please help me find a good home for Adonis. I know there is a little boy or girl out there who's been looking for him as much as he was seeking them that day in April.

The night that San Antonio artistas became one moon

2010-10-15T17:49:00.001-05:00

Franco Mondini-Ruiz; Joan Frederick; Vincent Valdez (with a trumpet instead of a brush); Joaquin Abrego with Los Nahuatalatos; Terry Ybanez, Deborah Vasquez, David Zamora Casas, Rita Contreras, Rolando Briseno, Dee Murff, and many many more, came together at Bihl Haus Arts to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of Bihl Haus Arts, one of San Antonio's cultural centers and gathering place for some of the city's most interesting and best artists.

It was a night of ART. LITERATURE. MUSICA! BAILE. Over 40 visual artists created original covers for the first Chicana novel published by the University of Texas Press, "Golondrina, why did you leave me?" by Barbara Renaud Gonzalez.

It was a humbling noche that left me hallucinated by the beauty of what we can
make together.

Why haven't I blogged? Been writing and reading and making a living

2010-09-21T21:37:00.001-05:00

I've been invited to read in NYC/CUNY next Monday, September 27th in the evening.
Haven't been to NYC in a few years -- since the Intl PEN Festival when I met writers
from all over the world. Africa; Japan; Germany. A birthday present from Raquel
Ruiz (who's writing a book on women and boxing).

Right now I"m finishing a children's book on the life of Willie Velasquez, that's right
the Voting Pioneer that NYC isn't interested in, but I know I know it will sell.
It's called "The boy made of lightning."

Today I worked getting out the vote on the Southside...for County Commissioner
Tommy Adkisson. Too many people don't want signs or want to be bothered by voting. The Tea Party hype, like some nasty worm,has infested enough brains so that people are ashamed of Obama because he hasn't changed things fast enough -- spending money, etc.
If you hear this enough, you start believing it. The calls to the ego by the
conservative forces in this country seduce people into wanting to be morally superior, morally right. To question, to challenge the status quo, to recognize injustice and
do something about it because it's painful in our hearts -- this is something the
Democratic Party seems to have a hard time discussing. I don't care if we lose
this year's elections -- I'm interested in changing people's hearts. Guess that's why
I'm not a politician, eh?

Twelve Heads in a Bag: Hector Saldana's Krayolas painting in bold, true colors

2009-08-10T16:04:00.000-05:00

Longleaf pines are native to the southeast United States, and their conservation status is vulnerable. Only three percent of this historic, unrottable pine tree forest that can live up to 500 years remains. With long leaf pine (no smack gum) by the comeback sensations, The Krayolas, it is clear they intend to make great music for the long haul. I’m talking about one song in particular, “Twelve Heads in a Bag,” a deceptive rock-ballad (written and sung by Hector Saldana, with Max Baca on bajo sexto and Michael Guerra on accordion). Twelve Heads… is dedicated to the beheaded victims of Mexico’s drug wars. As has been said before but needs to be said again, it is the first corrido of the 21st century and it’s for the history books. Twelve Heads in a Bag makes you want to dance with a Lone Star in your hand, no matter the barbeque stains on your Tshirt, wondering why it wasn’t you in that bag.

GOLONDRINA READING SCHEDULE SO FAR

2009-07-02T15:15:00.000-05:00

NEW READING SCHEDULE FOR GOLONDRINA, WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?
Fri Jul 10 8pm – 9pm Reading/Performance with Vicki Grise "The Panza Monologues" - Resistencia Bookstore, Austin, Texas
Fri Jul 31 7pm – 8pm Book Reading - Cafe Quetzalcoatl, El Paso, Texas
Sat Aug 1 Reading (TBD) at Summer MALCS Institute, Las Cruces, NM - Summer MALCS Institute, Las Cruces, NM
Thu Sep 3 6:30pm – 8:30pm Reading with local novelist Jay Brandon - Brookhollow Library, San Antonio, Texas
Mon Sep 14 7pm – 8pm Reading at Barnes & Noble, San Pedro Crossing, San Antonio - Barnes & Noble, San Pedro Crossing, San Antonio
Sat Oct 31 Featured Author, Schedule TBD, Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas - Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas

READING SCHEDULE FOR THE SUMMER OF CALOR

2009-06-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

Thursday, June 18th, Houston Community College Central FAC115 Downtown
10:00 am
with writer/HCC professor Tony Diaz in a discussion about writing, community, and society
Book Reading, Barnes & Noble, Westheimer/Voss, 7pm
from Golondrina, why did you leave me?

Interview on Nuestra Palabra, Houston

Interview on LatinoUSA with Maria Hinojosa, June 26th, special program on Women & Books, featuring Sandra Cisneros, Josefa Lopez, and myself

Book Reading, El Paso, Texas, Friday, July 31st (To Be Confirmed)

Reading, MALCS Summer Institute, Las Cruces, late July-first week of August (To Be Confirmed)

Confession: To be a Writer of Conscience

2009-05-06T20:06:00.001-05:00

I want to be the kind of writer who isn't afraid to make you cry or laugh or dream. Words matter, they have power and beauty and freedom, and with them, you can make this world a better place. Don't believe me? Check out the PEN International Book Festival.
http://www.pen.org/
And check out Robert Flynn's blogs on the site.

Dance Lessons/Golondrina Book Reading at Salute! Bar

2009-05-05T19:08:00.000-05:00

Now this is a book reading! At my favorite bar! La Azeneth, the owner of Salute!, is struggling to keep the historic bar open (Esteban Jordan performs there every friday night, like forever). So, a Benefit/Reading/Borlote: On Friday night, May 22nd, I will read the dance chapters from Golondrina as women dance-along and some may even read-along. MAMBO!
RUMBA! SALSA!!! POLKA! DANZON! LO QUE QUIERAS!!!!
The Dancers are: Norma Zamora; Florinda Castillo; Dee Murff and Janie Alonso; Jessica Cerda

The artist Terry Ybanez will exhibit a series of prints that are golondrina-inspired, and the photographer Joan Frederick is exhibiting twenty years of Salute! Bar photos! Also for sale.

Salute! Bar International
2801 N St. Mary's
San Antonio
210.732.5307
www.saluteinternational.com

The Reading begins at 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm. FREE.
Includes Deliciosa Comida. Cash Bar.
If you want to stay and hear Esteban, $10.00 at 10:00 pm

PLEASE COME AND SUPPORT AZENETH AND LA MUSICA BIEN GROOVY!

BookWoman Reading, Sunday, May 3rd, Austin, Texas

2009-04-24T16:43:00.000-05:00

But what makes Golondrina special, what drives its considerable innovation and perfumes its hundreds of tiny pleasures, is the sheer descriptive mestizaje beauty of the novel’s language, word-by-word, in English and en español. González wields Golondrina’s Tex-Mex dialect with real mastery; in her hands, the language is lyrical, big, luxurious, funny, and terrifying. González’s arsenal, linguistically and as a storyteller, is immense and complex, with Joycean neologisms (“cornpaste”) and fierce rhythm...
Golondrina, for all its potential difficulties, deserves and has the power to attract a wide audience. If you care about the changing face and language of American contemporary fiction (of world fiction; East Indian authors in particular, primarily in the UK, are pioneering new forms of English phraseology, too), and if you love a good story, and appreciate vivid descriptions of Texas landscape, architecture, culture and history rendered with surprising touches of beauty and dark humor, I’ve got a book for you bien cierto. •(Sarah Fisch, San Antonio Current, see link above)

Golondrina, why did you leave me? Book Reading
Sunday, May 3rd, 3pm
BookWoman
5501 N. Lamar #A-105
between N. Loop & Koenig
Austin, Texas
512.472.2785

The Rosalinda Reading/Latino Cultural Center, Dallas Texas

2009-04-16T14:54:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend, Rosalinda Garcia, a teacher from Grand Prairie, Texas, has cancer. It's bad, and it's good in that Rosalinda is loving life every single minute.

On Monday, April 20th, I'm reading at the Latino Cultural Center, a place that is a dream come true for me, as the appointee on the Commission for Cultural Affairs who initiated, and led its establishment in the early stages.

I couldn't have done it without Maria T. Garcia Pedroche. Dr. Catalina Garcia. Diana Flores. Regina Montoya. Felix Zamora. And Rosalinda Garcia, who listened, protested, and helped me with her powerful listening, patience, support, protesting, marching, and most of all - love.

So I am dedicating my reading to her. Golondrina, why did you leave me? is a love story based on my mother's life. And like her, Rosalinda is a golondrina: questioning, freedom-loving, fearless, and most of all, she knows that love is the land we're seeking.

Reading for Rosalinda
from Golondrina, why did you leave me?
The first Chicana novel from UT Press/Chicana Matters Series
Latino Cultural Center
Monday, April 20th, 2009
Dallas, Texas
7 pm

Praise for Golondrina, why did you leave me?

But what makes Golondrina special, what drives its considerable innovation and perfumes its hundreds of tiny pleasures, is the sheer descriptive mestizaje beauty of the novel’s language, word-by-word, in English and en español. González wields Golondrina’s Tex-Mex dialect with real mastery; in her hands, the language is lyrical, big, luxurious, funny, and terrifying. González’s arsenal, linguistically and as a storyteller, is immense and complex, with Joycean neologisms (“cornpaste”) and fierce rhythm...Sarah Fisch, San Antonio Current

Golondrina Book Reading Schedule/Texas

2009-04-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

Ok, so if you want to cry, laugh, dance, get a little nekkid, and celebrate this impossible state of Texas, please join me for my Premiere Reading in San Antonio y mas:
Tuesday, April 14th, Northwest Vista College, Cypress College Center, 2:00 -4:00 pm

Wednesday, April 15th, PREMIERE READING, Twig Bookstore, 5005 Broadway, San Antonio,
5:00 pm (Get your taxes done early!) http://www.sacurrent.com/story.asp?id=70048

Monday, April 20th, Latino Cultural Center, Dallas, Texas, 7pm

Sunday, May 3rd, BookWoman Bookstore, Austin, Texas, 3pm

Saturday, May 9th, Celebration of our Mother Tardeada, Pa'htilKali Gifts, 1024 Donaldson, San Antonio, Texas, 4-6 pm

Friday, May 22nd, Salute! Bar (warm-up for Esteban Jordan) 9:00 pm
$10.00 admission -- includes Esteban Jordan, Joan Frederick's twenty-years of photographs of the venerable Salute! Bar, comida, and dancing while I read and of course, when Esteban plays

Sunday, May 31st, Retro-Mex Vintage on Hildebrand, 4pm
Pilar is hosting - she's la reina of Mexican vintage
Art Exhibit by Terry Ybanez

The Alamo, as it should be

2009-03-28T18:26:00.000-05:00

I do not want to glorify war anymore. Gracias a Laura Varela, a filmmaker who envisioned these images, and Joan Frederick, who took these glorious photographs as San Antonio's Luminaria Celebration on Saturday, March 14, 2009.

Why Women, Las Mujeres, Must Claim the Alamo

2009-03-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

Because women are here to heal the world. Men are here to destroy it. We are the ones who must guide men to use their power constructively. Have you ever seen a man cry? Believe me, they want to. The love of women for the world is a divine gift, and too often we have let men take it away.

It is more powerful to love than it is to hate. The Alamo is a monument to war.

Join me for a Reading/Platica and Q&A about the Yellow Rose of Texas and Reclaiming the Alma, the Soul of Texas.

Saturday, March 14, 2009
3-5 pm
Luminaria Reading

Bihl Haus Arts
2803 Fredericksburg
San Antonio, TX 78201
210.383.9723

photo credits: Joan Frederick @2008

The next mayor of San Antonio is Julian Castro and will he or won't he?

2009-03-10T19:24:00.000-05:00

So I"m at the first-ever virtual townhall meeting for a political campaign in San Antonio! I got here late, so I can't really tell you what happened, lots of male bloggers and just met Julian's wife, Erica, who's due tomorrow. It seems I'm one of two female bloggers, here at the Julian Castro Headquarters on Mulberry and Broadway. It's fun to be here, the campaign people are real people.

I know Julian's mother, Rosie, a long-time activist in the Chicano movement. Like so many of my generation, she gave her son the best education she could -- Stanford and Harvard Law School. And he's certainly polished, I've seen him on television answering questions in a succinct, cool, tvbite way.

I first met Julian Castro as a progressive City Councilman in 1992 who stood up to the real estate developers who wanted to build a PGA golfcourse over the recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer. But the pressures on any city councilperson in this city are immense, and eventually Julian's courage took a backseat to the then-Mayor Ed Garza's rejection of a voter referendum -- and the golf course development was begun.

If I had arrived in time, my question to our future mayor is this: How do you feel about that vote now? The PGA Golf Course represented San Antonio's sad history of real estate development, the destruction of our environment, the religious belief in cars and highways to get us there and back, and the regressive tax structures that have kept San Antonio's poor, poorer still.

If Julian gets elected on May 9th, he could be Mayor for up to eight years (4-two-year terms)

Would you do it again, Julian?

The good and the bad of San Antonio

2009-03-09T12:22:00.000-05:00

The Good:

Margaritas with top-shelf tequila
Nachos bien greasy
The river that runs through the city
San Pedro Park
The Missions
Conjunto music, especially Eva Ybarra's accordion
Nopales with yellow florecitas
No te freak, toda twistiada, the language of Tex-Mex
La buena gente, people are kind. Even the mugger worried the other day how I was gonna take the bus after he had my money.

The Bad:
The Alamo -- the way the children are confused walking out of it. What lessons are we giving them? The Alamo. The souvenir shops across the street confound people after they hear how "sacred" the Alamo is. The guides at the Alamo tell us stories of battles and "brave men." One time a group of people told me "We kicked your butt."
The Alamo. And the thousands of ghosts that still roam there -- the men who died from both sides, and the Native Americans buried under the plaza that we walk on every day.
The Alamo. A symbol of war, of violence, of hate.
The Alamo: Sometimes, a symbol of nothing, because people just walk across it for its sheer beauty. To take a picture.

The Alamo. Let's talk about it.

Let's talk about it. Let's make the Alamo a good place to be.
Saturday, March 14, 3-5 pm, Luminaria Reading
Bihl Haus Arts
2803 Fredericksburg
San Antonio, 78201
www.bihlhuasarts.org

photo credit: Joan Frederick

The Alamo, Abused Children and Battered Women

2009-03-02T22:26:00.000-06:00

I don't like the Alamo. Don't care who won or lost anymore -- the Anglos or the Mexicans? It's all the same to me.

The Alamo didn't give me "freedom." The civil rights movement did that.

The women lost at the Alamo. The children lost. Women were raped, abandoned, forgotten, used. I say Forget the Alamo on March 6th by remembering the ugliness, the horror, the pillage of war.

San Antonio is a violent city. We have some of the highest rates in the nation for abused children, battered women, cruelty to animals.

As long as we celebrate this monument to war, there will be no peace in San Antonio. Violence engenders more violence. That war haunts us still as we revere the "heroes" and don't know who the peacemakers are.

This year, I am asking women from all over the world to examine, study, and look again at these monuments to war. Let's begin with the Alamo. Let's ask that the Alamo become a Monument to Peace. A Wailing Wall where all of us can go and cry in our suffering, and let's turn the Alamo into a Center for the Study of Peace, Healing, & Reconciliation.

photo credit: Joan Frederick, www.joanfrederick.net

Eva Ybarra, Queen of the Accordion, tells her story

2009-02-24T22:34:00.000-06:00

She calls them viboras, the men who deny her stature as one of the world's best accordionists. She lives here, in San Antonio, and she doesn't have a car and is worried about her taxes. Eva has played in New York City, and yet no one in San Antonio seems to want to pay her what she deserves. Enough to live on.

The other day Eva played me a new composition, it's called Eco de Mujer. The song is haunted, a polka-tango-blues of a woman's pain and loneliness, betrayal and it sounds exactly like when my mother used to cry at the clothesline under the hot Texas sky. Like she was on fire and there was nowhere for her to go -- except to hang up more of my father's workshirts.

My mother listened to Lydia Mendoza. I listen to Eva Ybarra.

On Thursday evening, I finally get to read from my novel, with her accordion accompanying me. Though it is really Eva, her music, and that voice of hers that I wish I could put down on paper: That voice made of hard,
dusty, gravelly, roads walked alone, head held high, fearless, holding a child's hand in one and a mother's in another, wishing that he loved her as much as she loves him, but not willing to go back for the scraps he is offering. No.

Who do you love, Eva? I ask her.

My music, she says. I am in love with my music.

The performance is on Thursday, February 26th, at UTSA/Downtown, Buena Vista Theatre, across from Pico De Gallo restaurant, at 6:55 pm. It's called Noche de Cultura, thanks to NACCS/Tejas Foco, which includes many other great artists. Free and open to the public.
And Gracias to the Office of Cultural Affairs of San Antonio, Texas, for their financial support of this performance.
Stage Design by David Zamora Casas
Production Chief, Mary Jessie Garza

photo credit: www.pbs.org

No candy, no flowers, just love the world like Luti does

2009-02-11T13:27:00.001-06:00

Last Friday, my girlfriend Luti Gude treated me to dinner and we talked about politics, cats, and always, her children. Luti Vela Gude comes from a prominent, progressive, South Texas family, puros Tejanos (and don't forget it!) with ties all the way to the (current) White House. Even in that family known for their enlightened views and activism, Luti shines because she ran in the Boston Marathon in her forties. She's currently a graduate student at UTSA in Counseling, and from all accounts, teaching them more about the community than the faculty can ever teach her. Luti was also determined to raise her children to care about the world -- and it's working. Her oldest son, David, a spectacular student, attended Brackenridge High School and other public schools in the inner city, becoming a humanitarian, dedicated to giving something back to the world as a physician and researcher.

David's life has not been without suffering, believe me. But last year he got married to a Hindu woman who is equally gifted, and who Luti has embraced as her new daughter.

At our dinner, Luti and I talked about love (what else is there?) and I bragged about attending the wedding-of-the-decade last April between John Phillip Santos and Frances Trevino -- and then Luti told me about the mesmerizing wedding of her son, David, to Nisha. There was David on a horse, and there were candles, fire, Luti dancing better than any Bollywood queen, and echa el grito, the mariachis!

On this Valentine's Day, I celebrate Luti and all the mothers who love their children enough to teach them to love others without measure and to fly far away from home!

The world is waiting for us to love like this.

A lesson for the Guadalupe Cultural Center: Apologize for Bret Ruiz's harrassment

2009-01-31T18:03:00.000-06:00

Juan Aguilera, the former Board Chair of the Guadalupe Cultural Center, should apologize to Dee Murff and all the women of the Guadalupe who were summarily fired because of Bret Ruiz, the former and very-flawed director of the Guadalupe.

Murff, the most outspoken of the group and surely the one with the most red-haired attitude - filed a lawsuit against the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (GCAC) charging sexual discrimination during Ruiz's tenure. The rumors are that the Guadalupe wants to settle the case before the arrival of the new executive director, Patty Ortiz.

Let's be clear: This lawsuit was a last-resort attempt to get the community to pay attention to the problems at the GCAC. Sometimes an organization, like an individual, like a nation, has to face its errors. Confronting guilt can be healing for everyone concerned. We all make mistakes, and Aguilera needs to man-up.

Bret Ruiz was the man hired to be Executive Director in July of 2005, despite a phone call from Mauricio Navarro, who told me he told Aguilera that Ruiz was the worst director the Anita Martinez Ballet Folklorico (Ruiz's former employer in Dallas) had ever seen.

Well, surprise, surprise. According to my sources, Bret Ruiz has continued his negative path, recently departing his position as Managing Director (he was there August-November 08) at the Latino Policy Forum in Chicago. A staff member there, Ruben D. Feliciano, a housing policy analyst and outreach coordinator, has written me, stating: (edited for this blog -- if you want to see the whole email, please contact me at lastruestories@yahoo.com)

"I felt in my spirit that Mr. Ruiz looked down at me on on several occasions also made very sarcastic references about me and my persona..

I see so many parallels in your stories and his conniving ways...I felt deep in my spirit that I represented everything that he despised. I am a strong and openly gay Puerto Rican/Latino man that wore my cultura with pride and honor in my frente, came from the community and is successful at it without having to compromise my values. But I guess I was too "ghetto" for his liking."

A new director has now been hired for La Lupe, Patty Ortiz. I met her last week, and she seems very nice, and is an accomplished visual artist and curator, besides. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Ortiz is going to continue to advise her old center, and she's planning on curating an exhibit in the fall of 2009.

The new Guadalupe Cultural Center Board has stellar members, including civil rights attorney Al Kauffman, labor historian Antonia Castaneda, and Trinity University's Arturo Madrid. Aguilera is still on the GCAC Board.

I trust that the GCAC Board will recognize what the women of La Lupe suffered under Bret Ruiz. A cultural center that doesn't respect the rights of women, la gente del barrio, the artists who are the soul of this city, has lost its mission.

One conjunto festival isn't enough.

photo credits: Joan Frederick, "The Accordion Player"

So did you get laid this week? Sexual harrassment in San Antonio

2009-01-31T17:23:00.000-06:00

My girlfriend Cecilia just left her job at Amed Community Hospice where she was a social worker for terminally ill patients. Why did she leave after two years there? Because of a man named Chris Sitton, the Bereavement and Volunteer Coordinator, 40 years old, married with a child.

Cecilia is a serious, 46 year-old woman, who tells me she loved her job, and that it was very difficult for her to say goodbye to her patients and their families. It isn't easy, or professional, to leave patients who are facing death.

But Sitton asked her constantly about her sexual life, she says. He whacked her on her derriere with a newspaper, and asked her things like "So did you get laid this week?" I know what this feels like, and most women I know have encountered sexual harrassment in their lives. But few of us actually fight back.

Cecilia told me Sitton harrasses others, but she refused to accept it to keep her job. She went to EEOC, and filed a complaint. Amed In the meantime, Amed has offered her $500 which she's rejected, along with a a letter of recommendation. But she doesn't want their bribes. She knows Sitton goes drinking with Tim Wagner, one of the executives, and Sitton has in fact been promoted - to Marketing.

Cecilia was only one of two latina social workers in San Antonio, where half of the patients are latino. It's easy to see why she's good at this kind of work -- she listens, she's empathetic, she's generous, the kind of person you'd want to be by your side if you were about to die.

She has a new job that begins on Monday.

The Persecution of Bambi Cardenas/Todas Somos Lobas

2009-01-22T22:41:00.000-06:00

Blandina Ramirez (Bambi) Cardenas, the first latina college president of the University of Texas system, is retiring from my alma mater, the University of Texas at Pan American,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif in Edinburg, Texas. Edinburg is about ten miles from the Texas border, across from Reynosa, Mexico, state of Tamaulipas.

Presumably, it's because of a heart attack. But I believe it's because of a spurious, "anonymous" campaign targeting her because of whatshe symbolizes -- educational progress, and the best of latin@ leaders. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1974.

This is bullshit.

I believe this campaign seeks to undermine and destroy her reputation: How DARE she dedicate her life to educational achievement, cultural pride, and civil rights? How dare she not be a good ol boy? Como se atreve? She's dangerous.

You betcha she is.

I say all this because I know Pan Am: We called it "Taco Tech," when I was there, and it is easily 95% brown. Pura raza. And because it is brown, students assume that everything is good in the world, when in fact powerful forces have deliberately denied latinos a superior education. When I was there, the guys drank beer in the library...I loved the place with its arches and fountains and tamale-eating contests, as I despaired at the illiteracy. Danos break, Sir! I wrote a long letter to then-President Miguel A. Nevarez while at the University of Michigan, explaining why a 50% dropout rate among college freshmen was not a good thing for la raza.

Apparently, Bambi agrees with me, and did something about it. This is why she is known as a heroine of public education in Texas.

Early on in my professional life, Bambi gave me hope as then-President Carter appointed her to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, then to the Civil Rights Commission, where she fought for years on behalf of affirmative action.

I remember how she told me in an interview how she would come home after daily confrontations with the Reagan-appointed conservatives and just throw up [from their veiled hate of us].

Bambi isn't like her name, exactly. She's gentle, but she can run with the wolves intellectually. My girlfriend Terry Ybanez painted her face on a mural in San Antonio, alongside labor leader Emma Tenayuca and political and spiritual leader Maria Antonietta Berriozabal,among others. There is a good reason Terry spent a whole summer in the very hot sun painting these women's faces and names on a wall, the first mural in the country to extoll these women so publicly and beautifully.

I'm sure Bambi isn't perfect, (though she's awfully close). There is no way she deserves leaving the stage in disgrace, which is what has happened.

It's persecution. It's harrassment, it's unethical, it's unconscionable.

My promise to those who orchestrated this nasty campaign: There are more Bambis out there, and you will not stop us from taking our rightful place in Texas.

Like it or not babydoll, your children and grandchildren will have to apologize for what you've done some day. And we will forgive them, but you will be forgotten.

While Bambi will stay in the history books.

My father, Roberto, turns 90 on Inauguration Day

2009-01-17T00:47:00.000-06:00

My father called me the other day from the Assisted Living Center where he lives in Corpus Christi. He says he wants to die. This coming Tuesday, he will be 90 years old.

My father is lonely, he's almost deaf, halfway blind, and he has a white manx cat, Blanca. He left us when my brothers were little, and there was so much crying. My parents divorced when I was in graduate school, so I wasn't at home when it happened.

In the years despues, I tried to set a good example for my brothers, but it wasn't enough. My father went to live way out in the country after the divorce, the land he loved, and he never came to visit. Not for graduations, not for weddings, nothing. Still, my brothers made pilgrimages to visit him, and it made him happy.

His anger at my mother was such that when my brother Charlie died suddenly at age 30, he refused to give her the Pesame at the funeral. It was like he pretended she didn't matter, even when I know he could barely walk from the grief.

I have been the most absent of the eight of us, enjoying my solitude, wishing I had my own rancho in the country.

The solitude has been good for me, I'm a writer. But it's made me very poor, and I've struggled to visit him, especially now that he can't drive his like-new truck, sold years ago. Daddy misses his old five dogs rusted with mange on the day he left the country. He misses the good smell of dirt, the whispers of animals feathering, chasing, hiding from each other. He misses the moon that seems to talk to him as if he was the most important man in the world. He always wanted to be, that's for sure.

I think he has regrets about the way he didn't love us very well and what happened because of it. I think he has been afraid of dying. I'm probably going to miss the Inauguration because of his birthday. My father has changed. He's proud that he voted for Barack Obama.

I hope I learn from his life.

photo credits: my nephew dressed up as Obama at Halloween.

The Dog next door

2008-11-30T22:46:00.000-06:00

The guy next door works at the base, and he has a big german shephard named Duke. I call him Dukie, and I admit it, I've been using my feminine wiles so that I can play with the dog, who never gets out of his little yard, maybe 400 sq. ft. The guy built a wire fence for him, so that Duke can see out, but since the guy's house is in the middle of the block and Duke's area is in the back, he rarely sees anybody, except in the morning when the high school kids pass by, but they don't notice him.

Duke rarely barks. He's very sweet, and when I go over to give him treats from the alley-side, he rolls over for a rubdown, and I do my best over the fence.

I live upstairs so I can see everything that goes on in the next yard, and this is not a good thing, because I worry about Dukie. I've noticed lots of things, for example, that the guy comes back at lunch, but doesn't even pay attention to Duke, check on his water or anything. One time he didn't return on Friday night or Saturday during the day, and when I figured that out, I went to check on Duke, and sure enough, his water bowl was dry and dirty and he didn't have any food. He must weigh over 100 pounds, and I have cats and don't know how much a dog like that eats, but I gave him two big cans of dog food mixed with dry, maybe seven cups. And fresh water. I wanted to let him out, his leash is right there, but want the guy to trust me.

I didn't say anything exactly to the guy -- the next time we ran into each other I mentioned that I'd fed the dog and he seemed pleased. That weekend I asked him if I could take Dukie walking and he let me. I took Dukie to the high school next door and he smelled every tree and blade of grass, I think. We were gone about an hour, and when we returned the guy said anytime.

So I walked him again.

Today I went to get him, and Duke was hyped. The collar around his head was loose, and he ran to the street. Me and the guy chased him, he wasn't far away, we were more scared he'd get hit by a car -- we live on a busy street. Finally, Duke got interested in another dog he saw, and I yelled to that man to just stay there so we could catch Duke

My neighbor the guy caught him alright. He was furious, and he squeezed Duke's neck so hard that he made the dog kneel even as I could see Duke wanted to get away. The giu put the collar on Duke and he pulled on the collar so hard I though he would pull Duke's head off. I tried to be calm, saying things like the dog just wanted to run, I have a friend who knows how to train dogs, etc., but he looked at me like I was crazy.

He said that the dog-walking was finished for the day. He took Duke, who was resisting him, back to his pen.

I didn't say anything more, feeling that if I did I wouldn't get a chance to walk Duke again. I made a special plate of meat and dry food for Dukie and took it to him through the alley like I usually do. He seemed Ok, his collar was loose, and he scarfed-up the food as always.

I think I'm trying to figure out how to save this dog. He's not chained, like the last dog who lived here. Or stuck in a garage for five days and nights. I got beat up for rescuing those dogs, and I don't regret it.

Duke looked so good running, he was so happy. The guy never takes him walking or plays ball with him, why does he have him? Duke doesn't bark, hardly. The guy told me that he saved Duke from a family that had chained him all his life.

This is all Duke knows. I wonder now if that time I took him walking was the first time for him. Could that be?

Trying to give thanks/Dia de gracias 2008

2008-11-27T18:49:00.000-06:00

I am trying. I am grateful, I really am. That I'm healthy even though my knees hurt and I miss running. I am trying to give thanks that I have such a bounty of quiet to write and think today, but hope my single friends can rejoice in the aloneness, the solitude that comes from divorces and family members dying and children growing up.

I love this weather, it was in the high sixties today, but I'm worried that it hasn't gotten cold at all and it's the end of November. I wonder if my friends recognize what living the suburbs means for the environment -- the cutting of trees and construction of highways and the gasoline it will take for them to get into the city. I am thankful for my 900 sq ft apartment, the windows and space I have, why is it we always want more, even me? Now I want to live in the country, now I want a bigger house, now I want an acre or two, now I want a vista of greenscape, and what will my dream cost to the environment or what if I just gave that money to the people who are suffering?

There are so many people suffering today. From Mumbai to Mexico, I remember the time I almost adopted that ten-year old in the street who was sleeping in an alcove, and it was raining. I'm worried about the chilren in Iraq who are now orphans, and especially the little girls. What will happen to them? Do I have something to give them, to help them, so they can give thanks too?

I want to give thanks, but I don't think it's enough. I want to understand all that I have so that I can give thanks and mean it, to do that I must see what the rest of the world doesn't have.

I suspect I'm not grateful for what I should be. And what is that? Maybe I have so much, where to begin? What about this gift of writing it down? What if I didn't have this computer or this weather or even the sweet potato fluff I tasted today, what if all I had was a piece of paper and a pen? Would I be grateful then? Maybe I'm grateful for all I can see, but not for what truly matters, myself. Myself. And what will I do with me? Not waste me like I waste food? And I don't mean my in the narcissistic way, but the potential to be more way. Like generous. Generous in giving all that I know to be true.
And what is that?

To do something, say something, write something that matters. That's a sacrifice, that hurts, that risks most of all. What will I risk?

What will I risk today?

That we are complicit in the beauty of the world as we are complicit in its cruelty. That we are giving thanks because others can't, and we must help them be able to give thanks, even if it means we sacrifice something.

What will I sacrifice?

What will you sacrifice?

Thanksgiving in the barrio in San Antonio

2008-11-26T23:42:00.000-06:00

It's 57 degrees outside tonight. Hazy moon. I walked home from the HEB groceries. My neighborhood is perfectly quiet, people have cars here or they're watching TV at 10 pm. No one's out except someone walking a dog and the crazy lady only come out on weekends.

People were loading up at the HEB. Whipped cream. Cokes, Dr. Pepper, Big Red. Cases of beer. Sausage. Cheetos. Ham. It was packed, because the store is closed tomorrow.

Somehow I remember the dinner party last night where we talked about the original thirteen colonies, quick, can you name them?

Yes, Georgia was one of them.

The thirteen colonies question is one of the questions asked for the U.S. citizenship interview, along with the Pilgrim question.

My girlfriend said last night that in a roomful of Ph.D's, no one could name all the thirteen colonies.

I'm sorry, but Thanksgiving just doesn't seem real to me. i've been to Plymouth Rock, outside of Boston and to the Charles River on the 4th of July. Something happens there.

I really don't like turkey all that much, and don't want to eat so much food anyway. I've read that the pilgrim's feast was a rare occasion, and that modern Americans get to "feast" often, tha we're not starving anymore like those people did.

I am very thankful to be in San Antonio and to see Thanksgiving. Tomorrow, I'm making pasta and salmon. With jalapenos.

Jose made me a turkey sandwich at 10 pm, are you in college?

2008-11-24T22:30:00.000-06:00

Jose is handsome, young, hard-working, and tonight he made me the best Subway sandwich with lots of jalapenos and spicy mustard, just the way I like it. It was almost 10 pm on this Monday night and I always wonder when I see these young people working so late...are you in school, mijito?

No, I'm not.

He smiles, cleaning the counter with ganas. He's got a system to do it just right, he tells the manager.

Did you vote?

No. I don't believe in it.

He keeps scrubbing.

It's all about money.

I give him my spiel about Obama and how there will be more opportunities for him to go to college. He smiles, keeps cleaning. Then I tell him how I did it, with loans and scholarships.

I have his attention now.

Latinos are 20% of the electoral vote in Texas, but we're not voting in high numbers, I tell him. Blacks are 19%, and they voted. That means you could get much more help with a college education if latinos voted more.

I tell him my family story, how I went to college, how my brothers graduated from the University of Texas. How my father didn't finish high school. And my mother only went to the second grade in Mexico.

What is your dream? I ask him.

I don't think anyone has ever asked him this before. He stops what he's doing and smiles, but this smile is hiding a big dream from the rest of us.

Sometimes hope is a job. And someone who explains to you how to go to college even if you don't have money. And sometimes, it's a story that whispers, maybe. Maybe.

Where to start? What my neighbor did to his wife

2008-11-24T00:01:00.000-06:00

It happened a year ago. My neighbor Rachel knocked on my door during the holidays. She was scared because her husband, (I will call him Big Panza) twice as big as she is with a voice that booms instead of talks, wanted a divorce.

They have three boys and she had no place to go. Panza has been beating her up, why hadn't I see it? Rachel could barely walk, Panza had beaten her in her pelvic area. And she had bruises on her neck and chest too. Rachel was sexually abused as a child. She drinks, and she's bipolar, and with all the medication she takes, she moves slowly, like she's drunk, but she's not. She weighs maybe a hundred pounds and she says she fights back sometimes when Panza hits her.

Rachel's not a great housekeeper. She feeds my cats, and she's very tender with her boys. They love my cats too, especially Snowball and Floofie, and aren't the type of boys who break windows.

Panza broke her jaw ten years ago, and that's why Rachel is always massaging her slightly crooked self. Panza broke her nose. Panza calls her names, he sits on her, he threatens her.

For months I tried to get Rachel to a lawyer, to a therapist, to a shelter. But she was afraid of Panza. She hoped they would get back together. She cried over losing her boys and had no place to go. Before she finally was released from a psychiatric ward after a two week stay, Panza didn't go pick her up.

Now Rachel lives with her elderly mother in the deep westside. She never sees her boys, and I have seen that look in their eyes of mother-loneliness and hate because she's left them.

I hear Panza yelling at his boys all the time. Their grades are dropping. The other day I heard him call one of the boys a Dummy. With all his yelling, I know he has called them much worse.

When he turns on his boom-box voice, he scares the cats, the birds, and even the leaves tremble.

Rachel called me the other day. She says that Panza goes to see her at her mother's house and that he takes her clothes off and does whatever he wants with her.

She thinks this is the way it has to be.

I wish I could do something. It's like I know the ending to this movie, only I want to leave now. But I can't. Something in me wants to see what will happen even though I don't think it will be happy.

This is why Obama won't win Texas -- Si Se Puede

2008-10-17T20:14:00.000-05:00

At a brunch with my comadres the other day, my girlfriends confessed that their elderly parents did not want to vote for who they callel negro. Some of them weren't going to vote at all, they said.

"El negro" is a Spanish translation for "Black man." It isn't a negative word at all, but it can be negative, depending on how it's used.

My girlfriends are voting for Obama, but they don't know what to do with their parents.

The tragic history of Texas has ensured that for Latinos and Blacks of the boomer generation and older -- the prejudice, ignorance, hate and scramble for scraps - continues.

Latinos make up 20% of the registered voters in Texas, and Blacks make up 19%. I know we have over 10% progressive White voters, so why can't Obama win Texas?

The past is still with us. Today, I roamed around the San Antonio (majority Latino) barrios today, Southside/Westside/Eastside. Where are the Obama signs?

Because the yard signs cost $7.00.

I don't have $7.00 to spend on yard signs, and neither do many on the Southside, Westside, or Eastside San Antonio, apparently.

But I am an activist and have given thousands of volunteer hours to help the party and written about Obama and Latinos. When I visited the San Antonio Democratic Party headquarters in the King William district, the mansion-rich district of San Antonio, Thomas Rocky Moore said a yard sign would cost me $7.00.

In downtown San Antonio, Judy Hall wanted to charge me $5.00.

When I told Judy Hall at the downtown office that I didn't have the money, she just looked at me and smiled. Isn't this shortsighted, I asked? Don't you want to see signs all over San Antonio?

She replied that Obama didn't have the Texas electoral votes.

At the last stop, Bexar County Democratic Party's Main Headquarters on St. Mary's Street run by Carla Vela, the Black and White Democratic Party workers argued with me when I told them I didn't have any money, and that they were being shortsighted by not distributing, by not giving away the signs all over the barrios, they basically threw me out. "Take a sign and get out!" the white guy said. The black guy must've thought about it, because he ran out a little later with two yard signs. He saw me with T.C. Calvert, civil rights activist and president of the Neighborhoods First Alliance, who spent the whole afternoon along with me touring the neighborhoods, worried about the lack of energy and excitement, evidenced by the lack of yard signs and too-quiet campaign offices.

The disrespect I felt and "we need to raise money for the Democratic party" line on the part of the Obama volunteers would have ensured that the swing voters I know wouldn't vote for him or vote at all -- that's how cold it was in there.

No matter that Latinos run some of the Democratic Party offices in Texas, I can see that the Party still doesn't understand the working-class Latino who is vital to making the difference in the Texas electoral votes. Of course elderly Latinos can vote for "el negro" and help secure the 34 electoral votes Obama needs to win the presidency. But we need to include everyone, not just the middle-class and upper-class voters I saw at the offices. If people like me were welcomed more often, we could help them, but I don't feel they want me/us right now.

Chicano Renaissance at the Enchilada Library and who cares?

2008-09-14T16:28:00.000-05:00

Everything we have is because of them and others like them: Rudi "Flaco" Rodriguez, fifteen years old, went to jail in Del Rio, Texas during the marches. Andrea Velasquez, a college student on scholarship at OLLU, organized Chicano teatro, marched in St. Louis with Cesar Chavez, organized the first Chicana newspaper El Rebozo and went to the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles. Artists David Gonzalez and Jose Esquivel aimed to be the pintores of protest as they wanted America to see that Chicano arte was vital, American, art.

This was the Chicano Movement, and the Central (Enchilada) Library is - delicately and diplomatically - featuring the Chicano Movement for Hispanic Heritage Month titled Chicano Renaissance.
Yesterday at the first panel hosted by San Antonio's most prominent and brilliant Chicana scholar, Antonia Castaneda, maybe 25 people were in attendance.

He who has the power tells the story, verdad? A teacher asked where are the books on the Chicano Movement? There are books about Cesar Chavez and chingos of books about MLK and the Civil Rights Movement, but were are our stories of struggle, resistance, justice, vision?

That's the panel we need to hear - what happened??? Did too many of us go to the suburbs? Did we neglect educating our children in our own history? Or do we not recognize that we are in this together?

Castaneda framed the story that took us where we are today: In 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 that opened the doors for Mexican-American employment at Kelly Air Force Base.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that school desegregation was illegal in Brown vs. Board of Education, which encouraged so many of our parents to dream of a better education for us.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed.
In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Then came La Raza Unida Party, founded by Los Cinco in San Antonio, and running a slate of candidates throughout South Texas in 1971.

Talk about rocking our world.

Because of La Raza Unida, Chican@s with a working-class political agenda campaigned - and won - political office for the first time.

La Raza Unida changed my life. As it did thousands of others, even if they don't know it.

What happened? Flaco Rodriguez, who was a "footsoldier" under Los Cinco (La Raza Unida founders and leaders who included Jose Angel Gutierrez, Willie Velasquez and Mario Compean), explained how they organized young people in South Texas in the late sixties to establish 39 chapters in Texas.

Rodriguez explained how our fear in the name of then Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez -- denounced and destroyed MAYO - fearful of the Chicano Movement. He called them communists.

My own mexicana mother hated the word Chicano.

So La Raza Unida was born. Ramsey Muniz ran for Governor, and got 6% of the vote. Then he went to jail under still-debateable circumstances.

Some of us have made it. We are doctors, lawyers, professors, multi-millionaire advertising Republicans. Impossible prior to The Movement.

But almost 50% of our raza is still dropping out of high school.

What should we do? Our principals and superintendants are Latin@s. We have brown legislators all over the Southwest.

I think we need a new movement. It will not be called "Strategy," "Compromise," "Pick your Battles," or "Pretend and it will go away." Or "I"m ashamed those people fought for me and I would rather pretend I did it all by myself."

This new movement will be called I will not be afraid to love myself so much that I recognize we are all in it together.

Yes, San Antonio is against the War! Here is our protest

2008-06-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

With four bases in San Antonio in bed with an archconservative Catholic presence, and a media that makes heroes of our poorest, most naive soldiers so that our young believe that War is right and good, there are plenty of us who say NO.

Gracias to all the writers who participated and submitted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9g5IYGsHlY

Fox News goes after Bill Moyers and He Fights Back with Grace

2008-06-12T18:19:00.000-05:00

At the Media Reform Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week, Fox News pursued Bill Moyers. How do the Fox Journalists sleep at night?

POWER TO THE PANZA! THIS IS WHAT SAN ANTO NEEDS!

2008-06-11T11:46:00.000-05:00

When I worked with la Vicki Grise at the Esperanza years ago, it was obvious to me she was a star. She had presence, wit, maldiciones and fideo-love. What else do you need? Between her and Irma Mayorga, the Ph.D from Stanford playwright and resident creative genius, they conceived and produced The Panza Monologues. Vicki has now finished her second year at Cal Arts - the nation's top program in the performing arts and Irma teaches theatre at Florida State University, where she is a star tambien.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Irma-Mayorga/12900109138?ref=share

Some musings from Vicki on not getting to premiere The Panza Monologues in San Anto this summer:

una notitita (ok its a notitote but not a mitote) we will be filming
the panza monologues in Los Angeles August 2nd. i am of course dissapointed that we werent able to do the filming in ourhome town (ran around woodlawn lake this morning - so glad to be home)but i'm actually not angry. so many people have opened up space for usto do our work with extreme generosity. i remain ever hopeful and
extremely grateful (yes, i have watched the secret since i moved to
california). evelyn street is doing a second printing of the panza
monologues and maybe someone will bring us to san antonio for the
book/DVD release. aver...till then i will be taking a much needed rest
(oh and writing that thing they call a thesis)!

i ran into vincent valdez the other day. he was telling me about
hearing obama talk in san antonio and one of the things he said was
that it was the first time he had ever heard a presedential candidate
talk about the importance of the arts in america, about reinstituting
arts in the schools and supporting artists with living wages, that
creative energy was vital to the future development of this country
and that it was the first time he saw so many people in san antonio
gathered in one site - outside of a concert, basketball game, or
fiesta.

i teach playwrighting in east LA and i see the desperate need and
desire our gente have for the arts. this is cultural survival, pura
neta. and while i do not have much faith in any institution or
canidate to reverse the ramifications of the cultural wars (i am still
an anarchist in spirit) - i do believe people are fighting back/ have
always fought back. i feel that we are at an important crossroads -
our young people want a different future (we all want a different
future) -

power to the panza!

fideo luv -vgrise

Photo Credits: Vicki Grise performing "The Panza Monologues"
The Panza Monologues.

What kind of performing arts center does San Antonio deserve?

2008-06-08T19:23:00.000-05:00

San Antonio has cultura but no place or money to see high-quality theatre. (See my story on the Panza Monologues in the next blog). And very little discussion about WHY this is happening. (See the blog after that)

Intro: This past May 10th, 2008, the City of San Antonio approved a gigantic Bond Package that included 100 million dollars for a Performing Arts Center at the Municipal Auditorium downtown...I've heard the Mayor say he wants Opera (which I love too, but chinelas...) BELOW IS A POST FROM PABLO MARTINEZ, POET AND CULTURAL ACTIVIST (with my edits):

In 2000, I returned to San Antonio after 14 years in New York City, where I worked at the New York Philharmonic and two major arts funding agencies. Not long after my return, I had lunch with a high-ranking city official. As we talked about San Antonio's future, he observed that the city was nearing the threshold of immense change. "We can go in either of two directions," he speculated. "We can become another party town, like New Orleans, or we can go the way of San Francisco." As I read recent accounts of downtown bars buying larger quantities of beer to meet customer demand during the Final Four and Fiesta, the path we've taken became abundantly clear.

The suggestion that the proposed center http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2008/04/14/story1.htmlwill be self-sustaining -- without any public support -- reveals the planners' naïveté. This country's genuinely great concert halls receive enormous sums of public subsidies from local, state, and federal agencies. What narrow information are San Antonio's leaders relying on when they make these myopic pronouncements?

However, if the building is to live up to its populist name, the Bexar County Performing Arts Center, then its board members, administrators, and funders must do everything in their power to ensure that the Center is accessible to all of Bexar County.

Without public subvention, San Antonio's hall will be denied the validation of funding agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts. In other words, it would be viewed as non-competitive in the eyes of nationally recognized arts professionals who help determine the NEA's yearly allocations. (Most NEA grants require evidence of diverse community support.)

According to the Managing Director of Fort Worth's Bass Concert Hall, it will take 300 programmed dates a year for San Antonio's hall to be profitable (the use of such language by local leaders suggests a weak grasp of the not-for-profit art sector's standards and practices). Let's see...filling 1,500 seats for 300 events a year comes to a total of 450,000 seats annually. Half-filled houses for the San Antonio Symphony's dozen season concerts do not augur well for a heavily booked house. Does San Antonio have enough deep-pocketed enthusiasts to fill the hall 300 nights a year -- supporters who would also continue to attend other local performances?

There is also the utterly disturbing but distinct possibility that the Center will serve to expand the already wide gulf that exists between San Antonio's haves and have-nots. By erecting a lavish hall that showcases Eurocentric art forms (symphonic music, opera, and ballet), we make a bold statement: we aspire to world-class status, but only when it's defined in entrenched, divisive terms. (Either that, or we're the West, as the new, centrally located museum will suggest to tourists.) The hall will stand as imposing evidence of San Antonio's insistence that we privilege certain cultural expressions over others.

Photo Credits:
"Electricidad," a Teatro Visión production, San Jose, California, directed by Mark Valdez (and written by Luis Alfaro)
(The play was also performed here in San Anto at the San Pedro Playhouse, directed by Marisela Barrera - but I am a fan of Adelina Anthony, (Stanford Ph.D program/activist/playwright/perfectionist) who played Electricidad in San Jose, and she should perform here regularly - besides, she's a native of San Antonio)
f5EKF_oGU9WuF5tz7jg&tbnid=3fKIkiJFC_h93M:&tbnh=123&tbnw=84&ei=BURRSIfnHYyaebbsud8M&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dadelina%2Banthony%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Why The Panza Monologues Can't Come to San Antonio

2008-06-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

Vicki Grise is from San Antonio, and so is Irma Mayorga. Together, they created The Panza Monologues, which has toured throughout the country, except here.

Why? There is no place to perform. And if there is a place, there is no funding for them. The Guadalupe is recovering from a nightmarish board and directors, and Say Si cancelled at the last moment.

I've always wondered why San Antonio doesn't have an established Chicana/o Theatre Program at one of the universities, why we don't have an Equity City Theatre, why we don't have Chicano Chakespeare, why Cherrie Moraga's Media didn't perform here, so many whys and neither Vicki or Irma live here anymore.

And now we have a multi-million City bond package that just passed and very little debate about its merits. (Read what Pablo Martinez has to say about that in next blog).

THIS IS WHAT WE DESERVE IN SAN ANTONIO! SEE THE VIDEO!

SAN ANTONIO MEDIA DOESN'T HAVE TO BE CLEAR CHANNEL, LISTEN!

2008-06-08T18:05:00.000-05:00

In Minneapolis this past week, thousands of people gathered to challenge the corporatized bottom-feed media brought to us courtesy of Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush - it's called media deregulation.
http://www.freepress.net/conference

In a democracy, the media should be free. People like me - and you - should be represented and it shouldn't be about selling ads on the front page of the newspaper or sex ads filling up the alternative paper or mainstream views on public radio. Television news should be local, and not focused on ambulance chasing and violence. We get the media we deserve. Let your Congressman and Senators know how you feel.

PUT THE KOOL BACK IN YOUR SUMMER, SAN ANTONIO-STYLE: THE KRAYOLAS ARE BACK!

2008-05-08T14:14:00.000-05:00

THE KRAYOLAS AND THEIR NEW CD
“LA CONQUISTADORA”

What if you could be a teenager again at the baile and the cutest guy with hazel eyes or the girl with the longest black hair slow-danced with you? Remember how it made you feel, all bubbly and dreamy and how life swirled us in Kool-aid colors, sweet and tangy, how life stained our tongues and white shirts in ways we can’t forget?

That’s how it is when I hear Hector Saldana (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, harmonica) singing rock-n-roll in that strawberry milkshake-voice of his with The Krayolas. Now a grown-up baby boomer, he and his brother David Saldana (vocals, percussion and more), are proving that midlife gives you another chance to meet your destiny in the production of their new album “La Conquistadora.” And conquer they do, featuring Augie Meyers, Van Baines (harmony vocals, lead guitar, pedal steel guitar) , Joe Sarli (harmony vocals and electric bass, and The West Side Horns.

Dressed in their sleek, black, retro-Beatles elegance, and looking even better than those other guys ever could - The Krayolas are a new-old force of summer, cruising-to-the beach-with-the-top-down rocknroll - with something more: The wiser, wintry, breezes of la vida grownup without giving up the fun.

Like the danceable, heart-throbby anti-war song, Alex, the first in the album, written by Hector Saldana. A song he says he wrote when he learned that his beloved nephew, Alex, had died tragically from injuries suffered in Iraq.

Or is it the second song, inspired by the album’s title, La Conquistadora (cover art by the local and loco legend who is the visual artist David Zamora Casas, December 12th El Dia de La Virgen de Guadalupe), also written by Saldana and dedicated to the memory of Father Francisco Geronimo, a rock-n-roll romp about the Spanish Conquest and who really got conquered?

Or is it the keyboard brujería if Augie Meyers (The Sir Douglas Quintet, The Texas Tornados) on his Vox organ, who’s contributed three songs for this album porque hey baby, que paso?

Maybe it’s el Max Baca on the bajo sexto on Augie’s song, “Little Fox,” or maybe it’s el chicano soul fonkyiness of Al Gomez’s trumpet and Louis Bustos’ saxophone, quien sabe, pero if you don’t wanna dance when you hear them no wonder she left you without even your chones.

Te acuerdas riding on the back of that motorcycle even though your mother said valemas que no! and remember sleeping in class and falling off your chair and remember when you understood the lie that was Vietnam and remember how many times you’ve fallen in love and you still haven’t learned one goddamn thing?

Then this album’s for you.

Besides, El Chisme on the street says there’s a good chance that the liner notes by native-son genius writer John Phillip Santos and the cover art by David Zamora Casas have a good chance for a Grammy nomination…

Que Viva la Konquista! Kolor me San Antonio!!!!

For more info, check out their website www.thekrayolas.com
photo credit: December 12th, el dia de La Virgen de Guadalupe, by David Zamora Casas
photo credit: cdbaby.com/cd/krayolas

xxxxxend

In San Antonio, why are we celebrating Fiesta!!??

2008-04-25T17:53:00.000-05:00

It's true, San Anto is puro-party. Someone somewhere tonight is celebrating something, and I'm invited. But this week, I'm not goin no-where. It's Fiesta!, the biggest ten-day pachangalooza you'll ever see, and frankly, I'm tired of dancing on my grave.

Let me explain.

On April 21, 1836, the Texan rebels - led by General Sam Houston, defeated the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto. It was a massacre. (Sweet revenge for the preceeding Anglo deaths at the Alamo and Goliad).

And of course, there was a woman involved. There is a legend about a Yellow Rose - whom my friend Denise McVea has researched extensively, and it's a wet-dream myth about a mulatta whore in Mexican General Santa Anna's bed seducing and betraying him for the Anglo Texans - and she's discovered the origin of this myth. I've always been repulsed by this story, as have most women...

But it's party-time now, and the past is pasado, right?

Yes. And no. I think, as Carlos Fuentes says, we've won the cultural war. People come from all over the world to sip our margaritas and munch down on our tacos. The City of San Antonio makes zillions of pesos from the cultural value of Fiesta! You think people come miles and miles to see the city's moneyed elite displaying their "royal court" finery?

Please. The women's Marie Antoniette look-alikes cost over $50,000 alone. If you want to see good-looking women, pos aqui 'stamos en $20 sundresses.

Listen, the people come here to eat. And dance. To hang out at the river. To walk downtown and see other people amidst Spanish colonial and Tejano architecture, even if so much of it has been demolished. They come to flirt. Fall in love. Make love if they're lucky.

But where does the money go from celebrating our defeat with our own cultura?

We're getting defeated all over again. Example: Six historic inner-city schools are being closed after the school year ends, and inner-city children will now have to go to much bigger schools miles away from their neighborhoods.

What's my point?

There's no money to support the schools, according to the corporations that advise the San Antonio Independent School District. No money? Whose fault is that? The real estate developers control our city government, and have convinced and connived to get people to buy brand-new shiny suburban homes far away from downtown.

Leaving behind the oldest, largest, re-gentrifiable housing stock in the whole chingon state.

That's why there's no money for the inner-city's property taxes. Or schools. But there will be money for the corporations and developers who want our beautiful, decaying, city. Who want to turn it into a kind of Tacolandia without the people whose tacos, colors, music, and traditions they desire - who won't be invited downtown. Who won't be able to afford to visit their own city.

San Antonio is poor and all that goes with it. The people, my people, are generous, kind, and trusting, believing that their neighborhoods and this city belongs to them. They love our tacos! They love our pinatas! So they must love us - all of us.

Wrong. The Anglo Texans wanted the land, their slaves, their individual property rights. This is the prevailing truth in Texas. It's the reason our air is polluted, that we've built developments even over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, it's the reason we have a quarter of a million prisoners, it's the reason the Gulf is so dirty, it's the reason that we don't have efficient mass transportation in San Antonio and I could go on and on.

And if you don't like it? Pretend everything is ok. I just can't anymore.

We've even lost the right to speak.

In San Antonio, the City Council passed an ordinance last year denying us the right to march in the streets for free. You want to protest the war? It will cost you plenty if you want to take it to the streets. Fiesta! was exempted.

So los tacos won, but la justicia lost. My people are too poor, too uneducated, too vulnerable because of the past. We have no power, except in our culture, so that's where we have to begin to fight back.

Fiesta me molesta.

photo credits: The Anti-Fiesta Protesta, by David Zamora Casas, outdoor installation at the Esperanza Center in San Antonio, Texas

The Media Pretends to Pay Attention as Six Inner-city Schools Close To Appease Corporate Interests

2008-04-23T16:40:00.000-05:00

Last week, Michelle Jimenez Reyes, mother of a Travis Elementary School student in San Antonio’s inner-city schools, discovered that her daughter’s school library was closed – with eight weeks to go before the end of the schoolyear.

It was only the latest shocker since the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) announced they were shuttering six inner-city schools – citing decreasing enrollment. The city of San Antonio is one of the largest cities in Texas, and with over a million residents, is not losing population. It's building new schools – in the farthest reaches of its spidery suburbs as its citizens move out in search of jobs and cheap housing, leaving behind the oldest and most valuable inner-city housing stock remaining in Texas.

Since the surprising announcement from the SAISD in February, Jimenez Reyes has organized a concerted protest of parents and activists, called Keep Travis Open (www.keeptravisopen.com), a defiant, grassroots, challenge to the closing of historic, blue mosaic-tiled schools with old-growth pecan, huisache, and pink bougainvillea shading the neighborhoods of a much earlier Texas. While the smell of tortillas and pinto beans compete with the racing Tex-Mex of children on bicycles, leaving a distinct echo on the streets.

The story of thousands of schoolchildren without a library and books should be front-page news. The story of established neighborhood schools – with acceptable school rankings – closing their doors for lack of enrollment should be a reason for investigative stories by the media. The community should be outraged, right?

Not in San Antonio. Who's going to tell this story? Here, one Hearst chain newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News is blitzing its ads on the front page as it seeks even more profits. Corporations, according to Jimenez Reyes, are the real power behind the closing of the six schools in a balance-the-budget bottom-line mentality as the developers seek prime inner-city real estate.

Accordingly, the newspaper’s editorial legitimized the SAISD’s budget-tightening decision as a positive move toward staunching the city’s high dropout rate.

On the other side of the street, the alternative paper, the also-corporatized San Antonio Current, stuffed with sex ads, has the interest but not the time to follow the story.

As the television stations cover the story in their usual spurts and spins, sentimental entertainment for the masses in a city that is one of the poorest, diabetic, and least educated in the country.

While the SAISD superintendent, Roberto Durón lives in the King William, a historically-zoned district outside the public schools he manages.

While the dropout rate remains at 50%.

photo credits: Travis Elementary School library, by Michelle Jimenez Reyes

xxxxxxend

FIESTA SAN ANTONIO! FORGET THAT WE LOST AND WE'VE GOT NOTHING TO CELEBRATE

2008-04-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

On April 21st, 1836, the Anglo Texans, after the Alamo and Goliad massacres, overwhelmed the Mexican forces led by General Santa Anna at the battlefield of San Jacinto. The Republic of Texas was established, and the rest is history.

But in San Antonio, the defeat of the Mexicans is celebrated as Fiesta!, a ten-day bacchanalia that brings millions of dollars to this tourist-dependant city known for its margaritas and mariachis.

A city comprised of a majority-minority population of brown and black people who still suffer the ramifications of San Jacinto and Anglo dominance in finance, education, city government and every other index you can think of.

La gente de San Antonio save their few dollars and spend their cash on the rides, the beer, and the music of Fiesta! Even though they lost the War, their cultura is the reason the city is enriched by them as its leaders continue to impoverish them. San Antonio is one of the poorest cities in the country, one of the most polluted, with a regressive tax structure, and unchecked development. We have four military bases and an Archbishop that comes from an Opus Dei tradition.

But we have Fiesta!

If you don't believe me, read my next blog. Or the previous one....

photo credits:
http://www.texascavaliers.org/kingantonio-investiture.aspx

According to a new book by Denise McVea, the mother of Texas was a Mulatta

2008-04-20T23:42:00.000-05:00

Denise McVea is a black woman from San Antonio, Texas, who speaks better Spanish than me. I used to read her stories in the alternative press in Dallas, where she was highly regarded. However, nothing prepared me for the stunning revelation - a decade-long investigation - into the story behind the Yellow Rose of Texas - the legendary mulatta whose seduction and betrayal of the Mexican General Santa Anna changed the course of history by allowing the Texan rebels the opportunity to defeat the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.

According to McVea's painstaking research in Texas, Mexico, New York, and France, the mulatta was Emily West de Zavala. She was the legal wife of Lorenzo de Zavala, a prominent liberal Mexican politician who fled from Mexico, traveling through New Orleans, New York, and finally making a home in Texas after becoming the ideological enemy of Santa Anna.

The Yellow Rose is a myth. But Emily West de Zavala was real, and according to McVea's research, she was the mulatta-wife of Lorenzo de Zavala. A quadroon beauty from New Orleans who Zavala married in New York on November 12, 1831.

Lorenzo de Zavala was the interim vice-president of the Texas Republic, and was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence - a document almost as holy as the Bible and more revered. Zavala is a certified Texas hero - in the same league with Sam Houston - and yet, very little is known of his wife, Emily.

And it is the silence about her that speaks loudly to her race, asserts McVea. From her descendants, from the destroyed files, from the historians. Though McVea doesn't prove that Emily West de Zavala was a black woman, she finds clues that a white male researcher would miss. And then she lets you make your own conclusions. Remember, the founders of the Republic of Texas wanted to keep their slaves - contrary to Mexican law which prohibited slavery in 1829. Intermarriage was illegal in the Republic of Texas, and Lorenzo de Zavala was a white Mexican man. Mexican high society - to which Zavala belonged - disapproved of such unions.

McVea told me that the University of Texas Press was interested in publishing her book - but there was unusual, high-level interference. In the last chapter of her book, McVea publishes the entire email conversations between herself and a noted Texan historian and reviewer for her manuscript who obviously didn't want to see McVea's story published. Instead, McVea self-published her manuscript, and the email conversations are included in a just-released Author's Special Edition of Making Myth of Emily by the Auris Project (2005). Making Myth of Emily has just been published for the public, 2008.

I'm not surprised it has taken Denise McVea this long to release her book to the public. This is Texas, after all. Where do I begin to tell you what it's like here? When will it end?

It ends today, April 21st, 2008. As a tejana with my own mulatta great-great grandmother, I am finally, proudly, free.

Obama is in San Antonio today and this I know

2008-02-19T10:39:00.000-06:00

I'm for Obama, but all my girlfriends are for Hillary. As a born and bred Tejana with absolutely no polling experience, I predict that Clinton will take Texas - but not by much.

My beloved state of Texas has a history of racial segregation between whites and blacks, whites and browns - and browns and blacks. I'm from the baby boomer generation, and my peers carry the prejudiced baggage of our parents. Not all - but many. They will never admit it, but it's there in what they don't say and the murmurs...you don't want to hear those words.

My generation of people in the fifties and forties has led separate lives from Blacks. At the MLK March we have every year here, billed as the largest in Texas, latinos and whites were maybe 20% of the thousands of black marchers on the city's eastside - now turning browner with immigrants and middle-class blacks leaving for the suburbs. Remember, latinos are easily 60% of the city's population, and I think blacks constitute approximately 7%. You call this togetherness? I call it the Alamo.

Rudy Rosales, Ph.D, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) told me months ago that "this country would never elect a black man." Rosales considers himself a progressive, and his wife, Rosa Rosales, is the national director of LULAC, who has substantial ties and much to gain from Hillary's political machine. That's not a bad thing, it's just our history - so far.

I want Obama to win. And this is something that's been bothering me because I've always admired La Hillary. Why do I want a black man to win over Hillary? Why do I feel more at home with him than the white woman? My first childhood friends were black, is that it? Did the name-calling I endured make me sensitive to what my black girlfriend Freda suffered after desegregation? Even after all the sexual harrassment I've felt from the latinos and white men, and even black men in the past?

As the young people say, it's twisted.

I think Obama has more conciencia, though I fear it will be lost as he's influenced by the powers. I'm an idealist, anyone who stood up to the War publicly in 2002 gives me hope. No one in public office I know from Texas stood up so boldly and challenged the War, not with all the military bases we have.

If Obama wants to win Texas, I have this advice - and it comes from all the arguments I've had with las girlfriends about him.

He needs to include Brown in his Black/White dichotomy. And he needs to say it on the national stage, and especially in the debate next week in Austin, Texas. He needs to say it often, loud - and proud. I suspect he means the blackness in brown, but my people here haven't come to that realization yet. My generation in general doesn't trust black leaders, having been forced to fight for a slice of pecan pie that wasn't very good to begin with. We weren't enslaved, it was worse. They married some of us. Then they enslaved us.

Brown is what we cling to, it's what we remember, it's what defines us, even as the definition of white/black/brown continues its melting inside us.

Maybe that's it, I see Obama as a brown woman because he's mixed like me, and he's emotional, like me. He lets his heart do the talking. He's the feminine, while Hillary is trying to be the macha.

Either way, it's history. And I never dreamed this would happen. Not in the Texas I grew up in. And we're planning pillow fights after the debate next week.

credits: Virgen de Guadalupe Velorio, next door to Obama's speech at the Guadalupe Plaza today
sanantoniodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_...

I picked a fight with the Girls Scouts over their fat cookies

2008-02-19T00:09:00.000-06:00

Yes, it's true, I was a Brownie a long time ago, and learned how to toast marshmellows and make rag-rugs, and I sold cookies then too.

But people weren't so - ummm - deliciously smitten with cookies and cakes and candies and pizza and hamburgers and tamales and barbacoa. We weren't so gorditas and gorditos then, ok?

San Antonio, Texas, has a reputation for great Tex-Mex food. But if you live here, it's hard to be slender. And the only slender thing about San Antonio is the river. We are one of the poorest cities in the country, deliberately so, making my community vulnerable to commercials and the flour-tortilla temptations of our working-class history. In my part of the city, there should be a law against all the fast-food joints on one block. Cheap, fast, filling food that working and middle-class people eat all the time. Have to eat, or else they'll starve.

This is why I picked a fight with the Girls Scouts selling their make-me-fat cookies outside the stores this weekend. It seems like ninety percent of the people here are overweight, many are very obese. When my out-of-town friends come to visit me, this is the first thing they notice... How dare the Girls Scouts take advantage of us this way?

But of course, they can. Everybody else does. We don't have a good mass transit system, and the middle-class won't take the buses, that's what poor people use in Texas. So hardly anyone walks. It's just too easy to gain weight in San Antonio, we have a generous table of friendship and food, it's all offered in love. Only the food we're eating right now is all wrong for us. Being gordita or gordita is normal for this city. I'm not kidding.

Our diabetes rate is skyrocketing-high, and it's like those who don't have the sugar have high blood pressure or borderline or are having heart attacks. We are a breathtakingly beautiful people, if you could only see us as I knew us when I was growing up. When we were skinny.

I told the Girls Scouts leaders at the table they needed to come up with another product - how they were killing us with every cookie they sold us. Of course the flaca Junior League-types got pissed, so much for the good-girl credo they're supposed to follow. It's about the money, honey.

No, I didn't buy the cookies. (I'm sure someone will let me have some at the office). And I hope you don't either. Ya basta! Health is a civil right, too.

credits: www.nataleedee.com

Rachel, The Battered Woman from the Pink House Next Door

2008-02-17T19:06:00.000-06:00

The reason I haven’t written is because of Rachel. I live in the barrio, well, San Antonio is one eternal barrio, a heaven and hell mix of fix-your-flat-tire repair shops, tortillerias, taquerias, pitbull puppies for sale around the corner. There are no bookstores here, no kiosks, and the only place to buy the New York Times is at the Starbucks off the freeway. My street is working-class, on the poor side of Jefferson High School, away from the big homes of the Monticello district.

I like living in the barrio, it’s real. But I also know why people don’t like living here, it’s too hard. People here have problems that my family surmounted years ago, my parents made sacrifices so that I wouldn’t see what I have in the almost-three years I’ve been here. And I know there must be something wrong with me – because I want to see it. I want to help, but I'm not able to help. Like for example,

Rachel. I haven’t been able to write because of her, my next-door neighbor. Right after New Year’s, she knocked on my back door late at night and told me she was scared because her husband, Jim, had just taken their three kids to his parents and wanted a divorce. That she was to leave immediately, and she has no job because she's a stay-at-home mother, a good one from what I've seen. I tend to stay away from her because she’s bipolar – that’s another long story – but this time I really looked at her delicate cuerpecito and noticed again the lump in her jaw, only she also had a purple skid-mark bruise on her forehead and she did that funny shuffle she always does, as I walked with her back to her house.

Why did it take me so long to realize she's a battered woman? And that Jim, her husband at 250 pounds-plus, has been beating her every week since I’ve lived here? Didn't I hear her screaming? Was that what it was? It seems that he’s lost his job at USAA and wants her out of the dilapidated pink house next door. He’s taken their three young sons, and though they’ve been married ten years, he wants her out of the house as soon as possible. He wants her to go live with her mother, and he's told her he won't ask for child support until she gets a job.

Of course I called the police, and the domestic violence specialist came right over and I heard all the gory details of how Jim has sat on her, beat her head with the phone when she's tried to call for help, kicked her, and how he broke her jaw years ago, that’s why she has that funny lump she’s always massaging. Jim wouldn’t let her go to the doctor, and so she let it heal itself. The police officer sent for the Evidence Team, and they came over and took photos of Rachel’s injuries, which included bruised ribs, a bloody tear in her scalp, and more in her pelvic area.

Then Rachel began telling me about her past. She’s from the Westside, and the story begins with her father who brutalized her, and her brothers who followed his lead. She’s been telling me the story in bits and pieces as I’ve driven her to a lawyer, to a counselor, who have advised her to go to the Battered Women’s Shelter.

“I’m scared.” She cries, trembling from the beatings that Jim gives her when he comes around, threatening her, watching her, telling her she has to have sex with him if he wants to see the kids.

“I’m scared, I’m so scared.” That’s all she says when she hears that under Texas law, she has rights, that she can fight for her kids, that she can get spousal assistance to help her get a good job. She has a high school degree, and a nursing assistant certification. She cries for her children night and day. She drinks. She takes her medication and plays with my cats, and my abandoned barrio-gatitos follow her into the pink house and keep her company.

She’s got Marilyn Monroe-blond hair, but the bleach-job compliments her, she's very guerita, and wears tight jeans well because she weighs maybe 100 pounds. Her husband is a beast compared to her. Her children are gentle with my cats, and I remember how Jim yelled at them all the time. When I tell her this, she gets quiet. "Why does he want to divorce me?" Then she says, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you, thank you for everything.”

The counselor from the Domestic Violence Unit warned Rachel that Jim might try to kill her or the kids. I've offered several times to take her anywhere, encouraged her to get help from the Battered Women's Shelter.

The other day she cried again.

“I’m so scared of being alone.”

To Be Continued

artistic credit: "Carmen," Ana Montoya, www.anartegallery.com

Legendary Singer Lydia Mendoza dies in San Antonio, Texas

2007-12-21T17:28:00.000-06:00

Lydia Mendoza, born May 21, 1916, died peacefully last night in San Antonio, Texas at the age of 91.

If you don't know who she was, ask your grandmother, who likely remembers her and her twelve-string guitar at the Plaza del Zacate in San Antonio, Texas, with the chili queens in the early 1930s. She sang, literally, for pennies, as part if a struggling musical family following the migrant route to Michigan and back, until she was signed to the Blue Bird label in 1934. One of her songs, Mal Hombre, was an overnight success, when she was just 17 years old.

She emerged as one of the few tejanas to gain national prominence in a time when few women were encouraged to pursue a musical career. Throughout her life, until she suffered a stroke in 1988, she was beloved for singing the songs of the poor, working-class mexicanos she came from, as La cancionera de los pobres and La alondra de la frontera.

In 1982, Lydia Mendoza became the first Texan to receive a National Endowment for the Art's National Heritage Award. Her last public appearance was a tribute, A Serenata to Lydia Mendoza, for her 90th birthday, presented by the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center at the Plaza Guadalupe in September 2006.

It rained that night, and Lydia Mendoza's illness prevented her from singing for the thousands who came just to show their respeto to the woman who knew at least a thousand songs about their lives, their loves, their language, and their dreams. She learned the words to those songs when she was a little girl in Monterrey, Mexico, from reading bubble-gum wrappers, then listening in the shadows to the men who sang those songs, then teaching herself to play the mandolin, the guitar, the violin, the piano, the bass fiddle, and any instrument she picked up.

Adios, Lydia. I will remember you because my mother listened to your songs crying for my father who didn't love her. She cried as hard as that rain that last time I saw you at the Plaza, and that's how you always sang. You cried for her, didn't you, for all of us.

The memorial service is tomorrow, December 22, 2007, at the Guadalupe Church. Lydia Mendoza will be buried at San Fernando II afterwards. That's what Radio KEDA, the conjunto station, also known as Radio Jalapeno in San Antonio, has announced, playing her songs continuously since yesterday in tribute.

Muchas Gracias a Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, for writing the autobiography of Lydia Mendoza, Lydia Mendoza's Life in Music, Oxford University Press, 2001.

photo credits: Lydia Mendoza lydia_mendoza.mondomix.com

In San Antonio, Texas, Free Speech Lawsuit gets its day in Court

2007-12-20T17:36:00.000-06:00

In Dallas, Texas, there is no cost for a "political" parade. Or in Austin. Or in Houston - for the first fifteen intersections. Political marchers aren't charged in Los Angeles or in New York City for taking to the streets.
But San Antonio, Texas is different. A new "Parade Ordinance" passed by the City Council on November 29, 2007, requires groups to pay thousands of dollars to march in the public streets. Though the sidewalks, the Ordinance says, are free.

In response, a coalition calling itself The International Woman's Day March Committee and the San Antonio Free Speech Coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance.

The Injunction Hearing was held today in a packed courtroom at the Federal Courthouse by District Judge Xavier Rodriguez. After more than four hours of testimony and cross-examination of the Coalition's witnesses, Judge Rodriguez decided to postpone his ruling until February 8th. The diverse group of witnesses, including Nadine Saliba, an Arab-American activist and Lorinda Carr, a disabled veteran who uses a wheelchair, answered questions from the plaintiff's lawyer, Amy Kastely, regarding the arbitrary and discriminating schema for marching organizers and marchers. Sabila testified regarding the $3000 fee she was quoted for an estimated 200 Arab-American women marching on the streets, and Karr testified about the difficulty of using the city's cracked sidewalks in a wheelchair. Graciela Sanchez, one of the Coalition leaders, stated that an activist planning a March for Darfur was quoted a $12,000-$15,000 user's fee - because the group - consisting of five runners with torches - wanted to be on the streets.

"It's your message, so you should have to pay for it...It's just like renting a house," said Mayor Phil Hardberger in response to the lawsuit, as reported in the San Antonio Express-News on December 20th.

photo credits: Mia Kang, Esperanza Center

Free Speech Advocates File Lawsuit Against the City of San Antonio

2007-12-10T15:19:00.000-06:00

With a vote of 9-2, the San Antonio City Council passed a new "Parade" Ordinance that denies marching on the street without a substantial "fee." The new "Ordinance" allows selected "groups" to march for free:

1. At least two "Fiesta" Parades
2. The MLK March
3. The Cesar Chavez March
4. Diez y Seis de Septiembre
5. Veterans Day
6. Mardi Gras

The City of San Antonio is one of many cities around the country facing these restrictive ordinances and legal challenges to them. On December 20th, Judge Xavier Rodriguez will hold a hearing on the injunction that would prevent the City of San Antonio from enforcing the Parade Ordinance.

NO WONDER THE MIRASOL SCANDAL HAPPENED: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CONTRACTS AT SAHA

2007-12-04T21:48:00.000-06:00

Herman Taylor, the recently-hired Assistant Procurement & Facilities Director at SAHA, has resigned after only two months reporting to Patrick Bourcier, Director of Procurement & Facilities - in shock at the contracting miasma at SAHA. Taylor, who is a professionally-certified public buyer, (know as CPPB), was the only procurement-certified manager at SAHA, says that he was appalled at SAHA's antiquated commodity code system that should have been updated "at least five years ago. "

Because SAHA has neglected using the government's national and efficient coding system for contracting, Taylor explained, the Housing Authority has little room for the many variations and categories of contracts that need to be established, reviewed, and re-configured according to governmental regulations.

SAHA has been under fire for the Mirasol Homes Public Housing Project, a westside community beset with poor construction and health problems linked to SAHA's contractual procedures.

Pursuant to his responsibilites while at SAHA, Taylor said that "When I went through and found the contracts, I went into the system and couldn’t determine what contracts were in place and the Director told me it (the contracts) was not accurate information." Taylor says there was no information on the contracts based on what was expired. So he’s (Bourcier) probably changing the contracts in the system – not in paper. So it lets him cover up the problem. Ninety percent of that (contract) information was not accurate."

Further, Taylor said there were "alot of contracts coming up for expiration," and they should be extended or renegotiated. And while many contracts are eligible for that, he made a list of "40 -50 contracts that need to be (newly) established." In other words, the contracts need to go out through proscribed governmental bidding procedures.

To get around the contracting slowdown created by incompetence, he said that SAHA is making non-profit procurement contracts via their corporate entities, to get around federal regulations. In other words, SAHA is using for-profit procurement procedures for non-profit procurement contracts.

Besides his professional buyer's certification, Taylor is also a real estate broker, mortgage broker, financial planner, securities representative, and has extensive experience with governmental contracts.

Bourcier's salary is near the range of "six-figures,' according to Taylor's estimation. Taylor also stated that he was writing a letter to SAHA's CEO, Henry Alvarez III, detailing his observations, and recommending that SAHA have two separate departments, each charged with Contract Management and Procurement.

Taylor says that while some people at SAHA wanted him to "shine," he had begun to feel he was hired to protect Bourcier, who has been at SAHA for a dozen years - and to "clean up" the Procurement Office without being given any authority whatsoever.

credits: Mirasol Homes, www.hobb.org/hobbv1/images/stories/Mirasol2.gif

Mary Alice, wife of Henry Cisneros, finds her voice in San Antonio as women battle for Free Speech in the Streets

2007-11-30T17:48:00.000-06:00

She's a delicate bird of a woman, petite and beautifully apparelled. I know her husband, and she looks up to her supremely intelligent, charismatic, but scared of the status-quo husband. I suspect that she became a San Antonio councilwoman as a result of his lanky shadow. No matter. Yesterday, la Mary Alice stood up to the Man along with Councilwoman Lourdes Galvan and voted on the side of the Constitution and women's rights as one of two women on the San Antonio City Council who recognizes that anti-war or anti-immigrant protestors should be able to march on the streets without having to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. While the city-wide Fiesta! bacchanal takes over the streets for weeks.

With a vote of 9-2, the San Antonio City Council overwhelmingly voted to pass a new "Parade" Ordinance yesterday despite the organized protest of free speech advocates - mostly women - who believe that the City Council is violating the First Amendment of its citizens by charging marchers who want to protest on the street instead of sidewalks.

Amy Kastely, a law professor and attorney for the Esperanza Center, walked alongside free speech proponents toward the Federal Courthouse after the vote to file a lawsuit on behalf of the International Women's Day March & Rally Committee and the Free Speech Coalition.

I know, I walked too. In my high heels, all dressed up for the occasion at City Hall.

According to Kastely, the just-passed ordinance allows for "big groups" listed below to march for free - while other groups have to pay:

1. At least two "Fiesta" parades
2. The MLK March
3. The Cesar Chavez March
4. Diez y Seis de Septiembre
5. Veteran's Day
6. Mardi Gras

"This ordinance threatens community marches by requiring groups to pay for the cost of traffic barriers, police officers and clean-up for their events, which can cost up to $15,000 or more," said Mia Kang, a young activist who spoke before City Council.

Today's ordinance "is a violation of the Constitution," says Kastely, as the City Council "is wiling to pick and choose among ideas, willing to balance the city budget off our backs."

The City of San Antonio is one of many cities around the country facing these restrictive ordinances and legal challenges to them. In response, some courts have said that it is not constitutionally permissible for the government to impose such high fees for the use of public streets - and that people are in effect precluded from using the public streets for marches, parades and the like. Further, courts have clearly held that the First Amendment requires "viewpoint neutrality," which means that if governments waive the costs for some they must waive them for all, without regard to the content of the speech.

According to Kastely, the Council's vote implies that they believe citizens should have to pay to speak out, and that the "costs are so big they interfere with free speech."

You know Mary Alice had to stand up to Henry that night. You go hermana!

credits: March in San Antonio, Texas, www.salon.com

STATEMENT FROM DEE MURFF WHO FILED DISCRIMINATION CHARGES AGAINST THE GUADALUPE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER THIS WEEK

2007-11-30T17:06:00.000-06:00

I've taken the liberty of editing the complete statement because of length, but I'm impressed with Dee's courage and coraje. May you too fight back, it's the only way.

This lawsuit represents more than the damages/injuries inflicted upon me. What I want people to remember is that there are 12 women and 2 men who were also displaced. The Chairman of the Board, Vice Chairman, and the rest of the Board failed to act responsibly; choosing instead to justify the illegal behavior of the President of the organization. The Board of Directors deliberately retaliated against me instead of protecting me and my civil rights. In fact my complaints were ignored because I am brown and I am a woman.

The tax payers and citizens who have provided support to the GCAC for over 25 years have also been robbed of classes, performances and events that enrich our community and preserve our Chicano/a culture. The loss during this period is immeasurable.
The greatest injury however has been to the countless civil rights advocates who battle to ensure that employees’ women in particular, would not have to endure sexual harassment and then suffer retaliation for reporting it.

I am saddened when I think about what has happened to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, once considered a model on the national level as a cultural institution. I am saddened when I think about the hopeful young children that have had their violins silenced because the President canceled the Mariachi classes. Gone is the Guadalupe Bookstore which helped promote local and regional authors and artists. Gone are all of the artistic directors that helped breathe life into the Guadalupe all gone except for one and how she survived is beyond me.

We expect a verdict that will send a clear message to those who still believe that females can continue to be treated like second class citizens. We expect to hold the Board of Directors accountable for affirming the actions of the President instead of defending my civil rights when I cried out and rather than protecting me; silenced, humiliated and escorted me out for my own protection.

Dolores Zapata Murff

November 27, 2007

credits:Women Resisting in Oaxaca http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.genderracepower.com/wp-content/uploads/2006

Are we ashamed of La Lupe? The Guadalupe Cultural Center gets sued for Sexual Discrimination by a Brown Woman

2007-11-26T22:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it's official. Tragic. And necessary.

The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, once a history-making cultural fuerza and fountain of all things Chican@, is getting sued by one brown woman - and is about to make history again. On Tuesday, November 27th, 2007, at 10 am, Amy Kastely, lawyer with de la Riva & Associates who is representing the plaintiff, Dee (Dolores) Zapata Murff, will file a lawsuit in Federal District Court in San Antonio, Texas, alleging sexual discrimination.

Specifically, the charges include: Sexual Harrassment; Harrassment based on race, color and national origin (the plaintiff called herself a Chicana); Retaliation; Constructive Discharge, and Negligent Supervision.

In the lawsuit, Dee Zapata Murff, the GCAC's former Public Relations and Marketing Manager, alleges that R. Bret Ruiz, who was hired by Juan F. Aguilera, the Center's Board Chairman in the summer of 2006, discriminated against her as the Guadalupe Cultural Center Board failed to take action when she brought it to their attention. The following is an excerpt from the formal complaint that will be filed on Tuesday morning: (The web-links are mine)

In July 2005, Defendant R. Bret Ruiz was hired as Executive Director of the Guadalupe Center. At some point in the next several months, Mr. Ruiz requested, and the Board of Directors of the Guadalupe approved, a change in his title to “President” of the Guadalupe Center.

1. Within a month of beginning work, Defendant Ruiz began to direct sexually offensive remarks towards Plaintiff Murff. These included:

a) Describing a young intern’s breasts as “voluptuous” and her clothing as “provocative” and then comparing the young woman’s appearance to Ms. Murff’s, remarking that Ms. Murff was also “voluptuous” and “provocative,” as he looked up and down her body;

b) Daily comments on Ms. Murff’s clothing made in front of other Guadalupe Center staff members, ranging from “very sexy today” to “here comes Dee in her fake Channel;”

c) Calling Ms. Murff while she was on her lunch break to comment on the co-worker with whom she was having lunch: “You’re not having an inappropriate relationship with him are you?”

d) Remarking that Ms. Murff must have “compromised herself” to get the editor of La Prensa newspaper to donate a half-page advertisement to the Guadalupe Center; and

e) Remarking that Ms. Murff “must have given a blow job” to another staff member who had complemented Ms. Murff’s work on a particular project.

2. Defendant Ruiz also repeatedly made racially offensive comments directed at Ms. Murff and other Mexican-Americans:

a) “You need to wear more sunscreen – you are getting too dark” [said to a dark-complexioned Mexican-American woman];

b) “You need to work on your accent because it sounds too Chicano” [said to a Mexican-American man]; and

c) Commenting that people living in the Westside of San Antonio (where the Guadalupe is located) are “very rasquache y feos.”

d) Telling Ms. Murff: “you look like la india Maria!!”

3. In September 2005, Ms. Murff told Mr. Ruiz that his sexual and racial remarks were “offensive” and “abusive.” Soon thereafter, Mr. Ruiz called Ms. Murff to his office and told her that he could not “mentor” her and that he had certain expectations of her as the Public Relations Director. Later, Ms. Murff discovered that Mr. Ruiz had put a letter in her personnel file discussing this “counseling” session. Although this letter is addressed to Ms. Murff, it was never delivered to her.

*******************
I've heard latinas complain about sexual harrassment at the Guadalupe Cultural Center for a long time. Unfortunately, there are still too many men at non-profits who don't understand that justice and equality includes respect for las mujeres. I attended several boardmeetings at the Guadalupe Cultural Center last year, and personally witnessed the contempt the boardmembers showered on the latinas of the Guadalupe, me included. What I noticed was that the boardmembers showed a definite disdain for the working-class, ethnic-apparalled, un-corporate couture of the women who came before them.

A jury could be seated and ready for trial in 9-10 months, Fall 2008.

artistic credit: Guadalupe (Cultural Center) Dancer
www.sadu.org

The greatest accordionist in the world, Esteban Jordan, has one more song to play for you

2007-10-21T18:34:00.001-05:00

Esteban Jordan, 67, "El Parche," who many call the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion, who plays what is simply impossible on the accordion, esta muy enfermo.

The last time I heard him play, he played a shorter set, and without the electric thunder of the past.

If you've ever heard him play, you will never forget it. The grammy-nominated master accordionist is our Paco D'Lucia, Hendrix, and Astor Piazzolla: Fire, cantina, and the grace of hell reside in his hands, and in those blinded eyes that have seen too much.

Esteban, born in the South Texas Valley and a son of a migrant family who didn't get an education, is notoriously difficult and protective of his music and image. It's the reason you may not know who he is, but now you do.

The only place to hear him in San Antonio is at Salute on Friday nights, accompanied by two of his accomplished sons and the prodigy Juanito on the drums. Lately, he's been playing less sets with longer intermissions. Azeneth Dominguez, the owner of the venerable bar on St. Mary's that specializes in jazzy, twisty, and rocknroll conjunto, is thinking of shutting down because - it's breaking her to keep it open. The sophisticated audience at Salute has included Juan Tejeda, Flaco Jimenez (who used to go hear Esteban play), assorted conjunto freaks, Los Macarturos, labor organizers, and even the anti-polkista Sandra Cisneros back in the day.

"When you go hear Esteban, get on for the ride," says artist Joan Frederick, a twenty-year veterana of Esteban's houevre. She remembers the time that Azeneth brought mariachis into the bar to serenade Esteban for his birthday, and how the mariachis played and played for him, and how Esteban knew the words to all the songs, and made the rancheras even better somehow, different, una locura, infinite.

Esteban, you have my life in your accordion.

photo credit: www.estebanjordan.com

LATINOS, WORLD WAR II, AND THE VIOLENCE OF MY FATHER

2007-09-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

My father, Robert Renaud, who's now 87, served in World War II for three years. Thank you, Maggie Rivas, Ph.D, for forcing Ken Burns to include men like my father.

Now let's talk about ending The War once and for all.

To do that, we have to remember the lessons.

My father returned to San Perlita, Texas ready to fight anyone who crossed him. He believed himself a better man than those who did not go to la guerra. To this day, he remembers his first days in the Army, his buddies, his uniform, how to salute, and the bone-breaking explosion of cannon from his driver's seat in the tank.

Daddy used to humiliate my mother because she was mexicana, and didn't speak good English like him. He thought we should bomb Vietnam into a democracy. He scoffed at Martin Luther King, Jr., as a man who "started trouble."

World War II taught my father he belonged. He took on the views of the priviliged, even though he wasn't. But ay, how he wanted to be.

Daddy beat my brother, Jorge Antonio, into a Texas prison, where he is today. He beat me almost daily, and my retarded little brother, Daniel. He couldn't believe Jorge was a genius. He hated the way I challenged him. And Daniel's diaper at six years old embarrassed him.

I love my father, and have tried to forgive him.

The War did not teach my father anything good. He says he fought for democracy, but I never saw him practice it anywhere. The only civil rights he ever wanted was for himself. Because he suffered for this country, I think he believed he would be treated equally by whites.

And that never happened. Sure, he got his medals, his pat on the back, and the false show of respect that so many veterans cling to.

But my father is a defeated man. He believes The War made him a man.

Now that we've proved we Latinos are just as capable of killing others in the name of democracy - a democracy too many men rejected when they returned home after World War II, let's honor them by remembering that War does not make heroes, much less true men.

Heroes stand up for truth and justice. This was not my father.

The Greatest Generation, I hope, is yet to come.

credits: NOAA Black History Month

credits:

This is the Huipil you won't see at the Museo Alameda's "Huipiles: A Celebration:"

2007-09-22T15:08:00.001-05:00

This is the kind of woman you're not going to see this in the Huipiles: A Celebration, at the Museo Alameda Smithsonian.

So I'm showing it to you.

Comandanta Ramona, 1959-2006
The world has lost one of those women it requires. Mexico has lost one of the combative women it needs and we, we have lost a piece of our heart,” said sub-comandante Marcos at the time of her death.

An advocate for women’s rights and artisanship, Ramona was the first member of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee (CGRI), the leadership body of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), to have died since their uprising in 1994.

In 1993, Comandanta Ramona, together with Major Ana María, extensively consulted indigenous Zapatista communities (back then, still underground and not public) about the exploitation of women and subsequently penned the Revolutionary Laws of Women. On March 8 of that year, the Revolutionary Laws were passed.

Ramona was a petite, soft-spoken woman charged with significant responsibilities, such as having been entrusted with the military leadership in San Cristóbal during the uprising. In February of 1994, after the Zapatistas called a cease-fire to the twelve-day long uprising in response to mass peace marches, Ramona was the first Zapatista representative to speak during peace talks with the government. Two years later, when the Mexican authorities forbade the Zapatistas from participating in the National Indigenous Congress in Mexico City, the frail and ill-struck Ramona was asked to represent the Zapatistas.

The plan worked as the government conceded to Ramona and she went on to represent the Zapatistas, speaking in front of 100,000 supporters in Mexico City’s Zocalo during the important nation-wide indigenous gathering.

Credit: Text (with my edits from the web) and Photo by Heriberto Rodriguez

Huipiles at the Museo Alameda: There is nothing to celebrate

2007-09-21T17:03:00.000-05:00

So some young latinas asked me yesterday about the "Huipiles" at the Museo Alameda. They were confused about the Exhibit. The photo below is by a commercial artist, Liz Garza Williams, one of the artists in the Huipiles Exhibit, and this is her photo of the featured artist, Kathy Sosa, wife of Republican party advertising-mogul Lionel Sosa, who is also in the show. You know what this visual says to young latinas, who comprise the majority population in this region? This photo, indicative of the quality and imagery in this Huipiles exhibit, says "See how I own your past? Do you see how beautiful I am wearing what you don't even know about? You can't even afford your own history, because only a rich woman like me is good enough and beautiful enough to wear it."

Now the Museo Alameda has asked latina scholars to contribute to "panels," to discuss "huipiles." There is a documentary that accompanies the show where some huipil-dressed latinas are interviewed. Sandra Cisneros and Ellen Riojas Clark, Ph.D, contributed essays, and are also two of the women Kathy Sosa Frida Kahloized in her "Huipiles" paintings.

What will young women remember? The essays, the documentary?

Or this?

artistic credit: "Katarina, mi querida amiga, a portrait of Kathy Sosa," by Liz Garza Williams

What's wrong with this picture? The Museo Alameda in San Antonio

2007-09-19T18:30:00.001-05:00

You're looking at one of the photographs taken by Liz Garza Williams, whose work is currently being exhibited at the Museo Alameda in a new exhibit titled Huipiles: A Celebration.

Other artists included in this exhibit are Kathy Sosa (Republican-party advertising mogul Lionel Sosa's wife), Cristina Sosa Noriega (Lionel's daughter of the HEB Loteria dinnerware line), Jacinto Guevara, artist, Veronica Prida, and Lionel Sosa himself.

I'm not a certified art critic, just a Chicana who's travelled all over Mexico and who spent time in Guatemala during their civil war. The women who wear huipiles there look like Rigoberta Menchu - they are indigenous, brown, impoverished, marginalized, and supremely despised by the status quo. They look like me. The Zapatista women wear them too.

Henry R. Munoz III, the founder of the Smithsonian-affiliated Museo Alameda in downtown San Antonio, is also the Vice-Chairman of the Smithsonian Board. According to trusted sources, he spent $1.2 million dollars on the inaugural extravaganza in April of this year after the Alameda Board approved a half-a-million dollar budget. There are rumors of Henry's extravagant spending, tyranny, prima donis syndrome, and that San Antonio-based corporations, knowing how he spends money, refuse to contribute.

The New York Times blasted the Alameda for its poor artistic quality, making an exception for el Franco Mondini-Ruiz's Botanica installation and John Dyer's Conjunto photographs.

The Museo Alameda purports to tell "stories by the people themselves." Officially, sixty percent of the people in San Antonio are Latina/os. The majority are poor, working-class, without benefit of an education that gives them a context to understand their rich, hybrid experiences. The Museo Alamada considers itself as the "largest latino museum in the country," costing $12 million dollars to renovate on the site of the former Alameda Theatre, built in 1949.

When I look at a photograph like this, it hurts me to the tripas.

The City of San Antonio's Office of Cultural Affairs is due to consider $630,000 to the Museo Alameda for the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

Over thirty years ago, Chicana/o artists established cultural centers around the country, defiant at the major institution's denial of their work. We raged at the museum's elitism, cultural appropriation, sterilization - and the virtual exclusion - of historical and political context.

Now, look closely. We finally got our own chingon museum - and look what we've done.

I really doubt that Lionel Sosa and his Republican political family cares very much about las mujeres who wear huipiles in Mexico or Guatemala. Or the children from el westside of San Antonio who are going to learn that huipiles are for las ricas and las gringas and las gueras.

And I'm sure the reception going on right now is lavish, elegant, and may Lionel Sosa, Kathy Sosa, Christine Sosa Noriega, et al., never see a huipil soaked in blood and resistance.

photograph, titled "Hot Hot Hot!" of Maria Del Mar Himmelstach byLiz Garza Williams from http://huipiles.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=39

TRUE STORY: What's a Chicana from San Antonio doing in Rwanda?

2007-08-18T11:26:00.001-05:00

La Vicki Grise is 30 years old, a hometown girl and performance artist who's in her second year of graduate school in the Performing Arts en Los Angeles.

You may know her for The Panza Monologues, produced by Irma Mayorga.

Vicki is the future of theatre. When you turn off the television after a long hoping of some truth, confused because it leaves you feeling not pretty enough, not rich enough, remember, remember, that people used to gather around and tell each other stories. And there was always that one woman who could make you laugh - and cry.

She told your story, and made you see how yes, you were necessary to the world.

Postcard from Vicki Grise

I am in Amsterdam now at my new office - the open bare biblioteek. The city is laid out in a series of cocentric circles with canals and bridges cutting across them on every block. The old buildings, lined right up against the other, lean forward and they look as if they are supporting each other. Everyone rides a bike and I am camping next to Gaasperplas Lake. I run every morning underneath trees that create ceilings of green that block the sky. I love it here.

I'm writing to let you know that I posted my first report from travels to Rwanda this summer on my blog site: www.vgrise.blogspot.com While I was in Africa I believe I was so overwhelmed by the experience I had a difficult time being on a computer even when I did have access.

The first post is on our first days arrival and Bisisero, the site of Rwandan resistance to the Genocide of 1994. In the following weeks, I will also post notes on:

1. Marambi - a community that refuses to bury their dead so that no one can deny what happened on that land

2. Butare - where Sistah Hailstorm and TIWAEIS (Vanessa) rocked the mike and had the audience on their feet

3. and finally Hope North, Uganda - a site of refuge for children fleeing the war in Uganda.

In Rwanda, we were told again and again - go home and tell people what you have seen here.

credit: photo, Vicki Grise, www.evelynstreet.com, The Panza Monologues, by Vicki Grise and Irma Mayorga

MEDIA WATCHATE!! THE SAN ANTONIO CURRENT GIVES IT UP TO SENATE WANNABE MIKAL WATTS AND YOU CALL THIS AN ALTERNATIVE PAPER?

2007-08-17T16:57:00.000-05:00

Well, its official.

Back in the day, alternative newspapers were really that. Now of course it's sex ads and restaurant reviews and the publisher is livin large. Ok, I'll swallow that if you give me the news I can't find in the mainstream.

Here in San Antonio, we got the Editor of the San Antonio Current, Elaine Wolff, using her position to promote (D) Mikal Watts and his Senatorial campaign, whose claim to fame is that he's a very rich trial lawyer and anti-U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R).

Have I mentioned that Rick Noriega (D), a Texas legislator who served in Iraq is also considering entering the race? Have I mentioned that he's not rich?
http://halfempth.blogspot.com/2007/07/watts-v-noriega-in-blogosphere.html

(My disclosure: I'm no fan of war heroes, they tend to be conflicted about taking on the status quo, fearful of being called Mexicans instead of Hispanic and sent back to la madre patria. )

Back in the day, the alternatives would be all over the left-of-center Noriega, investigating, debating, making his nalgitas toast nice and brown on the political comal.

Here in San Antonio, Elaine Wolff disclosed in print this week that her husband, Michael Westheimer, has contributed to the Watts campaign. Hmmmm.
On the Current's new website, it went like this:
http://www.sacurrent.com/chismelibre/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=24

What she didn't disclose in the printed version of the San Antonio Current is that her husband is a District 1 Zoning Commissioner and she sure didn't disclose that he gave a whopping $2300 on June 8, 2007. www.campaignmoney.com

This isn't hamburger-money folks. On the Current's website, Wolff discloses her husband's full name, who he is, and that she's independent of him.

But she doesn't disclose how much dinero he gave to Watts.

Personally, even if Wolff swears on the Bible she hasn't done it with her husband in a year, I smell some stinky, sticky, journalism.

If I can't trust the alternative to give me the other side, what then?

As the editor, Wolff is still in charge of writing the political stories. This week she interviewed - you guessed it - Watts. But her husband's contribution was over two months ago.

I don't know if this is related, but Dave Maass, her political writer - has resigned after less than a year at the Current. My sources say he challenged Wolff's veiled attacks on Noriega and her pimpy attempts at supporting el huevo-faced Watts. I still can't figure out what that man stands for, what his platform is.

And Keli Dailey, a black editor and Berkeley grad from San Antonio's eastside who was Maass' boss, (I like the way that sounds) got escorted out last month from the Current offices.

None of this was disclosed either.

photo credit: stephen.macek.faculty.noctrl.edu/.../photo1.jpg

MEDIA WATCHATE! Twenty layoffs at the San Antonio paper: Does anybody read the newspaper anymore (besides the New York Times)?

2007-08-16T23:31:00.000-05:00

I read the local paper, the San Antonio Express-News, searching for a nugget about political officials, corruption, the Edwards Aquifer and the golf resort that's threatening it, why the streets are flooding with all the rains, etc. But we get stories about Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, football, and praise for our military heroes. (Remember, we have four bases here).

Nobody under thirty years old I know reads the paper. If they're halfway educated, they scan it online, otherwise, they buy it on Fridays for the Weekend Guide and on Sundays for the coupons and the Sports Section. That's it.

I heard last night from a good source that twenty people were laid off in the latest round, I say that because about half-a-dozen people got their pink slips a month ago or so.

In reading the paper today, there was no mention of the layoffs. Who cares?

I do. Before you read who got the shove, let me remind you who's been kicked out already one way or the other: (These are not in chronological order)

1. I got the boot as a monthly columnist in 2001 for writing against revenge after 9/11 and THE WAR.

2. Julio Noboa: another freelance columnist who wrote about the suffering of the Palestinians. He was against THE WAR.

3. Dick Reavis: prize-winning chingon reporter who was known for his ANTI-WAR stance and stories about social and political injustice

4. Enrique Rangel: smart and respected journalist/columnist whose view of US/Mexico politics was moderate and who was also against the WAR

5. Rod Davis: PEN-prized novelist and Travel Editor who was suspended for two weeks for writing a column against THE WAR

6. Jan Jarboe: Texas Monthly writer and biographer and limousine-liberal columnist who was too liberal for the SAEN. She certainly was to the right-of-me, but not right-enough for them.

7. Susan Yerkes: Society columnist who was an out-feminista.

8. Macarena Hernandez: Beautiful, brainy, Berkeley-grad who wanted to weigh in on feature stories and the SAEN inner circle wouldn't let her. (She told me this). So she left for the Dallas Morning News.

Shall I go on? You think San Antonio can lose this talent? Now, tell me again, why are those young men and women dying over there? For our democracy? And how are we supposed to keep what we have without a fair and balanced and free press?

For those journalists in San Antonio who didn't believe it would happen to them, welcome to the real world. You been played.

Just because we don't read newspapers anymore doesn't mean we don't need news. We need your pen more than ever. Use it. Now.

And in this magic-rabbit time of the internet before Murdock buys it all, here is the only news item as reported by Poynter-Online, (the Journalists' Thinktank.)
http://poynter.org/forum/?id=32365

On Thursday, Romenesko was forwarded this e-mail written by a San Antonio Express-News staffer:

We had a round of layoffs yesterday, which followed some early
retirements. Twenty managers throughout the paper got the ax. Three were assistant managing editors in editorial: news resource (there are four or five people who do nothing but research for reporters and graphics); the graphics art and photo AME and the projects/Sunday AME.

I asked the paper for confirmation. Editor Bob Rivard is off taking his son to college, but Express-News public editor Bob Richter sent this e-mail:

I can confirm the newsroom layoffs only; not sure yet about the total
number paperwide. Here are the newsroom positions lost: Hallie Paul, assistant managing editor/design, graphics and photo; Kathy Foley, assistant managing editor/news research and technology; and Robert Kaiser, assistant managing editor/Sunday and writing coach. Their final day on the payroll is Aug. 31. As an aside, Hallie Paul had planned to retire from the newspaper in the coming year.

My understanding is there was not a memo or written notice from corporate. Bob Rivard made an announcement to editors at the news budget meeting Wednesday afternoon, and asked them to pass along the word to the rest of the staff.

credits: Dog Poster, www.art.com

A battered woman from San Antonio loses her reporting job

2007-08-02T15:53:00.001-05:00

Gina Galaviz, 43, KSAT-TV's I-love-the-police reporter, "has been fired" from the television station , according to the San Antonio Express-News, and I'm quoting verbatim here from Jeanne Jakle's byline, "after she was charged with assault following a fight with her boyfriend," Ronald Aguillen, 46.

Ok, so we in San Antonio know about the time in 2004 when Gina filed charges against another boyfriend, the former SWAT cop, who was a councilman at-the-time, Ron Segovia .
There were allegations of an apple being thrown at her nalgas, which humiliated her, and that he also pointed a gun at her. It was not the first time, she told me.

Tough-guy Segovia got off - I think he had three attorneys representing him if I remember correctly, and in this city, like too many, the cops are in bed with the grand jury - they need and depend on each other, and this grand jury decided there "wasn't enough evidence to pursue a criminal case against him."

Segovia wasn't a nice guy. My very good sources have told me about his violent past with women - and when I interviewed Gina on the issue of absolute police power over women in this city- she appeared to be a textbook case for a battered woman. She loved them. He hated them. She was loyal. She cried.

I was reminded of this impression when I watched her question then-Deputy Police Chief Jerry Pittman in 2006, who was also exonerated by a grand jury - for raping his step-niece - another man who women have warned me not to confront. Gina, the police reporter, didn't interview Pittman that day - she simpered, cooed and genuflected at his expensively-packaged speech. Pittman just glared at me . See: Thursday, August 24, 2006 Jerry Pittman: The Worst Cop, but there's more in San Antonio

So much for tough police reporting in this city. There are other stories out there about Gina, about her passion for the men in blue. Quien sabe. If she was abused as a child as too many of us are, then it would make sense for her to believe that men are the ones who are always right, and that she isn't worthy unless she has one besides her.

I would like to believe that this time she stood up and let him have it.

And then she got fired.

True Story: Maria, la santa de los cats in San Antonio

2007-08-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

In San Antonio, it's been raining cats.

Forget the biblical lluvia that's turned our city into an Eden in August. Los gatos , calicos, Cary Grant-tuxedoes, marigold tabbys, long-hair, short-hair, and witchy black ones with motor-purrs. They are raining down to tell us something.

And Maria has seen them in the alleys and streets of el Westside of San Antonio as charcoal bits - burned beyond recognition. She's seen gangmembers run over them in joyrides, so their little tripitas make them laugh. She's seen them poisoned with anti-freeze, and she's found them mewing from trashcans on Zarzamora Street.

Maria, a housekeeper, has rescued more than sixty of them. With her money, and sometimes threatened with rape - or death - for her compassion.

San Antonio has a problem. There are too many of them, the animal shelter is full, and too many waiting for adoption. We are a very poor city. But in this city, the cats are lost, abandoned, as if we don't need raindrops falling on our skin.

To me, they are a sign. They are the canaries of the city.

And we don't want to listen to their sad story.

Photo Credit: Me! I took this photo of Manito and Zarita, two stray kittens, wrestling in my house.

Chicano in Stockholm sees what war does to children

2007-07-31T16:02:00.000-05:00

The writer James Hillman, in Our Terrible Love of War, says that peace isn't the absence of war, it's the abscence of remembering. But if we don't want war we have to remember. We have to know what war does to soldiers, to the familes, to the women, to the children.

With that in mind, here's a postcard from Pablo Martinez, poeta, university professor and activista, who's been in Stockholm doing quien-sabe-que.

Stockholm, 24 July 2007

It's been wonderfully cool here the past two days. But I'm not writing to issue a weather report -- that's the job of the Weather Channel.

Today I visited the Medelhavs Museet, the Museum of Middle Eastern art and culture. Unlike the other museums I've visited, this one was quiet -- eerily quiet. I was there to see an exhibition of photographs; the show is titled Children of Baghdad in 1999.

A fairly pedestrian title, until you consider that in 1999 , Iraq was not anywhere in our collective consciousness.

Unlike the other local museums I've visited since arriving last weekend, there were no crowds waiting to get into the galleries. And that is the problem. This is the one exhibition we all should see.

The photographer, Anna Papoulias, took portraits of about 50 children, all standing in front of familiar sites in Baghdad: at the copper market, at an orphanage, at a tea house, at an amusement park, outside a mosque, on the banks of the Tigris. Some appear to be well-off, but most are obviously living on the margins. This is especially apparent in the case of the orphans Papoulias photographed.

And while all the portraits are memorable, I kept going back to one that depicts two young orphan girls. They are wearing hand-me-downs. The younger one, her feet falling out of worn out sandals, clasps the hand of the taller girl. She clasps tightly, for dear life.

I didn't read the introductory label before walking through the gallery. (Often I leave that for the end -- I am too easily influenced by the curator's interpretive language.)

I cried when I read what the photographer wrote at the end of the wall text: "I don't know how many of these children are still alive today."

Even if the gallery had been packed -- how I wish it had been -- I would have cried as I did when I went back to that image of those two little girls.

I pray that we all remain safe, and ever mindful of those who cannot be be so.

I send you my best love.

Pablo

credit: image from "Children of Baghdad," by Anna Papoulis http://www.medelhavsmuseet.se/smvk/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=220
James Hillman is a Jungian psychologist and writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hillman

Las True Stories is gonna have a new look and sabor

2007-06-24T18:53:00.001-05:00

Bueno, so I haven't been writing because I've just finished two manuscripts, and cross-your-fingers, parece que I have a good chance of getting them published with UT Press. There were agents interested in my Golondrina (a love story about a woman who falls in love with the man who helps her cross the border), pero a dream I had told me to let the money-thing go.

I want a beautiful book, a forever-book, and UT Press understands me. That doesn't mean I'll get it, it just means our stories deserve the editors, artists and publishing houses that turn our books into the jewels they were when our grandmothers left them to us.

So. It's time, maybe by this time next year I 'll have two books to tell you about. Speaking of books, my favorite subject, even before politics, I've just finished a novela by Almudena Grandes, a Spanish writer I discovered at the Intl PEN Festival of World Literature in NYC in April (when I lost my panties in the subway, see previous post). Her book is The Ages of Lulu - the kind of story a woman understands, and I'm warning you, it's not for the meek, this isn't entertainment. It's a shocking book, I'm reeling from it, not my usual Sunday afternoon. Nothing like I write, but I'm impressed with the borders she crossed on the page. Brava.

I'm dizzy with stories to tell you. And hopefully soon you'll see my new design - Michelle Villagomez, a techno-whiz is going to help me from NYC! She's from San Anto, claro, and juntas we're gonna do something you won't forget, either.

Artistic Credit: Don't you know? "Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe," Yolanda Lopez, 1978.

TRUE STORY: Los Panties en New York City

2007-04-28T08:18:00.000-05:00

I"m in New York City this week for the PEN World Voices Festival, an annual gathering of writers from around the world, no Chicana/o writers hanging out here, just me and la colombiana Raquel...

Anyway, been staying with the journalist Roberto Lovato in Brooklyn, and as I left the N Train on 14th Street yesterday, a man rushed to reach me, saying "Excuse me, I think these are yours."

Raquel and I turned around. Nobody hardly talks to anyone on the subway.

He was a big, white, professional-looking man. In a pin-stripe suit, pa' acabar. With my black Victoria's Secret panties in his hands.

If you know me, I always have something to say. This time, I was frozen, stunned with verguenza, what would my mother say? Why does this always happen to me?

Raquel turned to me as he came forward clutching my french-cut calzones with the pretty pink rosettes. She was accusing.

"Did you forget to wear your calzones?"

"No."

"Well, then how come he has them, do you have to lose everything?"

Where, what, why? How how how how? I wanted to faint.

The man just stood there, waiting.

"Get them, idiota." Raquel said.

I gingerly took them, wondering what was done with them.

As we walked up the stairs to the street, I started shaking. You know that laughing and crying you do because it just rained and you're going to the concert of your life and you look like a drowned rat? And the bus just covered you with mud? You know that feeling? It was worse than that.

With the black chones in my hand, I remembered that the fleecy Chinatown chaleco I bought the day before, and laid on my suitcase before I went to sleep could have, might have, OhmyGod, magnetized my panties so I was roaming all over Brooklyn and the N Train with a pair of panties as decoration.

Well, so much for trying to be glamorous or even funky in New York. Que rasquache, como decimos en San Antonio.

As Raquel says, I won the prize. But I got my panties back.

Thank you, New York.

What the Henry Munoz Spin Machine is saying

2007-04-20T10:44:00.000-05:00

I got a pretty nasty email from Nikki (?) about my Chingazos postings, relating to FightNight outside the Museo Alameda Smithsonian during the VIP Gala (see previous posts). Don't have time to interview the other side, but here's what I do know.

Artista Franco Mondini, dicen different sources, saw the fight. According to Rina Moreno, who was assaulted by Henry Munoz' family members, Juan Ramos, another well-known artista, talked to Cruz after the chingazos and repeated her depiction of events, telling Cruz that Franco had told him what happened just as Rina alleges.

You know what happens next, doncha? The right thing to do is for Henry Munoz to apologize, he's buena gente, que no? But it won't happen.

Political people, trust me, Munoz is one, don't think in terms of what's right. They think in terms of advantage, appearance, deals, money. They don't listen to their soul, they listen to their ego, which is richly rewarded in this material and artificial world. My guess from the beginning was that Henry would silence Franco and Ramos, two talented artists who likely perceive they have much to gain by siding with Henry. We shall soon find out if they can choose between la verdad and el miedo. Maybe Ramos needs to include these cards in his loteria-arte.

If Henry's familia doesn't, that's his problem, but he needs to be a caballero, and set a good example.

I hope the artistas will tell the truth.

Now Henry's side has filed a police report alleging that it was Rina who assaulted one of Henry's grandnieces, una hijita de Meredith and Peter Falcon. Falcon, who I've heard expound on zen budhism exquisitely, is the one who Rina states punched her. Like I've said before, I've also heard that Falcon has a predisposition for violence.

You can find the police reports at the downtown courthouse. I have to go out-of-town and won't be here for ten days, so don't have time to review them or talk to anyone.

Why am I airing our dirty calzones here in front of everybody?

Because if we get tribal about this, then we won't help each other become better people. And that's what I want for myself, and for all. Henry isn't perfect, and I've thrown some rocks, believe me. But if we don't examine what happened outside the museum on that first noche, then how can we truly honor what he's created and all it's supposed to stand for?

Or does the Alameda stand for orgullo at a woman's expense, corporate perceptions and patronismo?

Didn't our mothers teach us that un hombre doesn't hit a women? Rina is a mother of three.
No woman deserves to get a beating, it's called respeto - even if that woman says a few bad words, that's not a reason to get chingazos. No way.

THE CHISME CONTINUES: The fight at the Museo Alameda on Opening Night

2007-04-18T14:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I got a call from a relative of Rina's, the woman who was beat up outside the Museo Alameda on Thursday, April 12th, during the VIP Gala in downtown San Antonio. Los chingazos were apparently given by relatives of Henry Munoz, the Museo Alameda Smithsonian's empresario, the Alameda Museum's founder, and resident star-maker.

Rina Moreno, the social worker wife of Cruz Ortiz, artista, has filed a police report and intends to press assault charges against Peter Falcon, an actor. Falcon is married to Meredith, Henry Munoz's niece, and they brought their two young daughters to the Alameda VIP pachanga. Here's what happened according to Rina's familia:

It was about 12:30 am on Thursday night, and Cruz was helping put an easel away a few feet outside the museum. While he worked on this, Rina decided to return to the dancing which was still rockeando the museum. On the way there, she wished outloud to no one "Goddammit, I want a fucking giftbag!" after fijandose that everyone else had one. That's when a man, turns out it was Peter Falcon, admonished her about her palabras, saying that [his] children could hear her. Up to this point, Rina says she didn't know Falcon.

To this, Rina, a mother of three, retorted "Shouldn't they be in bed?"

That's when the chingazos started. According to Rina's side, Falcon punched her in the face.

Tony! Tony! Tony!

Rina started yelling for Cruz to help her (that's what his family calls him). Cruz ran to her, and saw a man taking his wife down to the ground, punching and punching her, while a woman was sitting on Rina's head. It seems that another woman who was standing by abetted the punching, likely, Emily Buche, Henry Munoz's sister who was calling out from the sidelines.

Henry's relatives let Rina have it. Whore! Whore!

Cruz Ortiz pushed Falcon off his wife and wrapped his arm around his neck, just in time for the police to arrive and handcuff Ortiz.

It seems that Henry Munoz walked by during the commotion carrying one of his by-now screaming grandnieces. He did not stop to intervene in any way.

Since Rina and Cruz needed to return home to their own children, they decided to file police charges later. Rina ended up going to the University Hospital for her injuries.

I asked Rina's family if Henry Munoz had called to apologize. No, they said. Munoz has purchased Cruz's work in the past for his private collection. Good sources have told me that Falcon has a temper, and we know what happens next.

All this for a gift bag? See the problem with extreme-marketing of our cultura? I know all of them (un poquito) Peter Falcon, Meredith, Rina, and of course, Cruz. This shouldn't have happened. Did people drink too much? Is that an excuse? Are we that hungry for recognition que the Alameda Museo's arrival is turning one against the other?

What was in the gift bag, anyway?

Artistic Credit: Una mesa para la gente, lead artist Cruz Ortiz and Lisa Vera Cruz, mural on North Zarzamora and Salinas Street in San Antonio, Texas

Chiiiisme! After the exclusive pachanga at the Alameda, los chingazos

2007-04-17T19:05:00.000-05:00

Ok, so everybody I know is mixtiado about Henry Munoz, the (alleged, some say) founder and corporate fuerza behind the Museo Alameda Smithsonian, which celebrated an exclusive dinner for the hoi politicos in San Antonio before the public's opening night on Friday the 13th.
The food was delicious and VIP.

My good sources on the scene tell me that Rina, la esposa de Cruz Ortiz, a chicano artist of repute who was in Henry's Chicano! exhibit by Target some years ago, got into some chingolazos with la wifa de Peter Falcon (the niece of Henry Munoz) outside the Alameda's steps by the plush sofas close to the midnight hour.

Hey, it was meant to be a let them eat cake night (check out the installation by Franco Mondini Ruiz with a Venus de Milo on a stack of pancakes)

Emily Bueche also got into it, Henry Munoz's sister, throwing down puro alamierda style (as it is commonly referred to in barrioesque), according to very good and reliable chismosos working on the inside of the joint.

It seems that Rina, a mother of three (four if you include Cruz), was complaining about the late-night hours of Henry's little grandnieces, dressed in little white flouncy dresses - and barefoot - on a chilly night for San Antonio. La wifa and mother of the little girls threw water at Rina and then chingazos were thrown from male to female and back. Cruz, a big Mexican with a dutchboy haircut, got Peter Falcon in a headlock, and that's when the cops arrived and handcuffed Cruz.

Que 'stabando pasando? The cops asked Rina if she wanted to press charges, and she said hell yes, but if she did that, then Cruz would have to spend the night in the can too, and she said no, thinking they had to go home to their own children.

Well, a good time was had by all after a very elitist event according to some famous artists from out-of-town.

Al fin del dia se sale el cobre. The gold was really copper... I think emotions were high because people want to be recognized for their arte and cultura and there's something else going on at the Alameda, people feel like they're being pimped.

What the media didn't tell you about the Duke University stripper

2007-04-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

I can't believe the media hasn't even tried to tell the truth about the Duke University stripper so I will. I'm a writer, who's also worked as a social worker. Contrary to popular myth, las strippers don't w ant sex. They become strippers or prostitutes because they've been raped, sometimes by all the men in their family, and they have been socialized to believe this is what a woman does. They want to please men, and yet they hate them.

Many times the stripper/prostitute will take drugs to escape the pain. Or she becomes an addict because that's how Daddy wanted it.

I believe the stripper in the Duke University case was raped. Horribly. Likely with a broom. But she was too drugged-up and too unstable to tell her story.

The rich white guys have so much power, and who's going to listen to this poor black stripped-down woman? Some of these guys will be judges someday....

I have seen prostitutes, strippers, abused women. It's all the same story.

MEDIA WATCHATE! Imus isn't the only one

2007-04-12T18:46:00.000-05:00

Let me count the haters: Coulter; Limbaugh; O'Reilly...and our own wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News.
There's more but I don't listen to talk radio or watch TV because of their rhetoric.

What Imus said isn't free speech, it's hate speech. He said it because he's gotten away with it but there are others who've said much worse. Imus is a symbol of Big Media that places profit over protest. The airwaves belong to all of us, not just to white men like Imus. We need real debate in this country. Diverse, informed, contextual, impassioned, but not racist, sexist... And we deserve to hear other voices besides the haters.

Register your protest to the FCC. See the link below.

http://www.stopbigmedia.com/minoritymedia.php

artistic credits: http: www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cperaza320/555%20copy.htm

MEDIA WATCHATE! Columnist Missing: What happened to Susan Yerkes?

2007-04-12T15:07:00.000-05:00

Have you seen this woman? Susan Yerkes disappeared from the San Antonio Express-News a couple months ago. Her society onda reported women's affairs with a progressive, sassy, beat. Sus columns just disappeared one day with no explanation given. A reporter from the paper assured me that she was still alive, but seemed nervous just mentioning her name.

The chisme-mill says that Yerkes, a proud card-carrying feminista threatened by Executive Editor Bob Rivard with her job in the past, neglected to write about a party that retiring publisher Larry Walker hosted. Oops!

Another friend emailed the so-called Public Editor Bob Richter at the San Antonio Express-News on February 14th, 2007. The response from Richter was along the lines of "I don't know and I can't talk about it." This is from the Public Editor who's supposed to represent the readers.

With the disappearance of Yerkes, there are no out-feministas publishing columns at the paper anymore. Melissa Stoeltje, another excellent columnist, is now a reporter.

This is called media deregulation, gente. Profits at the expense of free speech.

If you've seen this woman, please contact lastruestories@yahoo.com
No reward is offered, because I don't have any money. But you will have saved the first amendment.

Latino lite or Latino life: The Smithsonian Museo Alameda in San Antonio opens

2007-04-12T14:29:00.000-05:00

Henry Munoz, a vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Smithsonian and San Antonio native, is the driving force behind the Smithsonian-affiliated Museo Alameda, opening with fireworks on April 13th, and a free concert by Linda Ronstadt. The Alameda itself is a historic theatre in downtown San Antonio, a resplendant building that once hosted a milieu of Mexican stars and the films from the golden age of Mexican cinema.

Now, it's a national museum. Here in San Antonio, where the Guadalupe Cultural Center is imploding from its corporate ambitions and wannabe-boardmembers, there is debate about the influence of corporate interests on the depiction of latino culture that the Museo Alameda represents. It is our story, yours and mine, after all, that has the power to change hearts. With this musuem, will we tell it, or will we ask permission from our corporate sponsor? You tell me.

Below is a comment from Pablo Miguel Martinez, noted poet and cultural activist. He's from San Anto, and lived in New York City for many years. This is what he told the San Antonio Express-News, thanking them for their coverage, and asking some tough questions:

"The museum indicates that it will "ensure that the story of the Latino experience in America is told." I am not convinced there is such a thing as "the Latino experience." Do we really believe the experience of a South Texas Chicana is also the experience of a Cuban exile in Miami, or the same lived experience of a puertorriqueña in the Bronx? The museum's attempt at cultural cohesiveness negates the very thing that makes Latino cultures so rich -- our diversity.

If Museo Alameda can ensure that our stories are told, why is its architectural iconography so decidedly, almost singularly Mexican? (The hojalata entrance, beautiful though it is, incorporates the Virgin of Guadalupe's aura, Quetzalcoatl's feathers, etc. Mexican, yes. Chicano, perhaps. Latino, definitely not.) If the focus of the museum is Chicano/mexicano-based art and culture, say so, unashamedly, unapologetically, proudly. If the development of pan-Latino culture, identity, and sensibility is your goal, please diversify your programming, your Board, your Staff, and your mindset. If the museum's reach is hemispheric ("America," its mission states), include Afro-Peruvian, Dominican, Chilean, Bolivian and other artistic expressions in your offerings from the start, not as an afterthought that follows a Chicano-centric outlook."

The Guadalupe: MudKing can't clean up the mess

2007-04-10T16:54:00.000-05:00

My good sources tell me that Russell Felan, Mud King Extraordinario, will be voted on tonight, April 10th, at the Guadalupe Theatre as the newest boardmember. There's something too about Mike de la Garza getting on the board, though I don't know who he is.

Don't quote me, but I've also heard that both men are connected to Maria
Elena Torralba-Alonso, via family or corporate ties. She's the one
who got the Guadalupe into the mess they're in today. IF they are
connected, this is bad news.

In a conversation just now with Councilwoman Patti Radle, she expressed her frustrations with the Guadalupe Cultural Center, but stopped short of taking the steps necessary to force the Guadalupe Board to resign.

Look, the Guadalupe Cultural Center is in deep debt and deeper denial. Program-stifling, board-silencing, macho-armoring, dinero problems. (Long story, review my past blogs if you want.) At this point, unless the community marches down Guadalupe Avenue, (during Fiesta Week?), I don't think anything new or positive is going to happen. Correction: Nothing good is gonna happen. MudKing has to raise dollars to just pay off the debt. We already know the Board doesn't care about the community, they're trying to save their reputations at this point.

Here's the answer: There's plenty of talent outside the Guadalupe. Let's create our own CineFestival, BookFair, all that we want, cause it's not gonna happen at the Guadalupe. I know how, so do you. Are you game? If we don't, Henry Munoz and the Alameda and other non-profits will continue to siphon the dollars away from the Guadalupe...and who can blame them.

So the Guadalupe has Juan Tejeda and the Conjunto Festival. Too late, too tarde to save the Guadalupe. Juan can't do it by himself.

Photo Credit: www.nado.org

The Guadalupe: Los Paintbrushes

2007-04-08T18:29:00.000-05:00

From one of the founders of the Guadalupe: 

I remember when we first moved into the Guadalupe...it was being
used as a flea market.....on the southside (Guadalupe Street)
there was a door and a long room  all painted red...it was used
as an arcade........One guy from the neighborhood came to see me...
said he was a commercial painter.......said he had no money for
diapers for his child.........from his back pocket he pulled out
some house paint brushes  (4 inch) and said look hold on to these....
give me $15 and I'll come buy them back......I looked at the brushes
and I looked at him....the brushes were used 
but they were well taken cared of......at the time there was some
graffitti on the walls...not awhole bunch...and I told 
him.......I got a gallon of paint......go cover that graffiti and
I'll give you fifty.......

Another time a guitar player came and we went throught the same 
thing.......at this time we were already in the Progresso
building also....so it had to be the second year......and I told him ...
"Go down there and play guitar in front of the theatre for and hour
and I'll give you fifty dollars.......

Credits: Virgen of Guadalupe 
nmazca.com/guadalupana/Virgin_of_Guadalupe.jpg

The Meaning of Easter from El Salvador, that country

2007-04-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

Maria C. is a journalist, who just returned from El Salvador on a fellowship. Here is her post (with my edits) from an email she sent me:

I live in a country, el salvador (remember)  where 10 corpses
turn up every day and they're not just gangbangers, (we all know
that loss weighs less on the soul)400 women are killed every year
by men that promised to love them and yet I was woken up this
morning to some lady with a megaphone asking God to forgive us,
el pueblo,for murdering a man nearly 2000 years ago.

What?!

Last Friday I wound up by mistake downtown in front of the
cathedral where they stuck Monsenor Oscar Romero's remains in
the basement. A bunch of ladies wearing ridiculously frilly lacy
veils, white,prayed as some pig faced evangelical preacher told
them that the King and Queen of Spain are in town...but you know
what...he intoned...all the powerful people (men, he said) could
come here and it wouldn't make a difference. it won't  change the
poverty, the violence, the crime, no MAN can solve those problems.

Only el Senor. And it's not just the evangelicals, I'm at the same
park in front of the same cathedral today, left the house to stretch
and get a bath of reality. The FMLN, the student communist brigade,
the committee in honor of the Virgen de Guadalupe constructed these
huge alfombras (rugs) made of painted salt, of images of the virgen or
in the case of the communists, a campesino crucified to the cross.

A street performer is bleeding from the back and his act involves
shards of glass.I can't take it so I go inside the church where an
ancient, of course, archbishop is retelling the story of the
crucifixtion, for you non catholics think Passion of Christ. 

Well that's great dude, same story 2k years later but now what do
we do? Have you looked outside, if you aren't killing someone they're
killing you. in the u.s. i would say: have you look outside to see how
good we've gotten at killing people??


Credits: Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated during
the El Salvadoran civil war by the military.
http://microdot.gnn.tv/blogs/21902/Say_Hello_to_El_Salvador

While the Guadalupe fiddles, a Chicano theatre dies

2007-04-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

Cara Mia Theatre in Dallas was founded over ten years ago to bring Chicana/o theatre to la raza, and to train a whole new generation of artistas. Adelina Anthony, a highly-regarded actress from San Antonio who looks like a movie star with the conciencia of Cherrie Moraga, founded it with much sacrificio. The City of Dallas has never rewarded them for their community work and grassroot audiences. What has happened to us?

Its funny that in 11 years here with Cara Mia and me about to resign my

positions and long journey with Cara Mia it is not because we are in debt.

But because we can't get enough funds to pay a director and staff what is due.

And the moneys are in the bank as I speak loca, but I have given too much to this

beautiful child that every one loves but few understand. I have cried rivers like a

baby knowing this will become history for me, but I have to go on with my life.

Just maybe I will return if things go well with me, and maybe not Cara Mia but

the same Mission with another name and strategy. It is the Mission that is the heart of any organization and Cara Mia has served well to the community. The educational programs continue as I speak thanks to Frida Mueller now wife of previous Artistic Director David Lozano. This Chilanga from the D.F. without any English some how has the heart to continue our educational programs...

(Eliberto Gonzalez, the managing director, was my husband in my former life.) He's a great guy, and is a roofing contractor when he's not at Cara Mia.

The Guadalupe: R. Bret Ruiz Resigns and the Board Must Go Too

2007-04-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

I heard tonight from very reliable sources that tomorrow, April 4th, the city's newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News,will report that the Guadalupe's Cultural Center MBA-President, R. Bret Ruiz, is resigning, effective April 18th of this year. The SAEN will report the party line, that he's moving on to better things, that they accepted his resignation...and other b,,,..,,t.

Here's what happened. The Guadalupe has been in serious debt for a long time, thanks to the corporate ambitions of past directors, most notably Maria Elena Torralba-Alonso, and the corporate rubber-stamp board she selected. Some people say the Guadalupe is in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and I'm being careful.

So long story short: The Board hasn't had a clue for a long time, and they're responsible for getting the Guadalupe into this mess of debt, and for the mass firings of women, most notably la Mary Jessie Garza, who was interim director. Instead they hired a director/president just like them. Turns out the Guadalupe doesn't have the money to put on the Conjunto Festival this year.

As I said before, the whole board needs to get the chancliada. Are you listening, Councilwoman Patti Radle? It's time for the community to take over the board, and start over. Tell us the truth about the debt, and next time, let's not get carried away by corporate dollars and real estate.

The Guadalupe is supposed to serve the community. Not the Board, not Budweiser, not Bret Ruiz.

Let's give the Board a Chancliada, and let's not make this mistake again.

(For more stories on the Guadalupe, see my past blogs. Sorry, I need help in reconfiguring the links...)

Monday, June 19, 2006

Guadalupe in Crisis: Machismo and the Ten Women of Lady Lupe

This blog is under renovation

2007-01-17T18:40:00.000-06:00

Who knows what happened?

I lost my template and the genius of Michael Verdi is trying to get it back from cyberspace. If he can't get it back then I'll have to redesign, well, it's the New Year, that's what it's about, verdad?

p.s. This is me, before the renovation.

Bill Moyers says that Big Media is the New Plantation

2007-01-12T23:06:00.000-06:00

Watch the video

At the Media Reform Conference in Memphis, Tennesse, Bill Moyers, the nation's premier journalist, spoke out forcefully about how Big Media has hijacked democracy, and how we have to take it back. Three thousand media advocates from all over the country are organizing, networking, and challenging the power of Big Media. Besides Moyers, the speakers include Jesse Jackson, Danny Glover, Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, Geena Davis, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, and Jane Fonda, among many others.

Introduction by Nadia Benitez of the 411 Show, San Antonio, Texas