Read, Mis Amigos, Read

It's been years since I have read one of Castaneda's books and I picked this up a few weeks ago, one I had never really read, and began. It didn't take me long to get "hooked" again as I first was when I picked up "The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowlege", sometime in the early 70's.

Like so many at the time, I was completely and forever blown away by the stories of magic and the possiblity of other worlds, other existences, other ways of seeing the world, "a separate reality" as Carlos often puts it.

But in this one I miss the appearance of the Brujos (sorcerers) Don Juan, and his magical sidekick, Genaro. I'm not sure how many books there are in total, but some eight or nine? All telling of the amazing encounters Carlos had with the other world, in the deserts of central Mexico. He was a graduate student doing his thesis on the use of medicinal herbs among the Yaqui Indians of the Southwest, and in a Greyhound bus depot he meets an old Yaqui man he called "Don Juan", asking him if he might know someone who can tell him about medicinal plants. Don Juan says no, but he himself has "a little knowledge"
of their use, the qunitessential understatement of modern times!

The books are somewhat chronological, and I suggest reading them in order if possible, because they document Carlos first encounters with the magical world of sorcerers, his initiation into to it, and his clumsy and frightening journey to becoming what Don Juan and Genaro call a "man of knowledge." The power and beauty of their "teachings" compares to any of the ideas of the modern Western world of philosophy and psychology.

By the time this book is written, Carlos finally realizes that he was not alone in his intitiation, but part of a group of apprentices, 4 women and 3 men, although he had met them before briefly. What a movie this would make, putting modern psychological thrillers to shame! Carlos is a master at detailing the supreme fears and terrors he experiences, his stupidity and his debililitating clinging to his reason in the face of the inexplicable.

Anyway, I am glad to be reading again. I was an avid reader in my youth and years have passed since I have picked a book, and actually read it, so it feels good, a sense of accomplishment. I also just finished reading "Letters to a Young Poet", by Rainer Maria Rilke, a book I had been introduced to by my college philosophy instructor. Rilke's message seems simple: Find courage in your solitude, embrace it because from it you grow stronger.

It is tragic that today there seems to be fewer and fewer readers. I had to labor ceaselessly to get my students to read an essay or even a short story! And I was dismayed when they would confess, with a measure of glee, "This is the first book I have read in my whole life", or "This is the first book I read all the way through, "Mr. Rivers."

I hope this reawakening to the pleasures of reading in me, is not a passing fancy but hangs around for a while longer.

My New Book

Me an my dog, Skippy CA.1934

Pictured here is my grinning dog, Skippy and I when I was about 5 in the front yard of my home in a small barrio in Modesto, California. It will be used on the cover of my new book, "Songs From The Barrio: A Coming of Age in Modesto, CA."

The book will be composed of stories and poems that document my experiences growing up during the 40's, 50's and 60's, in "Juarez", as we jokingly called our barrio in South Modesto, a one-city-square block of a dozen or so, houses of Mexican immigrant familys

The people who lived there were all Mexican immigrants, poor and uneducated, who left Mexico in the 1920's after its devastating Mexican Revolution (1910-20), and came here legally and illegally to better their lives and those of their children.

But they brought with them a vibrant language and culture and they kept it alive the best they could in competition with the powerful pull of Americanization. Slowly, their kids assimilated, forgot most of their culture and moved to the Northside,or out of town in search of jobs and the American Dream.

We grew up poor though the old timers felt rich, when compared to what little they left behind in Mexico. Our barrio's streets were unpaved, unlit and unmarked but we played in them nonetheless. Everyone knew everyone by name, being related or comadres or compadres of one another, having baptized one anothers kids. The houses were divided by wire fences and they could see and gossip with neighbors on both sides, in contrast to the 6' tall wooden fences we use today, sheltering our lives from those of our neighbor's.

We underwent our own form of discrimination covert, and often overt, to the point that some of us were ashamed to call ourselves "Mexican", preferring the title "Spanish" instead. College never entered our vocabulary. Most of us quit school, got a job, had kids, and a handful graduated from high school.

It was another time and another world then and I felt the need to document it now, before it's completely gone, for my kids, my grandkids and my family and for any reader hungry to learn how America became the Melting Pot that it is, though some of us refused to melt, completely. The barrio needs to be assigned its rightful place in the history of California and the United States. Not only that, but I'm an old fart now, and time is passing. I can't screw around. It's now or never.

While I have been writing since the mid-1960's, I have toyed with the idea of some time publishing a book. Many of the book's stories were already written, but as I began to edit and organize them into the idea of a book, I saw holes and gaps and set out to write those stories.

Keep tuned in and I will try to update you on the book's progress. I will be uploading the manuscript to the publisher in a few weeks, I hope. Wish me luck and I hope you'll buy a book when its ready. You owe it to me for all the hard work.

A Book is Being Born

I've not posted for a while as my energy has been going into the organization, planning and writing of what I hope will turn out to be a book about my life growing up in a small Mexican Barrio in South Modesto (CA), during the 40's, 50's and 60's. Inspired by, and on the heels of my Blogger Buddy's Bill Snyder's recent book "The Eight-Fingered Criminal's Son", (read it, it's a riot), and with his encouragement, I am looking to getting my own book published soon.

Most of the stories have already been written over the past half-dozen years and at first the book was going to be a random collection of recollections, but now I see that it needs some kind of chronology establishing a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have read many of them in public and gotten enthusiastic responses to them.

I'm feeling a sense of urgency because as you might have guessed, I am no Spring Chicken and life is quickly passing me by and the things I write about need to preserve what life was like during this time period and what part Mexicans, and these barrios had in forming the diversity of American Culture. I want to document this for my reader, for myself and for my children and grandchildren.

"Don't ever forget where you come from", my mom used to say. Mom, I haven't.

Updates will follow. Meanwhile, any encouragement would be appreciated. If not "I will understand", like hell. It kills me when people write crap on Facebook, and then ask you to repost on your own status adding that if you don't, they will understand. Yeah, you're a jerk if you don't repost.

I am 1/4 Indian, 1/8 Spanish, 1/5 Black, & The Rest Eskimo.

I remember somewhere back when I was a kid my mom telling me "Mexicans are part Indian and part Spanish." "How much of each?" I asked. "Half and half". And so I went on to tell people I was a Mexican. I had no particular pride then in being Indian. Indians were killed in the old cowboy movies. "Don't stand in the sun too long", my mom said "Or you get black like and Indian."

Only later when I began to learn about Mexico's history did I begin to get a sense of the great significance of blood lines to people. Indian was bad. Spanish, or European was good. It meant to be "white skinned", not "prieto" or "dark-skinned", and that was good.

When I learned the word "Meztizo", my world changed. It was the term the Spanish Conquerors of the New World called those born of a Spanish Father and an Indian mother (Spanish women did not play  around, I suppose). It was synonymous with "half breed", a person despised by the indigenous for having European blood, and hated by the Europeans for having Indian blood.

More amazing was to learn of all the terms the Spanish invented for the incredible mixing of blood lines which were to come in the New World and they had a word for each and every one:

Peninsular = Spaniard born on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain)
Meztizo = One born of a Spanish father and Indian mother
Creole (Criollo) = Child of a Peninsular but born in Mexico (New World)
Caztizo = A Meztizo + a Creole
Cholo = An Indian + a Meztizo
Mulatto = A Peninsular + a Black
Zambo = A Black + an Indian
Euromeztizo = Indian with Spanish characteristics dominating
Indomeztizo = A Spaniard with Indian characteristics dominating.

In Henry Parkes' A History of Mexico he adds one final absurd footnote to this unholy mixture of bloods: a saltapatras' or "throwback", all the way to the start! How in the world, at the end of this stew of bloodlines, could one return to being a Peninsular?!

But even more incredulous is how the term Meztizo came to mean Mexican; this word that for 300 years of Spanish domination in Mexico was uttered with indignation. But it did.

Its origins are fodder for debate but a prevailing theory is that the people we currently refer to as Aztecs, never called themselves by that term, but called themselves the Mexica (Meshica) or the Mexicans (Meshicans)

After Mexico's War of Independence (1810-1821), the word Mexican would be proudly used for the first time to define the Meztizo, a person born of the bloods of two great civilizations, the European and the Native American.

Strange bedfellow, que no?

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me: The First Mexican Martyrs

(Painting showing Aztec fathers putting newly Christianized sons to death)

    Many years ago, I came across a poignant dialogue that describes a first encounter between a group of Spanish Conquistadors, a Captain and a Catholic priest, backed by a host of soldiers, and a group of Maya warriors, led by a chief and a woman who serves as a translator. The Spanish Captain tells the Maya woman, "Tell your chief we have come here in search of gold and silver." Immediately, the Catholic priest interrupts saying "No, no! Tell your chief we have come here so that they may come to know The One And Only True God'!"

    After a lengthy translation by the woman interpreter, the Maya chief says, "Tell this powerful men here (addressing the Captain), that in the Sun which is our gold, and the Moon which is our silver, lies our everlasting hope, but in order for him to reach them, first he must kiss the earth."

    This dichotomy between the acquisition of power and the saving of souls, was the hapless burden of the European conquerors and the Catholic church in Mexico. In her book, "Idols Behind Altars", Anita Brenner tells, among other things, of the church's struggle to convert Indians to Christianity during the early years of the Spanish conquest in 1521. 

    Suspicious and fearful of the new religion, the Indians reluctantly embraced a new Christian pantheon, but often, at the risk of grave danger, covertly clung to their own deities. Brenner describes how the Indians, who comprised the labor force building the numerous Catholic churches across Mexico, sometimes hid idols representing their own gods deep inside the altars as they built them, then quickly covered them up!  Thus, as they reverently knelt and prayed before the altars during mass, they were actually praying to their ancient gods hidden inside them.

    For the first decade after the Spanish Conquest in 1521, the Catholic Church was relatively unsuccessful in convincing the stubborn Indians to convert to Christianity, and despite openly condemning their beliefs, destroying their temples, paintings and idols representing their old gods, only a few brave souls dared be baptized into the strange new faith, some paying with their lives as the image above shows.  I cannot imagine putting my own son to death for his conversion to another faith.

    Ironically, with the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the Indian, Juan Diego in 1531, everything changed and thousands of Indians flocked into the churches to be baptized. Now, they had a new heavenly woman they could believe in, Mary, one like them, dark skinned ("La Virgen Morena"), not like the pale, white gods they had heretofore seen adorning the insides of the cathedrals they had helped build.

    Nonetheless, for years, indigenous beliefs flourished underground in secret, in caves, hidden from the eyes of the Europeans; for it was no easy matter to let go of the gods they had worshipped for centuries, in time forcing the church to find other ways to attract converts, not by pointing out differences in the native and european beliefs, but the similarities.

    Thus, in Mexico today we see this bizarre mix of Indian and Christian beliefs. Where one belief ends, and another begins is a supreme mystery, as Aztec dancers dance before the Virgin of Guadalupe at the hill of Tepeyac in Mexico City, at the very same place where they had once worshipped a female diety, Tonantzin.

     In fact, "La Catedral", the main cathedral in the heart of the "Zocalo" (central square) in downtown Mexico City, is built at the  very same spot, with the same stones that once made up the main pyramid of "Tenochtitlan", the Aztec capital, that Cortez himself had once characterized as the "Constantinople of the New World".

It was leveled by the Spaniards to build the city we know today.

Peonage: Mexico's Legacy of Shame

"The Liberation of the Peon" by Diego Rivera

I never fully understood the real meaning of the word "peon" until I began to read and teach about about the history of Mexico. To me, it had simply meant "a poor, uneducated Mexican."

When Mexico was conquered by Spain in 1521, its people suffered 300 years of domination by its often cruel and greedy hosts. In 1542, new laws were established concerning the "propriatory rights" of natives, indians. They were to be "free people" and slavery as such, was prohibited, except for the use of Black slaves which had been brought into New Spain from the mother country.

Under the new law, the "Encomienda" system was established, in essence a "payment" of land to the Conquisatdores for their "service" to Spain, and the right to Indian labor "for the state" one-quarter of the year. The rest of the year, they were allowed work on a small plot of land given to them for their own sustenance, though these laws were commonly abused. To skirt the law outlawing slavery, they were paid a measly wage, though working for wages was unknown to the native peoples.

After the War of Independence in 1821, the system continued but with a new sinister twist, "debt peonage". Indian workers were given "advances" in their wages with the distinct purpose of getting them in debt. In addition, they were paid in "script", a sort of coupon or promisary note, reedemable only at the company store owned by the "Encomendero", much like sharecroppers of the deep South, in the United States.  

Prices for basic necessities were greatly inflated but the Indians were generously extended credit, plunging them deeper into debt, eventually forcing them to turn over their land and possessions to the master.

If they ran or tried escape, they were mercilessly hunted down, dragged back to the encomienda, or killed.

When the worker, who could never hope to pay off his death in his own lifetime died, his debt was automatically transferred to his first born. The child at birth, assumed the debt of his father and began to acrue his own debt as soon as he was able to work, and so on and so on, generation to generation! This practice continued until 1915, when a decree was passed by President, Porfirio Diaz, outlawing the use of peonage in Mexico.

Despite this law, forms of peonage continued until 1936, when Lazaro Cardenas created the "Ejido" system, agricultural land which had been expropriated from the encomiendas and haciendas, turned into communal farms, allowing natives to earn wages according to the amount of work performed.

Much of the rudimentary rationale behind Mexico's Revolution (1910-1920) was to take the land from the rich and give it back to the poor, as espoused by its leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. For them, the "quaint" Hacienda was a an excess of wealth and land purchased by the sweat and blood of the "los pobres" (the poor). During the Revolution, Villa often rounded up the Hacendados (owners of Haciendas), and executed them, venting the rage of the poor for 400 years of abuse. 

While this practice was obviously and inherently evil in its concept, for me there is a greater evil: the creation of a race of people who came to believe that their sole purpose on earth was to serve a "master", and which endures among many of Mexico's poor today.  

The Saint of Ansul Avenue

Ansul Avenue was the name of the unpaved, dirt road in our Barrio in South Modesto where my uncles, Quirino and Juana Mendoza used to live when I was a kid. After they died, the house remained vacant for some time, and just after I married and asked my cousin Sally if we could rent it and she conceded to let us have it for $50. a month which was cheap even for the 1960's.

It was a simple wooden structure which my uncle had built, with 4 small bedrooms, one bath, a rickety old garage and out buildings where we lived for about two years, memorable ones being that it was our first home which we relished in making our own.

Goodwill and second-hand stores obliged us with many bargains on used tables and furniture, and the rest I myself built from bricks and wood, and my wife's wifely artistic touches for decor.

After a time, I ran into an old high school friend-of-a-friend, Bill Briggs who rented a room from us and shared in the expenses, while my wife cooked for the three of us. It was an idyllic setting, one we cherished for a time to come. Bill learned to love Mexican food, especially the hot salsa my wife made from scratch.

He and I had much in common, our love for books, jazz, philosophy (bullshitting), and cheap red wine. We prided ourselves in finding cheap wine at the local liquor stores, but our major find was when we discovered "Vino Americano", a Burgundy wine, at 99 cents a gallon! Much deep philosophy emanated from this find.

It was during this time, probably well into the depths of that gallon of Vino Americano, and deep into some pseudo religious philosophical debate that he said to me one day, "Richard, you are the Saint of Ansul Avenue."  I was flattered but somewhat embarrassed being compared to a saint. Being the sinner that I was, I had hardly considered myself a saint. A devil maybe, but not a saint!

I had, of course seen the plaster and wooden statues of saints at church and watched people light candles before them and my mother lighting candles and praying to them on her home altar. But me, a saint? Maybe, if I stretched it little, or redefined the word some, I might, on a long shot, qualify. I had always pictured the saints as people who suffered much, denied themselves the pleasures of life, and prayed incessantly, and certainly not ones who indulged on worldly lusts and Vino Americano.

Anyway, I have mostly forgotten that moniker, until my wife's recent illnesses and life in chronic pain when a friend visited us and after sharing our struggles and suffering with her, she said "Ay, Don Ricardo, es usted un santo." (Oh, Richard you are a saint.) "Si", I said jokingly, "un santo con cuernos!" I responded, making the sign of two "horns" on my head. She laughed inconsolably. "No, usted es un santo", she repeated.

Now, that makes two people who have endowed me with the title. How many more votes do I need to be canonized, 10? 12? But I'm kidding, of course, and may the real saints forgive me.

Nonetheless, I will continue in the hope that my good deeds blot out my sins, or at least some of them. Please light a candle for me (not to me), the Saint of Ansul Avenue.