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Independence Movement or Just More Disorder?

Posted on by sterlingbennett

In which I try to make sense of what’s happening in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

~ Today I met with my writing partner, a kind, intelligent Mexican businessman and writer, who is concerned about the self-defense groups that have taken up arms in the state of Michoacán—one state away. They are called Autodefensas comunitarias—citizen defense groups.

“Where do you think the weapons are coming from?” I ask.

We’re talking about a lot of AK47’s—in civilian hands, presumably non-narco hands—people that have grown tired of losing their children to rape, kidnapping and murder.

“And who is paying for them?” he asks. And then we talk about it for at least an hour, trying to figure it out, excluding no one, not even the CIA or other external forces.

I mention that the narcos have had no trouble getting weapons—assault rifles, grenades, and even RPG’s—rocket propelled grenades. Weapons smugglers, I say, are probably indifferent to who is buying, as long as there are sales—all of which are supplied by some 1,200 U.S. gun shops and fairs along the U.S. border. The other part of the equation is the insatiable appetite for narcotics in the U.S.—which drives the whole mess.

~ From La Jornada, Jan. 27, 2014. Journalist Salvador Díaz Sánchez asks questions as well.

He thinks it’s about independence from the State, and not a civil war. The State considers either possibility as unacceptable—except, ironically, when it applies to the criminal networks and their long de-facto rule of Michoacán.

Dr. José Manuel Mireles Valverde is spokesperson for el Consejo General de Autodefensas y Comunitarios de Michoacán—the General Council of Community Defenders. They call him Papá Pitufo, and the authorities, or some other group, say he has a criminal record. (When I listened to an interview with him, I thought he made a lot of sense.)

For years, small businesses, taxi companies, grocery stores, furniture shops, restaurants, artisans, cattlemen, growers, miners, businessmen, for years they have been victims of robbery, extortion, kidnapping, rapes, killings, extortion, and land use fees (to use their’s own land). It therefore seems logical that the money to finance AK47’s and other assault rifles comes from these businessmen in this area—which is called the Tierra Caliente, the Hot Country, south and west of Morelia.

As if it were a military campaign, the movement of self-defense has been spreading across the state to Nueva Italia, La Huacana, Tomatlán, Carrillo Puerto, Aquila, Aguililla, Antúnez, Parácuaro, Tancítaro, Acahuato, Buenavista, La Ruana and Churumuco. This is the cucaracha efecto, the cockroach effect, that alarms the federal government.

The formation of auto defense groups is, to some extent, imitative of older groups, like those in Cherán, Nahuátzen Cherato, Cheratillo, Urapicho, Zicuicho, Oruscato, and Ocumitzo, where for years the authorities have done little to protect the citizens, in fact were often in collusion with the criminal forces also armed with assault weapons.

Now, the more recent citizen forces have decided to move on to Apatzingán, a center of commerce and important crossroads. This was the deciding moment for the federal government. To them it smelled of insurrection, and the present, incapacitated and ailing governor of Michoacán, referred to as La Momia—The Mummy—appealed to the president of Mexico for help.

And so the federal Army entered Atúnez and on the governor’s instructions ended up shooting down four citizens, one an eleven-year old boy, in a confrontation with people shouting they would not disarm—according to their leader Estanislao Beltrán—until all the leaders of organized crime were arrested, in this case the organization called Caballeros Templarios.

The self-defense groups actually started earlier in another part of Michoacán, in a town called Cherán, where villages took up arms to defend their forests from illegal, narco-connected loggers.

But in the present case, the newspapers quickly filled with speculation. What would happen if the base—those citizens with the weapons—began to ignore the instruction from their financial backers and began to say no to Mexico’s political parties and instead proposed  independence? As in earlier Cherán.

Others said the federal and state government, at all levels, would prefer dealing with the Caballeros Templarios, the reigning, in-place cartel, to a democratic group with middle class supporters, and that the government feared a metamorphosis from self-defense groups to community assemblies. And so, what was the government to do? As if the question of control had not come up all the time the Templarios held free reign.

At first, it appeared that the federal government supported the self-defense movement, having been lobbied by the middle class backers of these groups who wanted to protect their economic interests. But now there was the cockroach effect, and the cry went up that the self-defense groups must adhere strictly to the law, that no citizen might own an assault weapon—as if that was not what the Templarios had in spades for years and years.

In one of the poorest states in Mexico, Guerrero, another similar model has been in place for 18 years. There are no leaders, the structure is horizontal, sustainable development is the goal—including citizen protection, since the government has not care to do it.

To date, in Guerrero, there are twenty-four community police groups that belong to the Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias, CRAC, the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities. CRAC tries avoid any connection with the government(s). Other groups are closer to the government(s), like the the UPOEG, la Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero—the Union of Peoples and Organization of the State of Guerro—who have also formed to combat cartel and non-cartel robbery, kidnapping, killings and the highest incidence of poverty in Mexico.

The CRAC rejects names like “self-defense groups.” Their system embraces wider, community-based projects. Local “law” recognizes the legitimacy of their police. They call themselves institutions and decisions are made in community assemblies, not in meetings with the government(s). (This is what the government(s), federal and state, fear in Michoacán.)

The State (Michoacán/Mexico) tolerated, somewhat, the new self-defense groups, as long as they didn’t invade what the government perceives as its areas of power. Local, effective self-governance alarms the ineffective, uninterested, probably cartel-compromised state and federal government. The latter says it will not try to disarm the self-defense groups, as long as they stay in their “boxes,” in their municipalities and towns.

What appears to be true is that the Attorney General of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam is concerned about the cucaracha effect, and little else. Journalists feel this man really has no ideas about how to bring law and justice to the region (to all of Mexico?)—since he and his political class appear to have tolerated cartel-controlled mayhem in Michoacán at a time when there was no such governmental insistence that the Templarios with AK47’s adhere to the rule of law and turn in their weapons or follow other restrictions.

Restrictions, it would seem, are reserved for the “good” citizens.

~ Summarized from the weekly Mexican magazine Proceso comes the following:

The first victim of a war is the truth. What we are left with is often confusion, speculation and disinformation.

What appears to be known is:

1. Michoacán is swamped with narcos from Morelia to Lázaro Cárdenas and from Zitácuaro to La Piedad—(a town about an hour from us.)

2. The federal government admits there are as many as 15,000 auto defense participants.

3. One is justified using the word “paramilitary” when referring to the self-defense groups.

4. Although self-defense groups are in at least 11 towns, they don’t necessarily control that area and they do not control their own funding or political alliances.

5. No one controls Michoacán. If anyone, it’s still the narcos that are in control.

6. There is a lot of money in the Tierra Caliente—narco and commercial. Self-defense leaders are middle class, with connections to the U.S. and financial backing there—possibly.

7. The armed citizens are locals, not outsiders.

8. This is an old problem brought about by the narcos and the indolence and stupidity of government at all levels.

9. Michoacán was always a social pressure cooker. One can assume that a lot of hotheads will join the self-defense movement. That is what the practical, if ineffective, federal government fears. (This same dynamic existed in the Mexican Revolution and the Christero War).

10. For the last ten years, locals have been giving the government intelligence on the identity and location of the narcos. But the government has not arrested them. Nor has government resolved 95% of the 990 murders committed in Michoacán in 2013. Not to mention those committed in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and before. Impunity fuels the conflict.

11. Citizens have pointed out and reported the involvement of government functionaries and their families with the cartels—with little results. Response to their complaints is essential to solving the problem.

12. With no action taken by the government, everything just goes on as before.

13. There is no indication that the special federally appointed commissioner, who is to solved everything—Alfredo Castillo, has either the knowledge or the capacity to resolve any of it. His job appears to be as spinner who is charged with lessening the damage done by the conflict to President Peña Nieto’s image—and it is important to view his pronouncements with skepticism.

14. The government at the state and federal level are in conflict. President of the Republic Enrique Peña Nieto and his Secretary of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong support the self-defense groups—or at least say they do. They want to make them into police. The ailing governor of the state opposes that.

What is not clear:

1. Whether the self-defense numbers will reach 45,000 members as predicted by the bishop of the cathedral in Apatzingán, Gregorio López.

2. No one knows what roll former governors Lázaro Cárdenas Batel and Leonel Godoy and their people had in empowering the narcos in the state of Michoacán. There is, for example, still no resolution of the grenade attack on the night of the Grito—the Cry of Independence—in 2008, in the historical center of Morelia.

3. A huge amount of debt was taken on in Leonel Godoy’s state governorship. It is naive to think that the narco economy was not involved in the disappearance of that enormous sum of money.

4. Unclear is the involvement of the neighboring cartel called the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG)—Jalisco New Generation—which is allied with the Cártel de Sinaloa and is at war with Los Templarios. It’s important to mention that the CJNG in Guerrero allied itself there with local auto defense groups that were fighting Los Templarios. One can assume the CJNG is not just standing by doing nothing, i.e. El Chapo Guzmán is probably involved, except one doesn’t know how, nor to what extent he holds the puppet strings. (One has to suspect that the narcos—highly skilled—are involved with any group.)

5. One of the most opaque aspects is the origin of the weapons. The self-defense people say they are hunting guns, supplied by concerned U.S. Mexicans, or taken from enemy casualties, of which there have been no more than 100. The 10,000 assault rifles estimated to be in the hands of the auto-defense groups must have cost something like 50,000,000 pesos—roughly four million dollars.

6. The big mysteries: a) The connection with Michoacán businessmen exiled to the U.S. (driven out by narcos or fear of them) that are presumably paying for the weapons, and B) the type of relationship they have with Peña Nieto’s administration.
Every government wants a group that can do its dirty work for them and in order to avoid direct responsibility while they inflict a mortal wound on the narcos.

7. It’s not clear who Dr. José Manuel Mireles is, the spokesman of the auto-defense groups. He seems to have a criminal record, although that may be nothing more than disinformation.

8. The ex-governor of the state Jesús Reyna has not explained why he attended a funeral of the father of a former chief of La Familia Michoacana.

~ Recent Developments, from the newspaper La Jornada, 28. January 2014: by Arturo Cano, summarized:

The government(s) suddenly jumps to life and holds a meeting in Tepalcatepec, where a few self-defense leaders signed an accord with the federal government (without consensus of the base), whereby the self-defense groups are to be converted into “defense rurales,” echoing the name given to the National Rural Police under Juárez and Porfirio Díaz.

The community defense groups are to be directed by the Mexican Army and are to register themselves and their weapons. They are to be temporary. In return, they get communication equipment from the Army. (Which seems like a bargain with the Devil. Did the Army ever make the same demands of the narcos with all their weapons?)

While various government officials speak official-speak, members of the audience shout out comments:

“You’ve come to sign an agreement? For what, if there are no doctors, no medicine, no education. Cowards! White-collared criminals! Investigate the murders of our young people!”

A woman bureaucrat speaks for the government.

“You have to trust in the government again,” she counsels.

The audience boos, and shouts “Get out!”

She perseveres, with her “Colgate smile.” She says if the Government doesn’t follow through, she will join the self-defense groups.

A man shouts, “We’re where we are right now because of people like this woman!”

One of the leaders, Martín Barragán, takes the floor and says, “We should give the Government a vote of confidence.” Having dispensed with this courtesy, he continues, “They (the government) proposed a treaty that we don’t advance until we have registered and become legal. We don’t want to just clean up the townships where we are already. We want to clean up the whole state of Michoacán.”

The state and federal authorities don’t move a muscle. This is precisely what they don’t want to hear.

He continues, “Don’t give us any more fictitious reports of narcos shot down.” He is referring to Nazario Moreno, whom Felipe Calderón, the former President of the Republic, said they had killed and who later has turned up alive.

More government-speak continues. The president’s special commissioner charged with bringing the rule of law—that was missing for a very long time before—says the self-defense groups can show even more courage by doing the brave thing by registering themselves and their weapons with the Army. (Again, a bargain with the Devil, who himself is known to be compromised by narco connections.)

He talks about their common purpose and how together they should repair the “social fabric” and Mexico’s “institutions.”

Another auto-defense leader says the government should recompense the families of slain auto defense fighters.

Another leader reproaches the government because the narco leaders go their merry way through the countryside and townships. The crowd shouts in agreement and call out, “We want heads!”

The Commissioner of the Federal Police takes a moment to announce the—miraculous and coincidental—capture of a narco leader (who shall remain unnamed) and the apprehension of 182 others.

This important narco leader had already been declared dead once before.

“Where is the El Muerto—the Dead Man?” someone cries out, as if that were his nickname.

Only the special commissioner and a general quartered in Apatzingán have escaped booing. But an old man gets up and slowly explains, “They delivered some sicarios—killers—to this general and the next day he let them go.”

Finally, another leader explains, “Sooner or later we’ll take the whole state.”

~ In Conclusion, I have to say that if the self-defense groups are anything like my barrio, there will be all kinds of internal conflicts, irrational behavior and potential violence—while the rest of us stand by and try to decide which way to jump.

The Youngest Parisian

Posted on by sterlingbennett

V. had been visiting us, along with her mother and father. Her mother is Mexican, her father French. V. is a baby of six months. We last saw her three months ago—half her life time ago. She lives in Paris, and that is where we visit her and her parents. It is better that way, because then we are not tourists. We are unofficial visiting grandparents and, not being tourists, our activities are more satisfying. V. lives near the Bibliothèque Mitterand, not far from the Seine. Three important places, side by side—V. and the other two.

We are all in love with V. As she throws things on the floor, we all hop to pick them up and set them on her highchair table again. All of us, her lovers, we swoon looking at her, focusing on her eyes, each of us making faces that we hope will make her smile. The house is in chaos—in more chaos than usual. Her things are everywhere: toys, commercial and improvised—she prefers the latter—parts of her bottles, her powdered organic French lait, plastic spoons the width of a baby’s mouth in red and green, jars of Blédina—sans additif—without additives—baby food unopened, opened, emptied, unwashed, washed, gooey remnants hardening from exposure to high desert Mexican air. Little baby jars carried all the way from Paris.

There are blankets on the kitchen floor for her to wriggle around on. Nearby dishes and food containers have been relocated. We pick up her chupón—pacifier—for the thirtieth time, and wonder each time whether we should rinse it off with filtered water. Her father, the French banker, rubs it against his shirt, then pops it back in her mouth. I pour whatever I’m drinking over it, over my glass, hand the chupón back to her, then drink from my glass.

She spits the chupón back out, or keeps it, depending on her mood, of which there are three main ones. First, buoyant, flirting—after waking up from a good nap, being washed, changed and dressed, the fewer clothes the better for her preferred sense of freedom. Second, fussing, writhing in the arms that happen to be holding her. This means she’s hungry, not hungry, tired, unchanged or teething, which is happening right now. She already has two lower front teeth. They are as sharp as razors. Do not put your finger in her mouth. All kinds of French teething potions stand on the kitchen counter, to lessen the discomfort. And three, not getting what she wants, which usually is the right to stand up or, failing that, being carried around in a place where there are interesting things to see, like human faces and cats. We have two of them, cats, and when V. arrives, being plopped down on our bed, they slink away, insulted by and wary of anything that looks like a child that might chase or replace them.

This afternoon, V’s mother’s friends gathered for a last visit at the local French restaurant in Guanajuato. In attendance around a table were a French artist-sculptor, a Belgian jewelry maker, a French film maker, a Texas book keeper, my love who is a community organizer, French student, architect and writer—myself, also a student of French, and the writer of this deathless prose, and V—all women, except for myself and a young man whose connection at first I couldn’t quite ascertain. Because of his light skin and red hair, I didn’t know whether he was French, American or something else. He appeared to be speaking a native Spanish, but I suspect one of his parents was French. Conversation occurred in Spanish, French, some English and V’s exclamations—upper register grunts that are designed to make her admirers jump in feigned surprise.

V’s mother was leaving in the morning for Aguascalientes on Primera Plus—a bus line—taking V. from us, abducting her as far as we were concerned. V’s father had flown back to Charles De Gaulle the night before—in-people don’t have to mention the name of the city, Paris. This was the last chance to see V’s mother, a former model of mine (painting), and—of course most important of all—V.

I don’t know how to describe it. It was as if we had all come to see and be in attendance to the baby Jesus—except, in this case, it was the baby V—and, for some reason, no less worshiped. Not in the religious sense, but more in the spiritual—as if we were celebrating the crown princess of our futures, an heir apparent, a child as innocent and sweet as her mother was funny, ironic, irreverent, smart and good-natured. It is hard to explain what V. means to us that we coo so much over her. While there are natural reservations and boundaries between friends—and even more between friends of friends—there are none around V. And we fall all over each other trying to make her respond to us, to make her smile or, better yet, laugh—to gain her recognition. And perhaps acceptance and trust. All of us united in this one purpose, to make her happy and protect her.

And to make us happy.

I have since done some research and found there is a part of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex. We react quickly to visual information with that part of the brain. Apparently, when looking at a baby, the reaction is accelerated and the cooing impulse starts in one seventh of a second. In addition, even the smell of a baby, even at a distance, can activate brain waves associated with good feelings of the kind we have around food we want to eat. Fortunately, the reward-pleasure impulse overrides the impulse to eat—thus sparing the child from being a meal.

While we were waiting with V and her mother for their bus to Aguascalientes at the central—bus station, three young middle class Mexican women sat across from us in the waiting room. They made faces, bobbed their heads and played hid and seek in various ways, all directed toward V. She was tired and a little squirmy, but she indulged them and brought out their smiles and delight with her proportionally large eyes, fat cheeks and Rubens-like mouth, granting them the connection they sought. Unknown to them, with the youngest Parisian in Guanajuato.

The Victim of Words

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I don’t know how many of you can say this, but I spent a week in a famous psychiatric ward in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital called Bulfinch Seven, a restricted area that was also sometimes reserved for the victims of words.

I had parked my rental car on a hill while visiting from Mexico, and I had neglected to turn my front wheels left and then roll back, anchoring the back of the wheels against the curb. A policeman had pulled up beside my car, a Toyota Prius, and asked me my name as he wrote out the ticket. I thought it a good moment to make a point about his more than likely monoligualism and I said to him, “You mean, Cómo te llamas, come lagañas! don’t you?”—What’s your name, go eat eye boogers!”

The policeman said, ” You can tell me in English, or I can increase the fine—for civic insolence.”

I doubted that there was a law having to do with “civic insolence,” and so I said. “Qué te importa, Mr. Policeman, tu hermana, la gordota!”—What’s it to you, Mr. Policeman, your sister, the great big fat one?

What started out as irritation on his face changed and became a detached, even scientific look. And so I thought it wise to inquire, “Qué te pasa, naranjada?”—What’s up, orangeade?

I had noticed—I admit, too slowly—the man’s complexion, and thought he might be Sicilian from the North End, or a Sikh from the South. And as my fortunes would have it, he answered me in—of all things—Spanish.

“Nada, nada, limonada.—Nothing, nothing, lemonade!” he said, with a perfect accent.

He was smiling, but still looked detached—a fact that gave me pause.

“I’m going to ask you to get into my pinche patrulla,” he said—in a reasonable tone—get into the goddamn patrol car.

Hard to explain, but I gave him one more blast. Plus, I didn’t intend to get into his pinche patrulla. After all, I was on my way to a reading—therefore, by implication, a writer of possibly some note. And so I gave him my cleverest shot.

“Güero, güerumbo, de un pedo te tumbo, de dos te levanto y de tres te retumbo!”—Pale face güerumbo (gware-rumbo, a nonsense word that gives sound and cadence), I can drop you with one fart, pick you up with the second and put you on the ground again with the third.

Not exactly the most delicate school boy taunt, but I was, I suppose, much worked up about reading from my novel and about the fawning looks I hoped to elicit from exciting young women half my age.

Before I knew it, he had cuffed my hands behind me and had me—the real güero güerumbo—in the back seat of his patrol car. And that is how I landed in Bulfinch Seven.

But it so happened that my agent—that’s literary agent—had driven up behind us and then followed us to the Bulfinch looney bin where they gave me a small pink pill. With a few calls on his iPhone my agent, one Henry Salisbury, arranged to have my waiting audience of twelve people shifted to the hospital, where I—now a calmer self—read to them and to the rest of the patients from my novel about a modern detective sent north into the United States to try to retrieve territories stolen by that country. Though their applause was not as strong as I would have liked, and everyone in my original audience was at least sixty, one unofficial attendee sitting in the back of the ward clapped with some enthusiasm—who was none other than my arresting officer, who later told me he was a distant relative of Santa Ana, the president-general that lost one leg to the French in the Pastry War of 1838, called himself His Most Serene Highness, blocked American invaders at Saltillo in 1847, delayed obese General Winfield Scott’s advance on Mexico City from Veracruz and, in the end, essentially lost half of Mexico to the Americans with the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848—for fifteen million dollars.

Kaliman and the Madness of Writers

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Kaliman is a walking wreck, with hair like a bush, swarthy from complexion, some of it dirt, and of this I’m sure, he has identified me as a writer—since he is one, too—and is trying to infect me with all his insanity. His eyes are squinty from too much thinking. My mother would have faulted him for his dirty ankles, more for his lack of socks. “Were you brought up in a barn?” she would have said with her gentle scold. I’ve known him for thirteen years. He was brought up on the street, and apart from cows.

Today he spoke to me for the first time. I was sitting in a local wreck of a café, sipping moras y yoghurt, blueberries and yogurt, a berry-like tea for Mexican yuppies. The window was open to the street, and I sat behind an iron railing, thank god, a little below the slanted callejón where he was standing. He brandished some writing at me and said some unwritten words. I ignored him, like a dessert we’re wise to decline. So little separates us from Kaliman and, as much as I would like to have broken our thirteen-year silence, I did not. There are traditions to uphold. Plus, dementia often waits for us down the line. A little preview baked by Kaliman might have been ahead-of-time contagious. One bite of him could have been enough. One glance at his scribbling bereft of words as we know them could have destroyed my own—all part of his plan to induct me into the Hall of Insane.

Clearly, someone had told him I was a writer like him. And now he wanted to change that as well, infect it, so that my words collapsed into kuneiformed rubble like his own? But, hold on. I could be just as devious and put an end to harassment of this sort. I stood up, collected my Apple things and beckoned with my index digit to coax him into a cyber café, where I plopped him down in front of a computer—not that I cared one way or another whether he knew what one was. I showed him how to touch the keys, my account, meaboutme@gmail.com—to an old and unresponsive friend, and only inserted a few words of my own. Camel, Allah, NSA-Great Satan. The rest of it looked like rat droppings fonted in pungent rows.

Some time passed while the words flitted through Our Coaxial Who Art in Heaven, and then the FBI visited me—its Mexican cell. The snoop cartel.

“Did you write this?” they asked, at my mesquite door, showing me a stamped and dated official copy of the time-sensitive drivel.

“No, my friend Kaliman did,” I replied—as truthfully as truth allowed.

“Who is Kaliman?” they asked—taking notes.

I described Taliban—I mean Kaliman—and where to find him, near the Museo de Leyendas, description enough—little visited repository of legends. An institution I thought would list him eventually, once things had passed.

They returned.

“He’s not sane,” they said.

“Who is these days?” I answered, palms outstretched.

“He doesn’t understand the words camel, Allah, USA or Great Satan.”

They looked at me with suspicion, looking for guilt.

“That should be ‘NSA-Great Satan.’ Not ‘USA-Great Satan.’ And written together,” I said, precise from my training as unionized teacher-citizen, California.

“Whatever,” said the less amused of the two.

The seat of his pants was shiny. I could see he is on his way to being Kalimanized. I wondered whether I should tell him, or what.

“You need to be careful,” I say. “He can infect your thinking.”

“Perhaps you’ve infected his,” says Agent Less Amused. “Adding words to his.”

“I have never spoken with him,” I said.

At that moment, Kaliman showed up. Not surprisingly, he had found out where I lived. He brandished a scribble. We were all in danger.

“He’s a writer like me,” I said. “And doesn’t wear socks.”

They tried to examine the page, but Kaliman clutched it, like a raccoon with an egg, and looked at me for help. I smiled at him and told him—breaking my vow of silence—he could trust me and that I would read it for him, without cracking the egg. His eyes brightened, one of them wept a cleansing line down his cheek. I had won his confidence. That much was clear.

I struggle with the first word. “Ben—gha—zi,” I read. “Benghazi,” I said. translating from Kalimandarin to English. “Al…al….al…,” I read.

“Al Qaida?” barked Agent Grouch, with a professional tone and ready to pounce.

“Al—lah,” I completed, nodding and pleased at my code breaker talents.

“It’s clearer now,” I continued. “Allah…be praised…my camel…Benghazi…knows more…about…Libya…than…Obama’s whole Stasi.”

I looked up at them, their darkened Homeric brows.

“That’s what it says, the rest is gibberish,” I said. And then, “I appreciate your trouble….”

“What does it mean?” they asked.

“Who knows?” I said. “The man is mad, as mad as a hatter—without doubt it’s a thing of no substance—of little matter.”

I often rhyme when it’s least appropriate.

Just then, Kaliman did me a favor, plucked the page out of my hands and stuffed it into his gob and, with shark-like pressure of grinding enamel, re-encrypted the code beyond all reach. He picked at his tooth where a phrase had got suck, spit out a glob of something penciled and strutted away, I supposed to re-establish the silence that he had broken between us.

“His brain is limited,” I said, “unlike our own. He must read the paper, AM or Correo or Corazón—all reliable rags. He’s like a parrot and repeats whatever he’s told. Nothing to worry about. Thank god there’s surveillance. I’ll keep you informed if I learn any more. Things that begin with ‘al…’—and words of like clout.”

The FBI said I would be hearing from them, but I never did. It’s possible they read my blog and tap my everything Google or Apple—looking for things like “NSA-Great Satan” and equivalent babble.

As for Kaliman, he avoids me with care, I suspect smelling treachery. And all has returned to its former quiet. I am still un-demented, my writing as well, don’t you think? Everything is good, everything swell. And so, Happy New Year everywhere, there’s nothing more to this, as there wasn’t before. But should more come up, you’ll be able to tell.

The Alpha and Omega of Yoga

Posted on by sterlingbennett

The day before Christmas, I got up early, put on at least three layers and went off through the cold city to attend my yoga class on the exposed roof of an old colonial building. I say old, since you might think that colonial was the name of a modern style. At first, it was just me and the teacher, T., a young woman of thirty-something. T. is a modern dancer, as in modern dance, and the strongest woman I have ever met. Plus, an accomplished yoga and Pilates teacher. She is also a beauty, smart and kind. My only lament is that I am not a better student. Younger, stronger, more flexible and better at yoga. More Cirque du Soleil.

At first, I thought T. would justifiably beg off teaching just one person. But then another young woman came, with her son A.—a five year old. I wondered what the boy was going to do the whole time after the teacher decided two was enough to justify giving a class. But the boy settled down on one of the woven reed mats, and T. brought him a yoga matt to lay on top of it.

When we began, A. began as well, throwing himself into each posture. His mother is very good at yoga, so he must have seen her do the asanas before. He stuck with it for nearly an hour, never seeming to lose interest. Once his mother took him off to go to the bathroom, a small journey that took precedence over yoga class protocol, where adults simply do not get up and go looking for a bathroom.

A’s little body was supple, willing and contained. Mine, stiff, willing but sometimes a little too ponderous to lever and bend. Still, I found A. an inspiration. After all, as T. says over and over, it is the intent that matters, and the boy was my refreshing guide in that.

All in all, I would say on the spiritual level, A. was also further along than me. He did not worry about keeping up, doing it right—or doing it at, since at times he simply stopped, turned around and looked at his mother or—with curiosity—over at me. T. made frequent visits to his mat and, with the skill and delight of a kind mother, adjusted his leg forward or back, and said, “This hand” or “Other leg! And: “Eso es!” “That’s it!” That in itself was worth the price of admission.

A. could do the bridge—a kind of back bend—with the top of his head on the mat. I think it should be called the crab pose. I could just barely do it. His mother, like T., can do it with her head far above the mat, forearms extended—a full wonderful upward bow.

Still, I admired A’s attitude, his participation, his interest in doing what his mother did. I knew very little about him, and so afterwards, in that lingering moment of camaraderie, I approached his mother to ask about him.

She asked me where I came from. I said I lived there in the city.

She said, “But before, where did you live?”

“California,” I said.

She took that in. I asked about her child. She is Mexican, the boy’s father, English. I asked the boy’s age and mentioned that I wasn’t sure whether he was a boy or a girl.

“A lot of people have that trouble,” she said.

“He’s a handsome lad,” I said. And a joy to be in a yoga class with, though I did not say that.

A. and I—I realized—might be to some extent exceptional, in the sense that, well, we might be exceptions. How many five-year old’s do yoga? How many seventy-five year old’s? Oh, all right, in the spirit of yoga’s purity, I confess to being seventy-six.

Actually, seventy-six and a half.

His skin is smooth and baby-like, mine more like that of a baby elephant—or rhinoceros. I had been hanging out with a five-year old—he beginning his life, me delaying the end with every trick I can think of. He was mildly curious about me. I delighted in his naturally yogic frame of mind: playful, determined, persistent, unafraid.

What other class have I been in with such an age difference? Alston Chase, at that prep school on a hill, near tears over Ruskin’s descriptions of classical Italian or Greek landscapes, Wendell Clausen, Professor of Latin and Comparative Literature, teaching Catullus’ poems at that college along the Charles. Andrew Jaszi teaching 19th Century German short stories in his Hungarian-accented German. Egon Schwartz doing the same, at the same place, but in German with an Austrian accent. It was shock enough when women from the neighboring famous women’s college joined our classes. But they were roughly my age. Once I heard about a twelve-year old genius studying at the college. But a five-year old? Unheard of.

But this yoga is a different matter. You don’t have to know German or Latin. You just have to have a somewhat in tact spine and a few willing muscles, and joints that haven’t been too neglected over the years. With Latin and German, about poetry and story, the teaching came from the professor. One’s own insights came later, little by little. But with yoga the information comes from one’s body, from inside. It’s as if the teacher says, open this book, read inside it. Loosen this joint, stretch this tendon—incrementally—tighten the stomach and the thighs. Look at the end of your nose—no straining allowed. This is what I can do now, your body says, and if you think about your breathing, it makes it easier for me.

“Be mindful of your intention,” T. says over and over.

A. ponders none of this. He just does it—with varying degrees attention, as is true for all of us.

Regretfully, just do it sounds something like a corporate slogan, by definition devoid of spirituality, subtlety or any real substance—nonsense, like that devilishly good brew that is called “the real thing.”

Except that A. is really the real thing, and me, too. All of us in the class are really the real thing. Our bending and twisting and breathing—most of all the breathing—and I suppose the constant awareness of age. A’s age and my age. He the alpha, me the omega. Contrasts exist, and the trick is—little by little—to accept them and therewith loosen the grip of their significance.

A Christmas Story

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Sometimes a Christmas story is about a reverence for snow, cold cheeks almost burning, wet socks, the smell of guava punch with apples and cinnamon, the heat of a wood stove with gingerbread baking in its oven, half burnt potholders with crows to protect the fingers, an Aunt that plays French songs on the phonograph and, half swooning, lays her hands splayed across her chest, just above her dove-like bosom that smells ever so slightly of mothballs and talcum powder.

She was a Catholic—me a diluted Protestant—and it was the Church, she said, that had kept her single because the men of Ireland had never learned to love women, only the Virgin, and tended to abuse them—not to mention themselves—because of the nuns’ warning not to touch. Not even with the heart.

I had no idea what she was talking about, except that I wondered now and then what it would be like to touch her, perhaps when she was asleep and not so sad. I was almost fifteen and curious about bodies, not the least about my own. In a moment of questionable trust, I told my father I found myself wondering about women’s bodies. He took his pipe out of his mouth and told me that was all right and natural enough, and then said with a humpf that I shouldn’t get anyone pregnant.

That remark caused me embarrassment, and I think I blushed—which made it harder for me to see myself as the man my father was. He had seen straight into my deepest secret, which, when I look back on it, overwhelmingly had to do with Nature’s plot to make babies.

My Aunt’s name was Georgina, and I suppose she wasn’t much older than twenty-five at the time. She already had a reputation in our family for not being responsible, for herself or anything else. She forgot to take things off the stove and didn’t tighten the tops of jars, so you had to be careful that the contents—oatmeal, for example, or popcorn—gripped  by their lids, didn’t slip away and crash on the straight-grained fir floor of our kitchen, creating two messes, not just one.

Georgina loved my mother’s guava punch—a fruit that was shipped from Florida each winter by her brother Antonio, and that arrived only half rotten. Georgina would carry her cup into the unheated front parlor and add sherry to it. She let me try it, and I thought it was awful, except that it made her a little less concerned about the young men in Ireland that still, at age forty, lived with their mothers and spent too much time in the pubs drinking Guinness and listening to fiddlers rattle their strings with angry jigs and reels, all the while complaining that Ireland should be fighting on the side of the Germans.

One evening near Christmas, my parents drove away in their 1943 Ford station wagon through falling snow to a cocktail party at the end of a dark New England road, to the house of two German bachelors, Herbie and Hans Wanders, who never spoke German, because of the war. That left me and Georgina alone in the house. A pot of guava punch sat thinking at the edge of the stove top. Georgina pushed it with one of the burnt crows to where it would heat up—with me watching her. Then she poured herself a cup and headed for the front parlor. I followed since, in many regards, she was my leader. She clicked on the phonograph, its orange eye lit up and, with another click, the plastic arm came alive and dropped the needle onto Edith Piaf’s “C’est lui que mon Coeur a choisi”—He’s the One My Heart Has Chosen.

I didn’t understand a word of it, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t either. We sat next to each other, with just the light of a distant street light, on the small settee upholstered in pale flowers, with our hips practically touching, and passed the cup—now fortified with my mother’s cheap sherry—back and forth, and I tried not to stare at my Aunt’s knees, which had somehow glided forward from the edge of her corduroy skirt and, at least to my memory, gleamed as if touched by moonlight.

The more I drank of the awful brew, the more I thought about things. How I too was still living with my mother—as well as my father—and how it was somehow wrong to be drawn to my aunt’s exposed knees. The punch made me warm all over, at the same time that I felt perched on the edge of nausea. The song was a walz and very emotional, and right then Georgina took hold of my jaw, brought my head up and around toward hers, and gave me what I think must have been a very un-Catholic kiss square on my lips.

I stared shocked into her eyes, at that moment lit up by the headlights of my parent’s Ford which, returning early, crunched to a halt the front of the house. The bridge over Prospect Creek, on the way to the Wanders, had collapsed, and my parents had seen the gaping black hole just in time and had stayed only long enough to drag brush across the road to warn motorists coming from the same direction. Back in the kitchen, while my mother studied us with a curious expression—possibly suspecting loose lids, my father marched to the phone on the wall, told all the listening busybodies to get off the goddam line and called the police about the fallen bridge.

Georgina, as it turned out, left for New York on the morning train and returned by ship to Ireland, which zigzagged all the way, she wrote, to avoid the torpedoes of German U-Boats. And I went on to lead a life only occasionally drawn to sherry, and more often to guava in any form—for its intoxicating smell. I no longer live with my mother, and I often thought of Georgina and her knees, until I met my first love—and then, like the men of Ireland, I forgot her.

An Invitation to Meet My Cats

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Serkalem Fasil
℅ The Individuals at Risk Program
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20003
U.S.A.

Dear Eskinder Nega, via your wife Serkalem Fasil,

I hope this letter finds you reasonably well, given that you have been imprisoned by your government. What has happened to you could happen to any citizen in the world, if individual protections of free speech are not written into the law and enforced by strong and just courts, and supported by humane governments. It is too bad that governments do not realize that they are stronger—not weaker—when they protect these basic rights of free speech for all citizens.

I am an American who has been dwelling in Mexico for some years, where I live and write (sometimes paint, as well) with my partner Dianne. If it would reach you, I would send you a copy of my novel Playing for Pancho Villa, which people say is a good yarn, albeit both sweet and sad—a love story set in 1916 revolutionary Mexico.

It is hard for me to imagine how your government, or any government, can justify putting you in prison—for voicing your opinions about it.

I hope that you are released soon, along with any of your countrymen who have also been imprisoned for voicing dissent. And that you can get up in the morning, have your coffee, talk to your cat, and hold your wife’s hand and watch the sun come up together—with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I hope I get to meet you when you leave prison. Maybe you will come to Mexico and give a talk in my small colonial city Guanajuato, and have some Mexican food with us, at our house, with your wife, and talk to my two cats—who I am sure would be very interested to meet a writer from Ethiopia. As I would.

Best Wishes,

Sterling Bennett

Kafka’s Dreidel ~ “Der Kreisel”

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From his Nachlass (literary effects) 1904 – 1924

(English translation below)

Ein Philosoph trieb sich immer dort herum, wo Kinder spielten. Und sah er einen Jungen, der einen Kreisel hatte, so lauerte er schon. Kaum war der Kreisel in Drehung, verfolgte ihn der Philosoph, um ihn zu fangen. Dass die Kinder lärmten und ihn von ihrem Spielzeug abzuhalten suchten, kümmerte ihn nicht, hatte er den Kreisel, solange er sich noch drehte, gefangen, war er glücklich, aber nur einen Augenblick, dann warf er ihn zu Boden und ging fort. Er glaubte nämlich, die Erkenntnis jeder Kleinigkeit, also zum Beispiel auch eines sich drehenden Kreisels, genüge zur Erkenntnis des Allgemeinen. Darum beschäftigte er sich nicht mit den großen Problemen, das schien ihm unökonomisch. War die kleinste Kleinigkeit wirklich erkannt, dann war alles erkannt, deshalb beschäftigte er sich nur mit dem sich drehenden Kreisel. Und immer wenn die Vorbereitungen zum Drehen des Kreisels gemacht wurden, hatte er Hoffnung, nun werde es gelingen, und drehte sich der Kreisel, wurde ihm im atemlosen Laufen nach ihm die Hoffnung zur Gewissheit, hielt er aber dann das dumme Holzstück in der Hand, wurde ihm übel und das Geschrei der Kinder, das er bisher nicht gehört hatte und das ihm jetzt plötzlich in die Ohren fuhr, jagte ihn fort, er taumelte wie ein Kreisel unter einer ungeschickten Peitsche.

A philosopher always used to hang around places where children played, and if he saw a boy with a top, he lay in wait. The moment the top began to spin he followed it, ready to grab it. That the children cried out in alarm and tried to keep him away from their top, that didn’t seem to bother him. If he plucked up the toy while it was still spinning, then he was happy—but only for a moment, and then he threw it on the ground and went off. The truth was, he believed that insight into the smallest things was enough to allow him insight into the bigger ones. It seemed too hard to approach the big concepts directly. Knowing the microcosm meant, at the same time, knowledge of the macrocosm. And so, whenever children got ready to spin a top, each time new hope rose in him and became breathless certainty that this time his enterprise would succeed. But each time he held the dumb wood in his hand, a dark mood fell upon him. And the disapproval of the children—which he had not taken in before and now did—drove him away stumbling and wobbling, as if he were a top himself, lashed by the children’s whip. — Translation by me, SB.

The Dreidel

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Two renowned artists appeared in our kitchen. My love had met them down in the center of this old colonial city in the middle of Mexico. She is not afraid of celebrity status, in the art world or any other world. She told them she had not expected to see them still in town. They said they were between engagements, and our small city was charming. They mentioned that the practice room they had been using was locked. My love said they could practice at our house, and they—deciding to trust her—followed her the 203 steps up through the allies to our barrio.

The first thing I knew about it was an astounding riff on our grand piano. Because of my love’s enthusiastic report on their concert performance with our Symphony, I had looked them up, as the good cultural voyeur that I am. She is a beauty, he is just as much a genius as she is, both of them astonishingly talented. And then they were standing in front of me, in our kitchen. That’s the moment when you pretend you don’t recognize and know anything about the famous people who perform all over the world with the finest orchestras. You’re disowning all knowledge, and this cost some energy, not to behave like a star-struck fool.

My love prepared food and drink. The husband said he would practice for a half an hour first, before eating and drinking. I did manage to show him the view from the roof first, looking down on the old city, almost as if flying over it. He seemed mildly interested, even less so in who I was. That was okay; after all, he had come in off the street with his family to practice, not to get to know me.

He was soon back at the piano. His wife attended to their child, a handsome boy of about three. She played with him, conversed with him and seemed to enter his world completely. He had found a dreidel (Yiddish dredl, from German drehen, to turn) among the toys my love keeps in shelves at a three-year old’s eye level.

A dreidel is a simple top made from two pieces of wood. The point is rounded, but the sides are flat. A short piece of dowel, attached above, serves as the spinner. There are four painted Hebrew letters, one on each of the four sides: Nun, Gimel, Hei, and Shin—which form the acronym for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, “a great miracle has happened there.” I suppose the sentence referred to what has happened in Israel. Palestinians might not have the same sentiment, but that is not the responsibility of this three-year old.

His mother spun the dreidel. When it stopped and fell on its side, it showed a painted letter. “Nun!” she exclaimed, as if astounded by what had been revealed. Then he spun it. “Shin!” she cried—at what he had accomplished. He spun again, and the little game continued.

On the adult level, the letters also serve as a mnemonic device for remembering the rules of a gambling game. There is a kitty in the middle (raisins, candy, coins, anything), the players spin the dreidel, Nun stands for Nothing (you get nothing), Hei stands for Half (you take half of the kitty), Gimel means All (you take it all) and Shin means you have to put money into the kitty, or whatever you’re betting with. All of which also did not concern this three-year old.

We were off to a Thanksgiving potluck, hosted by the first bassoon player from the Symphony. My love was giving instructions on how our guests should feed themselves and how to leave the house, locked, when they left—not a simple matter. And very important, since we live in a conflicted zone ourselves.

The boy’s mother—a beauty and goddess on stage—was down to earth and as uncomplicated as her professional performing was complicated. They memorize everything, and so it was not hard to absorb and carry out my love’s simple instructions—which they rehearsed, just to be sure everything went all right.

In the meantime, the boy had moved to a spot in the last of the afternoon sun. He sat on the tile floor with his legs splayed out and back—frog pose. In front, he spun the dreidel. Over and over. Watching for the letter that came up. I do not know whether he said the letters to himself, though I’m sure he knew them by now. The dreidel fascinated him. There were all kinds of other toys he could have drifted to, but he stayed with the dreidel—something so simple.

Except that it was not so simple. It meant something to him. I do not know what, but he was his parents’ son, and three years old or not, something held him fixed. If I had asked about it, I think my question would not have aroused much interest among the adults. I will never know, because I didn’t ask. It is possible he had some other previous knowledge that he joined with the toy. I remember thinking it had to do with the genius in his parents and that he was simply applying a three-year old genius of his own. It is also possible he had seen his cousins playing the game during Hanukkah, betting chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, for example. But it could have been something all together different, like the magic of chance bringing up the letter—the letters his mother had found significant.

I told his mother I wanted the boy to have the dreidel. She protested, as if I were giving away something that was precious. I insisted. It was small, he could carrying with him and play with it whenever he wanted. I said it meant far more to her son than to any child that had so far come through our kitchen.

As we left, I remember joking with my love that we had just turned our house over to complete strangers and that, while famous and talented, wouldn’t it be a joke on us, if they turned out to be some kind of kleptomaniacs and we would return to find an empty house.

That did not occur. She left a sweet note thanking us for everything and saying they would leave a CD for us at the front desk of the hotel where they were staying. My love, who is kind, generous and outgoing, has continued to correspond with them. The piano is here for them when they return in two years, should they need it. I suppose I’ll have to look for another dreidel, in case the boy, in the meantime, has lost his. I did look through the kitchen toys just to see if for some reason his mother had not taken it along, but it was gone—and hopefully, in this very moment, is in the little fellow’s pocket for when he needs it.

Sniffing Out a Possible Third Novel

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If you write two historical novels—spaced sixteen years apart, then you have to write a third one, so you’ll have a trilogy. Which I suppose is something like a triptych – a painting with three panels, an idea—in writing at least—originating with the Greeks themselves.

Because of the spacing between the first two novels—1900 and 1916 in the history of Mexico, and following the rules of compulsion, mixed with a little obsession, the third novel should be either sixteen years earlier, 1884, or sixteen years later, 1936.

Right away I see trouble with 1936. It is too close to my birth date of 1937. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that historic date, even though I was born in Morristown, New Jersey and not in Erongaricuaro, Michoacán. A better date would be 1884, when Porfirio Díaz was beginning the second part of his thirty-year reign, though he had really never given up power during the interregnum when others seemed to take over, Juan Méndez and Manuel González. In all, the old devil served seven terms as president of Mexico. Surely, that must provide a good deal more material.

But what about elements of Novel One and Novel Two? Why not the grandson of One coming together with the daughter of Two? Of course, some mathematics would be involved to get them together in a plausible time and place. The there would have to be a plot that was somehow related to the two earlier plots—suppression of the Yaquis in the first, and a glimpse of the Mexican Revolution in the second. Perhaps—looking forward again—something to do with Lázaro Cárdenas’s land distribution or his nationalization of foreign oil companies, specifically of American and British-Dutch oil companies.

We know this happened, but we don’t know why those countries didn’t react by invading Mexico in order to set this right, since there is a long precedent for this kind of behavior. This is the first of the questions that come up. And so we begin to speculate, so that we will know what we don’t know. The answer lies in this direction. Porfirio Díaz had seen to it that the Americans and British had built a system of railroads. From then until 1936, Mexico had imported a lot of weapons and studied enough warfare in order to know how to leave one million of their own dead in the Revolution. Perhaps there was a certain parity in weaponry at that time. The losses to the U.S. and Britain would have been considerable. Not to mention again to Mexico.

Plus, the Depression was still making itself felt in the U.S., and Germany and Japan were rearming. The U.S. and Britain had to do the same. Perhaps they made a deal with Cárdenas, that Mexico would keep selling the oil and agree to pay for the expropriations. Until that agreement was reached, there must have been some skullduggery. And since I like skullduggery—at a distance, it seems as if this period could be a fruitful time for the Third Novel.

I have arrived at this point without doing any research. Guided only by the Mexican saying: Te conozco, Mosco, por tu zumbidito – I know you, Fly, by the way you buzz. Which is as much to say, I know enough about Mexican-American history to be able to predict certain patterns. Up to this point, I have been sniffing only.

I have read a little since.

There was a strong Mexican Petroleum Workers Union—the formation of which the outsiders had tried to block, sometimes by illegal tactics (hopefully a source of skullduggery); the foreign petroleum companies were making much higher profits Mexico than in the U.S; a strike ensued with popular support; the Mexican Supreme Court sided with the strikers, as did the president of Mexico; the Court ordered the foreign companies to pay 26,000,000 pesos in back wages; the companies resisted; a boycott of Mexican goods and products ensued; the U.S. press vilified Mexico; in the U.S. State Department, a war was underway between friends of Mexico and potential enemies of Mexico—the latter fearing a Bolshevik-communist adversary, or a Fascist one at their border; in order to survive the boycott and embargo, Mexico had to trade oil for money and machinery with European fascist countries; a political faction inside Mexico, in disagreement with Cárdenas’s nationalizing, threatened internal revolt; Josephus Daniels, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico liked president Cárdenas, and vice versa; Roosevelt listened to Daniels and saw a kindred soul Cárdenas; and so there was no invasion of Mexico; Cárdenas went to the conservative Catholic bishops of Mexico and asked for help in raising the cash to pay compensation for the nationalized oil companies; the bishops ordered the word spread throughout Mexico by dint of his priests’ sermons; thousands of women responded by assembling in front of the Palacio de Belles Artes, Mexico City, on April 12, 1938 with donations—from chickens to jewelry—to pay off the foreign debt; on June 7, 1938 President Cárdenas issued the decree that created Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), “with exclusive rights over exploration, extraction, refining and commercialization of oil in Mexico.”

Is there material enough in this saga of Mexicanization? I think so. But I have more research to do, I think, in order to find a yarn to spin.