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The Police Throw Rocks

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I heard rocks crashing against the house at three a.m. I went to the front door to listen. Rocks were landing on the alley in front of us, some against the little tienda—store—twelve paces away. Even though there had been a half dozen events like this, I had never heard anything with such intensity. I checked the monitor. Somehow, I had screwed up the program so the images of the four cameras that were still left shifted too quickly to study the situation. I did see, however, that the rock throwers at our upper end of the alley were police.

In shorts and T-shirt, I climbed our iron spiral staircase to the azotea—the roof—so I could look down on the battle.

It took a moment to understand. With lethal force, the rocks, some the width of my hand and a few inches thick—cheap flat floor tiles, actually—were slamming against the tienda, the sidewalk, and the walls of our house. Some of the gangbangers occupied the unfinished building across the alley, across from our house, and threw at the police from thirty feet away. And so, in a sense, it was sort of a house-to-house combat, as well.

I had never seen the police return fire—that is, throwing rocks back at the rock throwers. In this moment, they were no different from the Chief Suspects, except that they threw with even more fury—so taken with the battle that they never looked up at me standing above them. The police—ten of them—had the advantage in that they threw from the upper end of the alley, with the aid of gravity.

My response was inner head shaking. What in god’s name was the point of all this? The stupid gang bangers, high on paint thinner or glue; the police high on permission to at last be able to fire back. Still, though it was very dangerous for both sides, at least the Mexican police are not allowed to use their side arms. In the States, I believe, police would have been discharging weapons of really lethal force.

There are multiple reports of U.S. Border Patrol firing across the border at juvenile rock throwers and killing some of them. There, international law and the border itself (a river) prevent hot pursuit—except for bullets, also fired in anger, or at least intolerance of rock throwing.

Here law prevents police from entering a rock thrower’s house or using bullets—except, apparently, for rocks.

While the battle raged, I could hear the most violent of the gangbangers growling from down the alley. I recognized this sound because he’s used it with us instead of speech to express his displeasure at being greeted with a “Buenos Días” at close quarters.

During the Mexican Revolution, there were often women present as soldaderas—fighters—or as wives and lovers, carrying and cooking food for their men, or carrying bedding and doing wash. During a contemporary Mexican rock fight, there are often mothers or aunts just behind the battlefield, ready to intervene if the police can actually catch one of the rock throwers.

We have actually witnessed this happening to Growler, also referred to as Q in these reports. The police grabbed him perhaps an hour after a rock throwing incident when he thought it was okay to stumble home. They forced him down onto the pavement in the little crossroads in front of our house. He went limp. His mother wormed her way in and knelt over him as if the police had murdered him.

I suppose the relationship between a Mexican boy or man and his mother is sacred in some way. The police stand back confused. Law enforcement is suspended. I suspect, in the States, she would have received a warning and then arrested for interfering in an arrest. Soon they walked away. It is true Q would have to have been caught en flagrante with a weapon or drugs, in order to be retained. If it had been in the heat of battle (rocks), they probably would have beat him up and taken him away.

At 4:45 a.m. I woke again. The gangbangers were crowing and whooping their victory cries, in defiance of all us sleeping citizens who do not sniff paint thinner and throw rocks at the police. I watched them (through the cameras) going down the alley past our garden wall. And I muttered to my mate, “Where in god’s name are they going now at 4:45 in the morning?” Looking for a fight, cars to burgle, or to mug an unwary tourist or student returning home too late? Or to party with more paint thinner, glue, or mota—marijuana.

For me, it’s growing old, and I find myself thinking these lads and their mothers—and their behavior—are stupid and irrelevant. More and more, we know, the rest of the neighborhood feels the same way. A larger mural project is going to start in the neighborhood (with our involvement), and I believe that will have a far greater social impact than anything the gang bangers and the police can throw at each other.

The next morning, I saw three police standing outside our door. Three simply meant there wasn’t going to be a battle. Plus, the brave gang bangers sleep way past noon in the protection of their mother’s homes. The difference was these three policemen carried, for the first time, long metal night sticks with perpendicular side handle. A sign, I think, of another police escalation. They walked down to the offenders’ side alley, looked in for a while, then continued down the alley toward the Old Center. Before they turned away, they waved back up at me.

Presumption of Innocence

Posted on by sterlingbennett

You should never go back to see the person that has inspired one of your stories. If you do, you should never mention it to anyone at that place.

Five years ago, in a bustling Mexican city, a waitress served me tea, which I had ordered, and two fluffy orange-flavored muffins, which I had not. She had struck me somehow—a unique face, dark, perhaps Indian, a pronounced jaw, an air of sadness. Dignity. Like the other waitresses, she wore a black dress with white trims, a short white apron tied around her waist.

Now, five years later, I asked the cashier about her.

I added that I had written a story about her—an imprecise and disastrous choice of prepositions. About her.

The cashier knew exactly whom I was talking about. She described a person that was slim, dark-skinned, and raised her hand palm down to indicate a certain height.

I said that might be her, but that I hadn’t seen her that morning.

“She works in the afternoon,” she said.

I thanked her and sat down again with my love. Then something occurred to me. I got up and approached the cashier again.

“I don’t know her,” I said. “Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t mention me. I don’t want to cause her embarrassment.”

I left out that would come back that afternoon.

My companion and I walked to a hill a mile or so west of the city center. I wanted to see the spot where a European monarch and his two loyal Mexican generals absorbed the bullets of a Mexican anti-French firing squad. The sun was lovely, the jacarandas billowing. A Soviet-style 43-foot statue of Juárez the Avenger loomed over us. I could not feel the executed monarch’s spirit.

Afternoon came, and my companion went on an errand.

I walked back to the café.

The woman behind the cashier’s booth looked down a little too quickly when I walked in. The coffee counter was topped by clean cappuccino glasses, white cups, and drifts of paper napkins—and just above those, the heads and shoulders of three afternoon waitresses whose eyes glistened with suspicion.

One of them came close to fitting the description of the woman I was looking for, except that she wasn’t as slim and pretty as the woman in my story—and no longer as young. While I, on the other hand, had remained roughly the same age as the narrator in the story.

I ordered a cappuccino. The woman in question turned her back to me.

“Chico o grande?” asked another, younger waitress asked.

The situation was out of control, and I didn’t know how long I would be staying.

Still, I said, “Grande.”

I sat down and took out my La Jornada, Mexico’s national left wing newspaper. The Legislature, it reported, was blocking any discussion of widening ownership of the airwaves—radio and television—beyond the monopolists Emilio Azcárraga and Carlos Slim, men of privilege.

I abandoned La Jornada and took out my notebook instead—to show I was a writer, not a pervert. It was part of a current manuscript, about a National Rural Policeman in the 1890’s who discovers the Yaqui Indians are human and deserve the rights guaranteed in the Mexican Constitution of 1857—my protagonist rural, a man who admired Sherlock Holmes.

But I decided he wouldn’t have known any better than I how to extract himself from the situation I was in.

I wrote for about an hour. I never looked at her. God knows what they were thinking. Eventually, M—I think that’s what the cashier said her name was—came out from behind the coffee counter and began waiting on people.

The city was filled with wedding parties. Twice, while I was writing, groups of young women, in their twenties and thirties, dressed expensively and to the nines, in heels too high and grooming too perfect, perhaps still unmarried, came through the door, and filled the room with an air of privilege and desperation.

When I got home, I wrote a letter to M—in Spanish—and sent it to my friend, who said he would print it out and hand deliver it.

~ Estimada Señora M, I began.

Please forgive me for the considerable discomfort I believe I caused you last Saturday. I am the gringo that entered the café and asked after you.

Five years ago, I sat down in your café and could not help but observe some of the people chatting there, drinking coffee, and giving you little orders as if you were there to serve them in all ways—not just in things they would eat and drink. I did not think they were aware of the assumptions of privilege behind their behavior—which may have been obvious to a person who was waiting on them.

Someone like you—a person of dignity, kindness, and beauty—also, humor. When I paid for my tea and the two orange–flavored muffins I had not ordered, I said, “They were a awful temptation, so I ate them.”

And you had said, with a smile, and without missing a beat, something like, “Yes, but the storm has passed now and life can go on.”

Then I went home and wrote a story about a person similar to you—but not you.

It was a love story. The narrator recognizes a woman in the Zócolo in Veracruz who works in the café where he has had breakfast. She is wearing a simple, lovely dress, red hibiscus against black, and high heels. It is an evening of danzón, and the plaza is filled with spectators seated in metal chairs watching the dancers.

The woman seems to be waiting for someone, who finally arrives. They dance together with much pleasure in each other. The man is tall, attractive, his clothes are still dusty from work. Although the dance form is formal, one can nevertheless see they adore each other. Still, something seems to be separating them, perhaps an unhappy marriage on his part.

There is a sad parting, with few words. He leaves on old black bicycle.

After he has left, she feels the narrator’s eyes on her, recognizes him, gets up and comes over to him, indicating that he shall dance with her.

He says he doesn’t know how. She insists, and teaches him the basic steps. After two or three dances, she says it’s time for her to go.

“It was a temptation,” she says.

“You’re not talking about the muffins,” says the narrator.

“No,” she says.

“And not about me,” he says, with a smile.

“Tampoco,” she says. “No.”

Then she leans over and gives him a peck on the cheek and walks away in the opposite direction from that taken by the man with the black bicycle whom she obviously loves.

This story came solely out of my imagination, but also—in a way—honors you.

I wrote the story in English, but if you find a way to forgive me and want to read it, I will translate it and send it to you— by the same courier friend that is bringing you this letter now.

My behavior last Saturday was clumsy and inexcusable and put you in an impossible situation.

I asked the cashier not to tell you I was coming to catch a glimpse of you again. I suppose I was also coming to see someone I had created in my story. I told her I did not know you and did not want to bother you or cause you embarrassment.

She, on the other hand, felt a warranted obligation to warn you that a stranger was asking about you—perhaps some sort of stalker or crazy person, or worse, a chupa-almas—someone that sucks on people’s souls for their stories.

I did not include this last phrase.

I knew as soon as I entered the café that the cat was out of the bag, and that you knew about me and that I was a suspect—that I was the observed one, instead of you.

I did not know what to do, and for that reason I began writing in my notebook—not about you, but about the situation.

You must have thought I was out again to steal one more part of your privacy, your dignity or your soul.

After paying my bill, I turned around and you were standing ten feet from me, looking at me, full on, with a face that was striking in the sense of being stricken—a dark brow full of anger, outrage, confusion or perhaps disappointment that I was not decent enough to speak to you directly.

I do not know what you were feeling. And I could not step out of being a writer to being a person and simply ask you.

Please forgive me. It was not my intention to cause you such unhappiness.

Nor to become just one more of your clients that shows a presumption of privilege—in my case, that I should presume to spy on one of my inspirations as if they were some sort of trinket of literature and not a person with feelings and rights.

Please forgive me.

Sincerely,

And then I wrote my signature and mailing address.

Danzón

Posted on by sterlingbennett

She sat down in front of me, in one of the hundred or so metal chairs that the municipality had put out in the Veracuz’s Zócalo, facing the Porfirio band stand and, behind that, invisible because of night and the curve of the earth, one of the highest volcanoes in Central Mexico. I did not notice her particularly until she leaned forward and began putting on a pair of strapped dancing shoes. The heels were high but also broad enough to provide stable contact with the black and white tiles of the plaza. I suppose it’s the kind of thing I notice, a woman crossing one bare leg over the other, slipping on one shoe, then the other, in public, for dancing. For that was what the crowd had gathered for – for danzón – but mostly just to watch.

I realized I had seen her before, in fact on that very morning, in an old established restaurant, with high ceilings, slowly turning fans. She had been dressed in waitress black, with a lacy white apron in front, her urraca-black hair pulled back in a bun, low shoes, un-shined, a woman of forty, maybe a little bit more, with white teeth, dark eyebrows, full lips, and a chin that fell away toward her long neck – a beauty who was a mixture of an ancient New World people, and Spanish or Portuguese blood, at least in my imagination. She reminded me also of a friend, who is Otomi from the State of Veracruz – which would very likely make her the recent descendent of a people who had been resisting the genocidal policies of government for the last four or five hundred years.

I had ordered tea, “con la bolsa al lado,” the bag to one side. I intended to use my own bag of green tea instead. She also brought me muffins, cupcakes really, sweet yellow things – which I had not ordered. I assumed it was an establishment obligation. That one couldn’t just order tea without having something else.

I had watched her clear tables, then serve a table of important businessmen next to me, who had skin much lighter than hers. I watched for signs of condescension. I did not see any. I watched for interest they might have in her pleasing figure, her striking face, and darker skin. The only person who showed any real interest was myself. I do not know why particularly. But in retrospect, I suspect it was because of her dignity, also because of my ignorance about her city, her culture, the complexities of her life.

Because she had brought them to me, and because I break my rules at the slightest provocation, I ate all three cupcakes. I read my La Jornada, Mexico’s national opposition newspaper. I watched her when she passed by.

When I had to go, I asked for the bill. She brought it in a little basket. I pointed to the three empty crumb-covered red cupcake papers. “Qué mala tentación fue eso!” I said, in my Spanish. “What an wicked temptation that was!” For a moment, I wasn’t sure she had understood either my Spanish or my way of conversing with people in general, or both.

Then her faced changed and she said, in good humor, “Ah, but now they’re gone, and it’s all over.”

I’m not even sure she met my eyes as she said this, gathering up my dishes – and not the moment later, when she took my fifty-peso note, nor the moment after that, when she returned my change.

Now, in the Zócalo, she was wearing a below-the-knee black dress with small red flowers, perhaps hibiscus. Her urraca-black hair fell shoulder length. I watched the dancers, then her, while she sat in her metal folding chair, in front of me. It seemed evident she had come to dance danzón, but she was not dancing. She watched dancers. I watched, too, trying to understand their steps, the way couples seemed to know to pause, now and then, for a whole beat. At times, I suppose signaled by the music, the dancers concluded a series of steps, then separated, still holding hands, and faced the band stand.

A man had approached. His skin was lighter than hers. She stood up to greet him. He had not dressed up to quite the same extent. In fact, he had not changed from his work clothes, which were lightly covered with stone dust. He had passed something over his black work shoes, but that was all.

I tried to measure his relationship with her. There was something reserved about it. But that is also the nature of danzón. Formal movements from French contra dance, later passing through Haiti, then Cuba, arriving at this port city of fine coffee, high ceiling fans, coral walls, grand buildings in black and white stone, and handsome women.

They danced, formally, but with no more than two hand widths between them. They looked each other in the eye. They floated through a variety of steps, sliding rather than stepping into the next position. One, one-two. One, one-two. That is, one long step, followed by two quick steps – here and there, the infinitesimal hesitations.

I could not tell how well they knew each other. That was, I decided, the key to danzón. Public, formal, the hint of sensuality, understated, completely proper. He seemed handsome, not because he was, but because of how he held himself, and what he knew. He directed her firmly. She followed. He looked into her eyes, she into his, both with a respect and appreciation, and both smiling. Not broadly, rather from muted pleasure. She was elegant in her high heels and her hibiscus dress. Of those who danced or watched, they were not from the highest social class. But, of the fifteen or so couples that danced, it was clear the audience found them the most striking.

At the end of a song – how many had they danced? Two, three? He escorted her back to her metal chair. She did not sit. She watched him pick up his dusty backpack and put it on. He put on his baseball cap, faded olive, with a frayed visor. He held out his hand. She held out hers. He leaned forward, slowly, and kissed her on the cheek. She held his elbow. There was a moment, when she seemed to resist his leaning away again. He said something, without smiling, and she said something back, still holding his hand. And then their hands drew apart, and he turned away. I saw him retrieve an old black bicycle from one of the great palm trees at the south edge of the Zócalo and, pushing it, move out of sight behind the wall of onlookers.

She had sat down again. I watched her. I watched the dancers. The band, up in the bandstand, played more Cuban-Mexican tunes. I stood no more than ten feet from her. At one point, I glanced over and saw her looking at me. I held her gaze longer than I usually do with a woman I don’t know. Perhaps because I felt I knew her, even though I didn’t know her. I looked back at the dancers. She got up. I saw her moving, in the corner of my eye. She was going to pass close by. She stopped in front of me. She pointed at a spot on my chest, then toward the other dancers.

“No puedo,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

She reached out for my hand. She led me out away from the spectators. She showed me the simple box step, and eventually, when she said “Pausa!” – with the accent on the last syllable – I learned to pause at the end of the series of one, one-two’s.

We danced two dances. She looked in my eyes. I looked into hers. I saw friendliness, generosity, pleasure, and a suggestion of intimacy that was not intimacy at all. Something I did not understand. When the music stopped, she walked us back to her chair. I stood along side, awkwardly, as she changed her shoes, crossing first one leg, then the other. She carefully put the shoes in a cheap plastic bag with handles. She put on her scuffed black low heel shoes. She stood up, a little shorter now, and held out her hand. Several older women, on both sides of us, were taking it in – watching, but not intrusively. She said, “Gracias!” I said “Gracias!” and bowed slightly at the waste, the way my mother taught me. She held my hand an instant longer. “Qué mala tentación fue, pero ya se terminó,” she said. A strong temptation, but now it’s over – with a look in her eye, a little bit of mischief, a trace of sadness.

I nodded.

“Not the muffins,” I said.

“No,” she said, and gave my hand a little squeeze.

“And not me,” I grinned.

“No, not you, either.” That made her smile. She dropped my hand, but leaned forward, and kissed me on the cheek. Then she picked up the thin plastic sack with her dancing shoes, and walked in the opposite direction to the one her dance partner had taken, with his old black bicycle.

Readers’ Comments

Posted on by sterlingbennett
Submitted 2013/5/23 for Jon Janasak
Hi Sterling,

I enjoyed our visit this morning.

I’d been hoping to run into you as I’d been anxious to congratulate you on your new book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it (Playing for Pancho Villa)! I hope that it is a big success for you—it should be! Very well written and, just a fun fun read! Good luck with your future endeavors!!

—Submitted 2013/4/28 for Kate Burt
 “Playing for Pancho Villa” takes us to Chihuahua, Mexico in 1916.   The tale invites the reader into the beautiful landscape, rich diversity and unique logic of Mexican culture. It dives directly into the upheaval and confusion of civil war as the protagonist and the people he encounters struggle to survive and maintain their integrity. The characters are well drawn, from Frank, to the mysterious Mr. Wu, to the wonderful mare Tosca, whom I wished to adopt. I became quite fond of these characters and was so pulled into the story, that I found it hard to put the book down. Having finished it too quickly, I miss it! Greatly recommended!
—Submitted 2013/3/23 for Norah Wakula, (Presumption of Innocence):
A great story, Sterling. As always.
—Submitted 2013/3/23 for Norah Wakula (Presumption of Innocence):
Lovely, lovely Sterling. I’d like to read the inspired story, too. (The inspired story is Danzón.)
—Submitted 2013/3/21 for Mauela Thiess Garcia, (Playing for Pancho Villa):
Greatly enjoyed your book, Sterling! I read through it in a couple of days because the action was so engrossing.
—Submitted 2013/3/12 for Marc Smith, (Playing for Pancho Villa):
I did want to let you know how much I enjoyed your book.  I enjoyed the characters, story, and way it all was placed historically.  In the best of ways, it reminded me of an Isabel Allende book.  I especially wanted to mention how much I liked your primary characters….For me they were believable, wonderfully varied, and I totally connected w/ your female characters.  I could blither on a bit more, but will spare you.  Felicidades!!!
—Submitted on 2012/2/28
I’m a sixty-eight year old South-African-born now living on a farm in
Kentucky. I’ve been reading Mexican Blogs for about three years —
mainly to just remind myself that there are still societies with
cadence and color, and that the blandness I find myself in is not yet
completely pervasive, but probably some sort of punishment for
unspecified transgressions. Then, a week ago,  I discovered your
website and writing.  I just needed to tell you how very much I enjoy
your writing and thoughts. I think you must also admire Borges, like I
do.
Thank you,
Joe Williams
—Submitted Jan 24, 2012 (My Father’s Loves)
Dear S enjoying your blog and stories very much. Love the one about the notes especially. – T.M.
—Submitted Jan 24, 2012 in response to T.M. on (My Father’s Loves)
When another writer reports they especially like one of your short stories, then you go straight there and wallow in its new-found splendor, not to mention, global importance – Sterling Bennett
—Submitted Jan 23, 2012 (The Horse Warmth Blues, now published in Mexico as Playing for Pancho Villa)
I finished reading your book and loved it! Got more coming? – William English

—Submitted via Facebook Jan.2, 2012  (The Horse Warmth Blues, now published in Mexico as Playing for Pancho Villa)

Looking forward to mining your works. I want to know more about Frank and I don’t care if it’s true or fiction. What makes people return to the East? – Nick Eaton
—Submitted Jan. 2, 2012
Hi Sterling. I just got the chance to read a couple more of your stories. They are riveting. I become so involved with your people and the emotions they must be feeling. I would like to suggest someone to add as a friend. Her name is M. C., and she also lives in Sebastopol, is a writer and an artist. I am sure she would be as enchanted with your wonderful short stories as I am. May I suggest she send you a friend request? – Susan Moore

~ Submitted Jan.1, 2012 (storytelling in general)

I came from a family that didn’t talk much. And I think that’s why I write stories. I call it re-inventing family. It’s also a kind of archaeology of family. Bringing them back to the surface, the present, or to the present of a story told. Not that I reject the family I had, but rather that I have them do things and say things I wish they had told me about. I’m afraid my descendents will be very confused. But maybe a fictitious history is better than a silent history, an untold story. – Sterling

~ Submitted Jan.1, 2012  (storytelling in general)

My suspicion is that the stories I write somehow capture many of the very positive aspects of my parents that I was not able to see or appreciate when they were alive, when I was with them. Those views (values, knowledge) are accessible to the storyteller I think because we internalize so much our parents. So I guess I’m saying that, by using our imaginations, by being creative, we have access again to the gifts our parents gave us. No matter how rotten we thought they were when we were all together. I have fond memories of a very wise Ben Lewis, Santa Rosa therapist (Sonoma County, California), remarking, “If you think you’re mother’s a bitch, what does that make you?” – Sterling

~ Submitted through Facebook, Jan. 2, 2012. (storytelling in general, in reply to the above)

I used to work with folks who had difficult times grieving, particularly the loss of someone with whom they had had a difficult realtionship – often they got stuck because it seemed that the chance for any kind of healing was now over. Turns out that though someone dies, the relationship continues, and that we internalize so much more of our parents and loved ones than we can keep in consciousness at any one time, that there is a huge fertile territory for the imagination to work with in exploring and and fleshing out the relationships that are really not over, until we are. – Kevin Carr

~Submitted onJan 1, 2012  (My Father’s Loves)

Danke:) mein Vater hat tatsächlich viele viele Zettel geschrieben, meine Mutter detaillierte Tagebücher. Und diese Zettel schieben die Fantasie an. Habe ich deshalb mehr über meinen Vater zu erzählen? – Jule

Ich denke, das wird die innerliche Erzählerin entscheiden. – Sterling

Translation: Thanks! My father wrote lots of notes, my mother kept diaries. And (but) these notes are what get my imagination going. Do I therefore have more to write about my father? – Jule

Translation: I think that’s something your inner Storyteller will decide. – Sterling

~Submitted through Facebook, Dec. 28, 2011 (A Solstice Tribute to My Mother)

I went to your blog and read two of your stories. Wonderful! We have a house in Sebastopol with a persimmon tree in front. I fell in love with your mother and father in that tiny story. You are an amazing writer, and I can hardly wait to read more of your work. – Susan Moore

~Submitted on 2011/08/11 (An Otter for a Hat)

Sterling, what an exquisite wonderful story! Truly special. You capture the love between your parents so well–and in such a respectful way. And the otter-story is just incredible! What a character your father must have been! Hilarious and just wonderful that he loved animals that much. Had such a big heart. Thank you for sharing this personal story of revelation! – Michaela

Thanks, Michaela! The Press Democrat printed this story, some years ago. On an Easter. Your comment brings up an old dilemma: the close connection of fiction writing to lying! And how in the world the Reader is to distinguish the one from the other. How she is to know what is autobiographical and what is made up. There is no reason she should know one from the other, if the yarn is tall enough to suspend disbelief! So please forgive me when I tell you that the story was fiction. The elements that are true, apart from that, are: my father loved my mother, she lived to be very old, I love animals, I believe a woman (or man) can choose a good man, one member of a couple may be the stronger chooser but not necessarily anymore loving than the other, and my mother protected the privacy of their love. So, one could argue – in defense of lying – if these things are true, then the story is true. Although it’s fiction! The Press Democrat subtitled it: “A Sonoma County resident remembers his mother.” – Sterling

~Submitted on FB, December 26, 2011

“The Horse Warmth Blues” is SO GOOD, dear Sterling. It will be hard to stop reading, it already is! ” – performing artist Ana Cervantes, pianist extraordinary.

~Submitted on 2011/12/21 at 1:13 pm (Jorge and the Santa Muerte)

Life imitates art, they say sometimes. The art–I use the word loosely–would be my short story “Jorge and the Santa Muerte” at http://www.sterlingbennett.com. The life: on Friday, October 28, 2011, many months after I wrote the story, heavily armed troops from the 21st Military Zone, at 7:40 in the morning (the Army reported) managed to gun down nine young men and a woman, with no wounded and without a single Army casualty, close to the Church of the Santa Muerte. An Army video shows the bodies spread across a field, exposed, not exactly in defensive positions. One lies on his AK 47, in a way that seems unnatural, as if the rifle might have been added afterward. A close-up of one body shows a black cloth wristband with the word “Muerte” clearly visible. The word before it could be “Santa,” since it begins with an “S”. Not quite an accurate imitation of the story: it was all supposed to happen the other way around.

~Submitted on 2011/12/10 at 12:39 am (The Horse Warmth Blues)

Sterling – very rich story! I was carried along, and kept trying to see Frank. And saw you. Made me feel a lot. Excitement, sadness, grief, longing. Thank you.
Kevin

~Submitted on 2011/12/08 at 1:02 am (Biff and the Sinking Coal Freighter)

Sterling – loved this. Been making a little dough lately telling stories. I just started writing some myself. This is inspiring. How’s life down there?
big hug
Kevin

~Submitted on 2011/12/13 at 1:10 pm | In reply to Kevin Carr. (The Horse Warmth Blues)

Thanks for the comment, Kevin! It’s good to get some feedback from a trained therapist as well as friend. I’m also glad you liked the Biff story. I still can’t get it straight in my memory whether my father told me about bears and tugboats, or whether I made up Biff and told my own boys stories about him when we were all very young. I would still like to see Biff translated into Chinese and Arabic! Thanks for commenting!

~Submitted on 2011/12/13 at 1:20 pm | In reply to Kevin Carr.

Kevin, I’m trying to think what it is about storytelling. In contrast to television, film, and other media. When a person starts to tell a yarn, a tale, a story, something in me comes alive and I listen with an intensity and alertness otherwise seldom called upon or available. I guess it’s like an invitation for the imagination to start doing what it was evolved to do: bring up images unique to only oneself, glowing and wonderful, from secret places within the Self.

~Submitted on 2011/12/13 at 1:32 pm | In reply to sterlingbennett.

That’s what I’ve always felt about storytelling – that it engages the imagination in a different way. When I was doing more counseling, I often would get in the same frame of mind, though less free and more focused, as I was listening to folks. I’ve found that storytellers who in some some way enter the story themselves, rather than just presenting it, evoke ( invoke?) a more profound response.

~Submitted on 2011/11/21 at 9:13 pm (The Horse Warmth Blues)

32 chapters… congrats indeed
and I am looking forward to the hardcopy.

~Submitted on 2011/10/07 at 5:04 pm (The Fence, Nut Cake, The Curve of the Earth)

I thought I had read the best story when I read The Fence. Then you put up more. Well, I really liked Nut Cake also. Then, today, The Curve of the Earth. I want to be that woman standing in the claw foot tub on the edge of our farm property in WI. Or at least I can imagine that. Where do you get this stuff? I’d give anything to be able to express myself like that. Heck, I’d love to just think those thoughts and worry about expression later. I have sent the link to your wordpress site to several people. I usually don’t read short stories because I feel ripped off when I want 300 more pages. But these super short ones are just great.Thank you, Sterling.

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:15 pm | In reply to Colleen.

Hi, Colleen! You can read longer stuff by going to the chapters of my novel which I’m putting up on the blog. The novel is called “The Horse Warmth Blues.” It’s not 300 pages long, but it is longer than a short story and may not leave you feeling too ripped off. It does treat some of the same themes that appear in “The Fence” and “The Curve of the Earth,” but in the setting of the Mexican Revolution. It is a love story, or several love stories!

~Submitted on 2011/10/08 at 4:07 pm (The Fence, The Curve of the Earth)

Very nice indeed. You are a master of both urban and rural. Wow.

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:08 pm | In reply to Dinni Gordon.

Hi, Dini, I’m afraid I brow-beat you into repeating your email words here. Thanks for adding to my credentials, to my shameless self-promotion! Abrazos!

~Submitted on 2011/07/04 at 7:10 pm (The Mexican Mind)

¡Ah! De nueva cuenta esta vieja discusión. ¡Qué bueno que existen nuestras profundas y afortunadas diferencias; éstas nos hacen fuertes y… diferentes. En ambos sentidos.

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:30 pm | In reply to Rosa Martha.

Hola, Rosa Martha! Como sabes, mi escrito “The Mexican Mind” se trató en realidad de la mente estadounidense, y goteó de la ironía. Nunca presumiría de hablar sobre la mente mexicana. Estoy de aceurdo contigo de que las diferencias entre nosotros nos ofrecen tierra fértil para aprender.

~Submitted on 2011/05/16 at 8:27 pm (El Discurso Que No Dí: Las Mujeres No Son Vacas)

CUANTO GUSTO ME DIO LEER TU DISCURSO Y LAMENTO QUE no haya sido escuchado porque merece que muchos hombres lo escuchen y lo practiquen,pero siento un poco de desesperanza en pensar todo lo que hace falta y cuanto mas vamos a tener que pasar para que hombres y mujeres piensen asi´.Espero que a ti no te haya costado mucho dolor el llegar a este convencimiento,gracias por este momento de conciencia .

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:37 pm | In reply to omaqui. (Discurso: Día de la Mujer 2011)

Hola, Hortensia! Gracias por tus palabras de apoyo! Sí, los hombres tienen que aprender mucho más sobre si mismos, sobre su enojo, sus tristezas, sus decepciones, hasta que sepan que solo ellos sean responsables por mitigarlas. Un abrazo!

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:39 pm | In reply to my daughter-in-law.

Much thanks to you, my dear daughter-in-law, for getting me started with this blog and for leaving the first comment! I would not be embarked on this enterprise if it had not been for you! Un abrazo fuerte!

~Submitted on 2011/08/10 at 3:06 am

Hi Sterling.
I love your stories. Especially since I can see you speaking them and hear your voice so clearly. Unmistakable, your voice.
Thank you for sharing. Tell “Carolina” I say hello. Miss you all.
xoxoxo,
Stacey Tompkins

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:18 pm | In reply to staceytompkins.

Dear Stacey, Sorry to have taken so long to respond. You were my first comment, and a very encouraging one indeed. Thanks so much! I haven’t forgotten you story about the dog killing the goats. Or were they sheep? I believe you read that story at our house, during one of the reading evenings. Abrazos to you all!

~Submitted on 2011/10/15 at 6:41 am (The Horse Warmth Blues: Mr. Leibniz and the Avocado)

I like the whistling corpses.

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:05 pm | In reply to Ana Trucha.

Hi, Ana! Phil Contreras’s father either saw such whistling corpses or heard about them, here in Mexico. I asked Phil if I could use the story in my writing. He said yes. Alas, he is no longer around to see his father’s story incorporated into my writing.

~Submitted on 2011/10/22 at 9:21 am (The Down from a Thousand Geese)

Hi Sterling! I really liked your short-story. I was hooked, then I was disappointed that it ended so soon! Great job! Are we going to see you in December?

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 1:02 pm | In reply to Claudia Sandell.

Hi, Claudia! I wrote the story “The Down from a Thousand Geese” while waiting for the food to come in a tiny Chinese restaurant, on a napkin, in San Francisco. That ‘s why it’s so short! Pretty much just enough to wipe your mouth with! Abrazos to the whole family.

~Submitted on 2011/11/07 at 4:45 pm (The Horse Warmth Blues)

Yes, Sterling. I love this. Also I have finished what you have written up to date on your novel. It has such wonderful “texture and scent” When can it be held in an actual hand? I just finished a lovely book from the library in San Miguel called The Names of Things by Susan Brind Morrow. I need to read it again but it has to go back so I ordered it from Amazon. After reading your book I got a hit that you would like this as well so you can borrow it as soon as it arrives if you like. Or…you could take it out of the library. I want to know what you think after you read it. You have a fan in me. Keep writing. Fondly, Annie

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 12:56 pm | In reply to Annie Smith (The Horse Warmth Blues)

Thanks so much for the kind words. Sending stuff out into the ether is a little daunting, because you don’t know if anyone’s reading it, let alone liking it! My only guiding principle is, I think, take the risk, if there’s one you can take!

~Submitted on 2011/11/07 at 3:05 am (Biff and the Sinking Coal Freighter, The Horse Warmth Blues)

finally noticed you again twitter – I’ve not been reading it in ?? forever. nice blog, I’ve just started with tug story. enjoyed, onto the novel…

~Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 12:58 pm | In reply to Matthew Bailey Seigel (Biff and the Sinking Coal Freighter)

Hey, Matthew! Glad you found me again. I wrote the tugboat story for my five year-old granddaughter. I think my father told me similar stories about a bear and tugboats. Are you still doing art? Abrazos!

~Submitted on 2011/10/16 at 2:50 pm (Foreground)

wonderful ‘yarn’ doc…. Oxoxoxox

~Submitted on 2011/10/16 at 11:20 pm | In reply to john douglas.

Thanks, John! Know all about you now, after the NYTimes article! You’re famous!

~Submitted on 2011/10/07 at 1:43 am (A Few Words About Me)

Greetings from the beautiful State of Missouri! I have enjoyed reading some of your stories this evening. You writing style reminds me of having a conversation with you. It is
enjoyable!

~Submitted on 2011/10/07 at 3:44 pm | In reply to Ian Davidson.

Ian, Glad you’re reading some of my stories. I’m flattered that you enjoy them. A think one of the tricks of storytelling is to be guided by the flow of one’s own speech. Your Granddad Earl speaks very much the way Mark Twain writes, when he’s talking about Missouri and the Bottom Land along the River. Good to hear from you. Y abrazos a tu Mamá!

~Submitted on 2011/09/23 at 2:56 pm (An Otter for A Hat)

Sterling:
That’s a good read
Jenny

~Submitted on 2011/09/23 at 5:23 pm | In reply to Jenny.

Thanks, Jenny. Couldn’t have a better critic!

~Submitted on 2011/04/21 at 12:43 am

Love your blog. It is looking fabulous. Keep posting!

Día de la Mujer, Guanajuato, 2011 – Las Mujeres no son vacas

Posted on by sterlingbennett

(La conferencia que no dí)

Las mujeres no son vacas, ni mascotas, ni juguetes para humillar, dominar, y controlar

Tú lo sabes, pero muchos hombres no.

Porque no se sienten merecedores algunos hombres tienen que robar y violar.

Y no solamente a las mujeres adultas.

Por Lydia Cacho conocemos la extensa explotación sexual de niños, desde los seis años de edad.

Por Digna Ochoa (Octubre 2001) sabemos que la valentía moral es sumamente peligrosa y que muchos hombres no saben toleran una justa y oportuna aplicación de la ley.

Los que necesitan de la impunidad no saben querer, ni otras, ni a sí mismos.

Por Atenco (Mayo 2006) sabemos que la policía, es decir, algunos hombres sin mucha auto-estima, tienen que robar y humillar. De otra manera, cómo se explica su comportamiento:

“Me metía los dedos en la boca y en la vagina y me obligó a hacerle sexo oral, me echó su esperma en mi suéter blanco. Y vino otro policía y lo mismo, me agarró mis pechos y dijo: ésta está bien buena y está amantando (sic), ¿verdad? Puta perra!

Las mujeres no son vacas.

Los hombres con frequencia son perros.

Pero esta encarnación no es obligada.

En mi opinion no deberíamos celebrar el Día de la Mujer.

Mejor celebrar a la mujer misma.

Pero cómo, si no sabemos siquiera celebrarnos a nosotros?

Mi experiencia de 30 años en grupos para hombres me dice que éstos no se conocen a sí mismos.

Han aprendido solamente dos opciones en sus relaciones con mujeres:

Golpearlas o alejarse haciendo pucheros.

No sabemos que en nosotros está disponible toda la gama de emociones que tienen las mujeres.

No sabemos hablar con mujeres, porque ellas tienen más habilidad táctica en esta area – la de sobrevivirnos.

Pero los hombres pueden aprender a defenderse, con palabras y no sentir pánico ni rabia.

Pueden aprender a sentir emociones.

Pueden aprender paulatinamente a reconocer su decepción, su enojo, su miedo, su profunda y sepultada tristeza por muchas cosas, especialmente por la distanciamiento con su padre, que también se sentía solo.

Pueden aprender a respaldar a otros hombres, en vez de competir con ellos, y hablar de qué es esto de ser un hombre en este mundo.

Y cuando descubren que tienen emociones de que no hay que avergonzarse, pueden ser menos dependientes, emocionalmente, de mujeres.

Van a saber que no hay garantías de lealtad, y que toda forma de dominación, que toda presión, toda presunción de lealtad hace imposible una madura y satisfactoria forma de amor.

Y quizás vayamos a descubrir que las mujeres no son vacas y que nosotros no somos perros.

About My Stories

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Before becoming a finalist (not the winner) in the 2011 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, I tried to pitch my collection of short stories to some five university presses and publishers. Only Cinco Puntos Books, I think, took the effort to read my book proposal.

The exercise was very worthwhile in any case, since I was forced to think about my own writing and describe it.

For those of you who might be interested in this process, or in a context for reading my stories, or in Mexico generally, I include portions of the book proposal, in a kind of question–answer format, for ease of reading.

What is the collection about, in a nutshell?

Along the lines of Quinones’ True Tales of Another Mexico, my manuscript called Foreground – a collection of twenty-seven short stories – focuses on a Mexico where cataclysmic events erupt, where war, mob hysteria, sudden dark preoccupations, collapsing structures, and anarchy lie just below generosity, intelligence, humor, and stubborn patience.

My stories reflect two Mexicos. In the first, modern freeways connect major cities, with their Costcos and Radio Shacks. But beside the highways, beyond the shopping centers, advanced health centers, tourist hotels and beaches, across the mountains, covering the entire country, there is a parallel world of human, horse and burro paths, still used, which connect villages, milpas (corn patches), memory, hunger, love, loss, and war. This is the deep indigenous landscape of the Mexican psyche from which comes the vocabulary of poetry, song, food, folk medicine, and art – a landscape as essential to Mexicans as the forests of New England were to the Transcendentalists. This landscape is vulnerable to extinction by modern institutions, both legal and illegal. Big media, government, business monopolies, and the church point away from deep landscape, while using its customs and images for their own narratives. The state does not invest in its human capital. Farmers give up and move to urban poverty. Rural and urban youth turn to the drug cartels, or cross the border to the North, in both case at great risk.

These two Mexicos – deep culture and modernizing culture, and the tensions that build between them – form the background tectonic rumble, as I write my stories about the good, intelligent, generous, and hard working people I live among.

What about research?

Since this is not a non-fiction book, I choose to re-define the word research, as it applies to my work. Non-fiction, it seems, acquires a body of knowledge, through research, in order to explore an area of interest. A fiction work begins with the storyteller’s story, which may be triggered by something experienced or read. After the story has been told, then the research commences, in order to strengthen the credibility of the tale.

As for the first step in my process, as in Boccaccio’s Decameron, I tell my stories to someone. I write them at a wobbly coffeehouse table, surrounded by university students (not the plague), in the presence of my Mexican writing partner – each week. I read them to him immediately, then often embed them in a framework story later. That is the second step, layering time, place, and narrator.

A third step is listening to my Mexican writing partner. I have suffered his wisdom at all points, for a long time. If a there is a unique flavor to my stories, it is because of what I have learned from him, from his confirmations and re-directions. It also helps to have studied Spanish for twenty-five years, with very special people, reading the local and national Mexican press, and opening myself to the knowledge of Mexican friends, especially those in Michoacán.

What have reviewers said about the stories?

Fred Hills, a former Editor-in-Chief of McGraw-Hill and subsequently Vice President and Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster, who had edited Raymond Carver and William Saroyan, worked with Vladimir Nabokov, and published the Nobel Laureate Heinrich Böll, read five of my stories and wrote these ringing words:

“Sterling Bennett is a beguiling and gifted writer, a virtuoso who intrigues and fascinates, like a poet whose work suggests more than can be fully grasped or absorbed in a single sitting, or a single reading. The world he evokes is a strange and sometimes enchanting place, but also dark, bewildering, even unfathomable. Where one cannot easily walk away from this writer, where he is clearly a considerable talent.”

On the other hand, the person that advanced me to a finalist position in the 2011 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award wrote the following less ringing note to his/her fellow judges,

“Historical search stories triggered mostly by old parchments, manuscripts, letters, records in libraries or family drawers when someone dies. Most shorts, in a 19th Century style of writing. German, Mexican, French stories about the diaspora in Mexico after WWII. Much flashback about WWII, structured as straight narrative about past events, little embellishment. Layering of metaphysical on these events feels unearned to me, definitely sentimental, but the events themselves are mesmerizing.”

I have to give this critic credit for having found me out as moonlighting in the 19th Century. Except that my style itself is a little more modern. It is true, though, that my approach was partially formed by a career of teaching 19th and 20th century German short story writers: Tieck, Kleist, Keller (Swiss), Droste-Hülshoff, Goethe, and Mann. From Goethe’s “Novelle,” 1828, I take the idea of the Wendepunkt, the turning point, and the concept of eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit, a unexpected unheard of event – often also the moment of transition between predictable order and chaos.

What about your voice and style?

Being my own graduate student, in this case, I would define my voice and style as the following: the unique choice of image, cadence, sound, sentence structure, juxtaposition, speed of flow; and plot – where I see the storyteller (inside me) moving like a snake through a field, choosing his path with a kind of revealed inner logic. Then there is the dimensionality of words – as in the story “The Hair and the Heart,” when Miguel Angel and Claudia make love on floating vegetation, hidden by rushes from the entire Purépecha town, with “… warm dark water seeping up through the reed bed…” touching their bodies. With the background question, from the very beginning of time: How many young lovers have done that along the shores of lakes? The formation of character; and, finally, the right painterly strokes in description, so that the reader can complete an image and see it fully with less information. Luis Alberto Urrea does this with great skill in The Hummingbird’s Daughter.

I add humor, irony, a sense of plot and action. I populate various stories with family names (as does Luis Alberto Urrea in The Hummingbird’s Daughter), usually uncles and grandfathers, partly in efforts to re-invent family, partly, – I suppose – to fill the yawning silence on the male side. I like to think that my stories contain universal themes, and that the events I describe – often discordant with habits of reason, order, and predictability – are events that happen everywhere, and to all peoples, with local variation. And that a good yarn can deepen and humanize a view of another people, and thus inform as well as entertain.

What would you say to the timeliness and appeal of your stories?

I have always thought the U.S. served as the spiritual backyard of the German imagination. Mexico may serve the same purpose, though a darker one, for the U.S. imagination. Most Americans know something about Mexican language, beer and beaches. Far fewer have a grasp of Mexico profundo – the foundation of generosity, intelligence, humor, and patience. Many equate Mexico with danger, a perception that repels, but also attracts. Americans need to know about their neighbor to the south: about its cultures, histories, languages, and what’s going on right now, and how Americans are involved: the drug wars are fueled, for example, by U.S. consumption of drugs and the U.S. sale of weapons to the drug cartels. They need to know, for example, that at the end of the Mexican-American War 1846-48, Mexico was forced to concede (the U.S. occupied Mexico City) 55% of its prewar territory to the U.S., including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. Many Mexicans remember this historical fact, while few Americans do. The overflow of Mexico into the U.S. is an old and continuing process (see John Ross’s book The Annexation of Mexico, 1998). Poverty and the leadership’s lack of interest in providing jobs and education drive the courageous and hopeful toward the U.S. border or into the hands of the narco-cartels, who will supply jobs.

Who would you say you are writing for?

I have always written with the idea of sharing my stories with an audience. I have read to live audiences for something like the last thirty years. It is very hard to answer whom the storyteller is writing for, in the moment of writing. The only analogy that comes to mind is the compulsive liar, who fabricates seamlessly, for almost anyone. The storyteller’s audience, then, is anyone who is listening.

Who will buy this book?

Well, clearly the paper book publishers decided no one would buy it, at least to the extent that they the publishers would make any money. In a sense, this may have been a good thing for me, in a time of changing fortunes for paper book publishing. It would appear that eBooks are the future or, one could argue, the present. E-publishing removes the skeptical or uninterested gatekeepers. The potential for audience – the whole point of writing, in my opinion – greatly increases, if the writing is good and readers recommend it to other readers; and if the proper links are placed, which direct new readers to the site. The stories, I have decided, should be free. In the meantime, the only English language publisher in Mexico has picked up and published my novel Playing for Pancho Villa, a novel expanded out of my short story “Mr. Leibniz and the Avocado.” Playing for Pancho Villa was available for purchase in Mexico as of February 2, 2013 (www.editorialmazatlan.com) and will be available in the U.S. market in April, 2013, wherever books are sold, Amazon, Kindle etc.

Who would read the stories as a eCollection?

People who like a short, complete, well-written, yarn; retirees sniffing out Mexico; travelers; expatriates in Mexico, who are beginning to look more closely at where they are living; readers with limited time (most of us); readers beginning to focus on Mexico because of the Bicentennial (Independence 1810) and because of the hundred-year anniversary of the Mexican Revolution (1910); and because of growing fiercely politicized immigration issues; students, at all levels, of Mexican social and political affairs. Anyone with a Kindle, lying on their side, reading for a few minutes before sleep pulls down their lids.

Who else writes stories (novels) about Mexico that you would recommend?

Well, I would include Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter, for its wonderful voice and writing; its compelling images of end of the 19th century Mexico. Every writer runs across another writer who he or she thinks is threateningly good. Urrea is that for me. I recommend him highly.

Then there’s Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo, but especially the collection of short stories El Llano en Llamas (The Burning Plain), which takes us down into México profundo as unerringly as an hungry burro going home; I know of no one – Mexican or otherwise – who can match his vision and language, when it comes to very deep Mexico. Nellie Campobello’s Cartucho comes close to it. Not to be missed is Cate Kennedy’s Sing, And Don’t Cry: A Mexican Journal – a passionate and loving observation of life and lives in rural Mexico.

Who are other expatriates writing from Mexico?

This is the specific group for comparison and includes: John Reed, Mexico Insurgent, 1914, a work that is Homeric, accurate, and beautifully written. This is a wonderful book. Not recent, but timeless.

Then there’s B. Traven, especially his story “Macario.” His writing answers the question: Can an expatriate write about the deep culture of the country he or she is living in? I think the answer is yes.

Daniel Reveles with his Tequila, Lemon, and Salt honors the Mexican village and its characters, with great generosity.

I highly recommend C.M. Mayo’s (the 1995 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award winner) collection of short stories Sky over El Nido, especially the remarkable stories there: “The Wedding” and “Rainbow’s End,” which show the collision between Mexico profundo and Mexico imaginario. And, of course, her novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, with lines like: “… in the night the crows flew to Mexico, to feed on dead soldiers. In the day, they digested the flesh.” Writers and historians should make regular visits to her blog at madammayo.blogspot.com.

Last, I would include Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, stories, from Mexico, edited by C.M. Mayo, 2006, especially the story “The Green Bottle,” by Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo, which echoes the grinding hopelessness (and beauty) of Juan Rulfo’s El Llano en Llamas “The Burning Plain.”

Thank you! This has been a wonderful fake interview.

You’re welcome!

[To read the stories, go to the sidebar on this blog and pull down “2011 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award finalist collection “Foreground.”] Two sample chapters out of Playing for Pancho Villa are also near to top of the list on this blog.

For Someone Watching Our Cameras from New Hampshire

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Regarding the cameras, the one called 1) Jardin (garden) is looking at the green gate on the left. Up a little higher on the left is the door to C’s house. Sometime you may see someone lower a little basket on a string or the just the key, when someone wants to get in. Someday you’ll see a bent white-haired women come out or go into that door. She is B and must have been a great beauty when she was young. I think she’s about 78. We don’t really know the people who come and go from the green gate just below. Right across from C’s door is our garden gate. Higher up, above the green gate is where

Camera 2) “Christina” is located. It looks down the steps from about the level of our garden gate. Our wall on the left stops at some corrugated roof overhang. That is P’s house. She and her son clean, water our plants, and watch over us and our house. They are 110% reliable. On the lower right, you see a white jar cap and the jar beneath it. The bottom has been cut off and it serves to shield a light bulb. The pole next to it is the street lamp. When the latter’s bulb fails, the people behind the green gate turn on the jar light street lamp. On the right a little lower is a vacant lot. At the lower end of the vacant lot is where we were mugged. We are now recovered from that event, although I still carry pepper spray whenever I step out of the house, and we use a bodyguard or taxi to return home at night. The taxi drops us off a S’s store two blocks higher up. Our bodyguard M brings us to our garden gate just above the mugging site.

Camera 3) “Frente” (front) is mounted on the front of our house, upper end, just to the left and above our front door. The door to the left is R’s little tienda (store). During the attack on the police, the latter fled into her tienda, although they were armed. Human rights laws do not permit police firing at attacking youth. To the right of her door, on the left, you see her altar, which is lit up at night. There is a doll-like virgin inside dressed like Marie Antoinette. The blue house on the upper left is where M lives. He is D’s best customer for her children’s books lending enterprise. I pump up soccer balls for him. You will see him hanging out a lot the this area. His parents or parental figures neglect him almost entirely. He is eight or nine. D is like his aunt. You will see some of the gangbangers hanging out here too. They usually wear white baseball caps and white baseball shirts. You may see them selling drugs. When they are high on paint thinner and other stuff, they stagger around with jerky-jivy movements.

Camera 4) Tienda” (store) is mounted on R’s store, to the right of her door. It shows our front door on the green-gray wall on the right. On that wall, you can see a French cave horse and an antelope which I drew in chalk, along with M and his friend J, in a demonstration of mural drawing. In a recent confrontation with the gang mothers (molls), one of them pointed to my animals and said, “Look, you make graffiti, too.” Beyond our door, there is a slight overhang separating the wall from the old rock wall below. At the end of that, C and A’s house begins. C and D form the Nr. 2 Women’s Detective Agency. Because they don’t like to walk up the alley in front of their door when the gangbangers and their friends are out drinking and acting out, we have cut a hole between their roof and our terrace. They now have a key to our garden gate across from C’s door visible in camera 2) and can pass through our garden, climb the steps to our terrace, step through the new gap in the wall and reach their azotea (roof), from which stairs lead down into their house.

I hope that helps those of you who are watching from thousands of miles away. We have not heard anything from the police about any of the events. I read a graph recently showing that 25% of crimes are reported and 2% are prosecuted in Mexico. Very, very few result in convictions—the theory being that this kind of impunity has led to a great rise in delinquency.

Gang Mothers Threaten Rape

Posted on by sterlingbennett

The doorbell rang around six pm. D looked through the wooden door flap. She decided it’s okay to unlock. It was, after all, only the mostly absent president of the neighborhood committee, L the mother of the most dangerous gangbanger, and E the aunt of the next most dangerous one.

I decided to step outside, too. It was one day after the bangers mentioned above ripped down two surveillance cameras that had been attached to two other houses—and I was a little angry.

We stood outside in the callejón, just outside our front door. We had never met L before. D had tried to talk to her many times before but always got the brushoff. I introduced myself. She took my hand—almost no grip—but would not look at me. We got down to business quickly. The president, who had given up trying to get D and C to stop being co-leaders and strong women, had also, it appeared, given up being the local cacique, boss, only interested in his own power. He was now a conflict resolution expert.

“I have a proposal that might calm the situation,” he said.

“You want us to take down the cameras,” I suggested, probably with sarcasm.

D probably interrupted him at that point and continued to address L and E. No, sure, she said, she would be glad to take down the (remaining) cameras when there was no trash in the alleys, when the thick, ugly graffiti all around us was painted over, when everyone could pass through the allies without being threatened, menaced or intimidated, when illegal drinking and drug taking no longer dominated the callejón, when that activity no longer drew in all kinds of people from other barrios (attracted to the same behavior), when the revelers no longer pissed in the alley, kept the neighbors awake and fearful, when their sons and nephews behaved with respect for the Commons, the public space, when they behaved with courtesy and respect for the all the rest of us, when they no longer threatened her personally with kidnapping and rape, and, finally, when their mothers and aunts took responsibility for teaching the boys the above-mentioned civic values.

The president tried to continue with me. I cut him off.

“I’m listening to them,” I said, too forcefully. He, after all, was supposed to have been in charge of security, a role which failed to perform in any fashion. And now he was essentially representing the gang and their mothers.

L had a position. “Me ofende que las cameras están espiando a mis hijos….” Her meaning: It’s offensive that you have these cameras aimed at my innocent sons.

D lets her have it again. I let her have it. I am pissed. What in god’s name are you talking about. There would be no cameras if you had control over your sons, your nephew. E glares at me. I glare back her, too long, too pissed. D does it much better. She is clear and respectful. Still you can hear the trace of scorn in her voice.

This is a tricky situation. We are two Ph.D.’s; E and L have very little education. L lives with her husband and three sons in little more than a shack, probably with no more than two rooms, at the most. There is a class difference. They—including the president—invoke the foreigner rule: You are not from here and do not understand our ways. We are permanent residents, in fact. That doesn’t matter. There is a web of confusion, assumption, non-understanding. There is also a generational factor. Gang culture and activity is often handed down through generations, and carries with it its own assumed ethic. Such as: the public space is not public—not when we claim it. L’s husband was in prison for murder; it is said he lived with a woman who was selling herself. That may or may not have been L. He came home day and found her with another man, whom he killed. It is very possible he learned such solutions from his father, and his father before him. It is possible that L’s husband is involved in things, like our Nemesis in the privada. One could say they belong to what you could call a bandit class. Let me explain.

There is a long history of banditry (el bandido) in Mexico. It is an activity you could characterize as social/political (take from the poor, give to the rich) or professional (straight out bank robber), or shades of both.

The concept overlaps with caciquismo (el cacique), the activity of a local political boss). This type of bandit operates inside or outside of the local governmental structure. But there’s nothing like getting your hands on the people’s money, the public coffers.

Then there is caudillismo (el caudillo), the activity of a political-military leader in an authoritarian context. He (or she: Eva Perón in Argentina) is supposed to control banditry’s impact on society, but he will enlist bandits of all types to further his own political power. Mexican governors and presidents, for example, reach accommodations with the leaders of cartels.

There is a fourth category that has no word for it that I know of, and that fact says something about the challenges for women who are the mothers, aunts, wives and girlfriends of the various kinds of bandits. They are not soldaderas like the women that fought in the Mexican Revolution). It is about the women who navigate to survive in circles of banditry, caciquismo and caudillismo. They do this by being the spies, propagandists, lawyers and lobbyists for their bandit males. There used to be a word for her in the U.S. during the Twenties: the moll. Hollywood depicts her more as the plaything of the gangster, but I suspect she was, at times, also his advisor and partner in crime.

The complement to banditry is the feeling of helplessness in the face of arbitrary (usually) male claims of power and violence. Which is to say, the citizenry, even the molls, find themselves trapped in social dilemma—how to find accommodation with the local cacique and his strongmen, even the latter may be living in one’s own family.

L and E and C, I have decided, are molls. They are part of the bandit group. They had come to our front door to 1) find out what we knew about the attack on the police and the destruction of the two cameras, 2) to argue our otherness and lack of understanding in things Mexican, 3) to deny the facts (everything is fine), 4) to plead the innocence of their sons and nephews, and 5) to point out the dangerous provocations coming from us.

“Outsides can come in here, you know, and some of them are men who rape,” said L to D.

“All the more reason for cameras,” said D, without missing a beat. She had been walking past L’s house one day recently, and Y, L’s youngest son, seven or eight years old (who used to borrow children’s books from D and who D found out could not read) had said, “You know, the cameras really aren’t such a good idea. They’re thinking of kidnapping you.”

L and E and C are women who have to go along with the bandit culture and worldview. They are part of it. Thinking any differently from their men could turn out to be very dangerous for them. We do not know to what extent they have already been abused and brutalized. They are the molls of the neighborhood, and their lives cannot be easy.

Masked Revolutionaries

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I have wondered how what follows has anything to do with the struggle for democracy. But it does, if we talk about democracy in our own little barrio. Last night, with faces covered by bandanas, the Usual Suspects inched along the top of an unfinished wall—like the Siamese cat Ratón during Monday night’s invasion by police and Army—and tore out T’s camera, which had been guarding the vacant lot. The theory is that certain parties hope to claim that lot eventually and, I suppose, feel possessive of what is and is not seen going on in the lot. The lot is also the escape route for the gangbangers when the authorities come in hot pursuit.

The masked Usual Suspects, and their little gang, are terrorizing the neighborhood to some extent, to some extent just being extremely uncivil. As a friend recently said about her neighborhood in Mexico City, “Lo que falta es el civismo,” what’s missing is a sense of civic responsibility, public spirit. That is the case with our little friends. The neighborhood wants law and peace. The gang wants only their law—their negative anarchy. They are what plagues Mexico on many levels, from the narco world to the business monopolies to the political gangs—all of whom don’t particularly care about the public or the public space, the Commons.

After ripping out T’s camera, the Suspects, masked, openly exited their privada, climbed up in front of our front door, and threw a cotton long-sleeve shirt over the camera that guards the camera closest to their privada. The shirt, successfully placed, blocked the camera so it could no longer see. Then, one standing on the other, they ripped out a second camera, the one closest to their privada.

So now they have done something stupid, aggressive and war-like, leaving us citizens (I use that word loosely) in somewhat of a dilemma: How do you defend against Masked anti-social Revolutionaries?

The Police Retreat

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Right on schedule the weather changes. It’s not even February and it’s suddenly warmer. For two days, people have been hanging out in the callejón, alley, right at the entrance to the privada, the side alley where much of the trouble seems to focus. A lot of drinking, a lot of hand motions while talking. We try to identify the figures through the closest camera. We can’t figure out why the sudden activity. Young men with a lot of swagger, more when they’re drinking. M and Q are among them.

Today, at the end of the second day, someone called the police.

D burst into the room. “A bunch of people just ran up to our door, then ran back down,” she said.

I went up to the roof. Just as I got there, the troops arrived. Maybe twenty men, some in dark blue with combat helmets, one of them with a dog; the rest in camouflage. They are worked up. But it’s like coming into the middle of a movie; you don’t know what came before. They storm into the privada where the trouble brews. I watch the wall that the gangbangers usually use for an escape. No one drops down from it, escaping the police-Army, whatever they are. For all we know, Army has been integrated into the Seguridad Pública, the local police.

In the midst of all the excitement, I see a movement. It is the neighbor’s Siamese cat Ratón—mouse. He is a private, somewhat aloof, mostly outdoor cat that has survived all kinds of hungry street dogs. He is walking along the top of an unfinished wall in the vacant lot, stepping carefully over curved re-bar, getting himself nearer to the helmeted troopers. It is, after all, his territory. He watches from close-up the whole time they’re thrashing around looking for the gangbangers.

Then, surprisingly, another twenty or so men arrive, from uphill, all in camouflage. They rush down to the privada, then rush back up past our door. One of them kicks opened the locked metal door to the vacant lot. Breaking a entering into private property—a technicality of lesser importance since the registered property owner is dead. They search the lot, then the woods adjacent to the lot. One man in blue spends a lot of time looking down onto the roof of M’s aunt’s house.

It is hard to keep track of all the platoons of troops. They are upset about something.

I open the door and tell several troopers how the boys escape each time they’re pursued. I have done this before. They thank me. I am closing the door when I see Buddha Comandante passing—joining the attack.

“Comandante,” I say. He turns toward me. “Buenas Noches,” I say, and smile at him and wave.

He recognizes me and smiles back, from under his helmet. “Buenas Noches,” he says, and charges on down the callejón.

D goes to the computer and finds the recorded event that triggered the whole invasion. We see three troopers walking quickly up from the privada. We see a group of about seven gangbangers mill around, then charge after the troopers. The latter rush into R’s little store ten paces from our front door. Several boys—young men—are throwing rocks, a few of them bricks at the store’s open door. Then the punks—high on thinner—turn around a run back down the alley toward the privada. The three troupers in camouflage come out of R’s tienda, stand in front of our door and shout down at bangers, “We know who you are!”

That was the part we missed. We don’t know why the three were in the privada in the first place. I guess it doesn’t matter in this pageant. Now there are police and/or soldiers swarming all over the place. We play the digital tape over and over. We recognize a few of the stone throwers. Others, we don’t. They are outsiders, perhaps from another gang from another part of the city.

The doorbell rings. D opens the little wooden flap-door. It’s a man in blue. He asks if he can come in. D unlocks, the officer steps in. He wants to know if we saw what happened through the cameras. D—thinking much quicker than me—says yes but he will have to look at the recording in the offices of the Seguridad Pública; he shouldn’t see the recording at our house because it compromises out own security. Politically, it would be unwise. We tell him C, who installed our cameras, is in contact with the Seguridad Pública and has told them how to access the recording through the Internet. We give him the exact time: 19:47, military time.

He tells us the gangbangers injured one of the three, of which he claims he was one. I am a little confused. I thought there were three police in camouflage. He is wearing dark blue, with flak jacket, radio, the whole works–very professional looking.

I tell him I have a question.

“Why is it you flee?” I ask.

He pulls his jacket away, showing us his automatic.

“If I use this, there will be no end of trouble for me. There are human rights laws. I can’t use this.”

I nod, and pull my canister of pepper spray out of my pocket. It is pink, the most popular offering on Amazon.

“What about this?” I say.

He pulls his jacket away from a different spot. He plucks out a canister four times the size of mine.

“That’s aggressive, too,” I say.

He nods. Clearly, they don’t use it. D and I figure it would not be a good idea to give the bangers the same idea. If one of the police got sprayed and was rendered vulnerable, they might do terrible damage to him with a brick or two.

He introduces himself. We introduce ourselves. He thanks us. His behavior contradicts much of what you’ve heard about police behavior in Mexico. There are other police where you would be right—but not in our neighborhood. When the door opens, another trooper calls out “Good-night!” in English. A few non-police, neighbors, I hope, are watching the policeman emerge from our door.

We think there may be some good news in all of this. We think we did not see either Q—or M, to whom I sent the offer of university tuition help in among the attackers.

That would be very good news, I think.

The phone rings. Q’s mother, who has rebuffed any number of D’s offers to talk, wants to talk to D.

“Why now?” I ask.

“Because she knows her children were involved (the middle boy) and that the cameras recorded it.”

D makes an appointment to talk to her in three days. We are very busy until then.

“She’ll have to stew a bit,” says D. “Think a little bit about her three boys—and about what they’re doing.”