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Writer’s Slump and Other Maladies

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I know what writer’s block means, but what about writer’s slump? Or writer’s blues, or writer’s despair, or writer’s disillusion? Or writer’s whine? Post partum depression? The Yaqui Novel has been sent off to the Book Designer. I don’t know who that is or where that person lives, whether it’s a man or a woman, big or small, nor what color or religion. Or whether they are worried about their taxes and hence not putting their full attention on my book.

That collection of pages has gone through the Editor, three times, with we me coming along behind, like the millwright who is asked to take up the slack in this chain or that and to re-weld the great band saw blade (plot) that has snapped, lashed around and cut off a few characters at the knees.

Then came the Proofreaders. They read the text aloud to each other. Was it to keep from falling asleep? Were they alert enough to catch the errata that the human eye and brain do not catch—the missing Spanish accent, the two definite articles sneaking through together, “the the,” and “that” where a “who” should have been, since the antecedent was a person and not a thing? Or where I had written “lay” for “laid,” when thought I was saying the past tense of laying something down. This is a flaw in my English, which I think I should blame on my parents, since I never knew I had it. And about that last “which,” in the sentence before, was it non-restrictive enough, or should it have been “that”?

Warning to want-to-be writers: There is never one last perusal of the manuscript. That is because you have never found the last erratum, i.e. mistake. And the reason for that is that you make assumptions, for example, that you have scanned this or that passage the required twenty times. Then you have sent the manuscript off labeled “Final” and lie in bed at three the next morning, realizing you did not do a one last, full check of the book’s epigraph, that pithy little quote at the beginning of the book that speaks for the whole 80,000 words.

The book has left the station. Others will decide its cover design, title and print font. So you have plenty of time worry. Will there be some sexist photo that will offend women? I read you should never have a horse on the book cover. Then there are the blurbs. You go to other writers and beg them to write three or four lines that can go on the back cover and explain to the world that you are the greatest thing since Shakespeare. For me, it’s always like asking the prettiest or most popular girl to dance. Am I out of my mind? Won’t they just roll their eyes as I stare at my feet, while being sucked down into Writer’s Bog?

People are kind. Finally you get your blurbs and send them off to the Publisher, reminding him to send them on to the Book Designer. You hope he doesn’t forget. Should you remind him a week later, in case something came up and the blurbs languish somewhere short of their destination? But say the blurbs arrived, still, how would anyone know the book has been born? They won’t unless there has been pre-publicity, something that requires pre-planning, a luxury that little presses don’t necessarily have if they’re juggling several new books at once. Some writers brazenly ask their friends and distant relatives to buy their book through Amazon and to please review it, if they like it, and all on the same day in order to trick the company’s computers into ranking the book at the top of the list and to continue for some time with that advantage. To bring this off, you have to pull on your Brazen Pants, your literary Lederhosen—retiring, introverted writer that you are. This activity falls into the sphere of howling self-absorbed, self-promoting Jackass and can backfire on you, when the called-upon masses begins to think you’re taking yourself, your book and your writing too seriously.

It is said that readings and book signings at bookstores and Elks Clubs are a waste of time. Right away I can think of one devastating counter-example where one mega-writer sold 400 copies of his new book at a single reading—enough to keep me awake three nights in a row.

Book publishing has changed. Thousands, perhaps millions of books stream into Amazon’s computers where they are sucked into a black hole of equal opportunity oblivion. In that place, you cannot walk along a shelf, pulling out books, putting them back, stumbling on the unexpected, poking around, browsing. With Amazon you have to know what you’re looking for.

In the first place, you have to be a reader. That means being a woman, since women read in far greater numbers than men. That probably has to do with brain development, since we all know that sports and gadgets stunt growth. I am also a man. This perhaps explains my anxiety about the whole matter, often unjustly identified as whining. Much of my reasoning loses footing the way feet lose footing when placed in ankle-depth waves. Saturated with the Internet, I “relax” by watching a skillful television series (The Good Wife, Downton Abbey) at night—making myself my own worst enemy. If I’m not reading at night (because I am not a woman?), how can I expect anyone else to? I have not read most of the novels I excitedly downloaded on my Kindle. What does that mean? The Internet encourages acquisition but discourages follow-through? People still prefer tangible books. I know because my bedside reading table holds stacks of books that I read in dribbles. But if they (men) won’t read books, why go to all the trouble to write them?

I knew the answer to this question way back before the Time of the Slump. There is something in me that likes to tell a yarn to any audience that, in spite of everything, likes to hear a yarn. Is that earlier insight enough to over come Whine-slump? I think the answer is yes. Even writing this and throwing it out into the ether—with all the pertaining risks—makes me feel good .

It is Wrong to Steal, and Colonizing Culture

Posted on by sterlingbennett

My father, a man who was quiet, did somehow manage to instill in me certain attitudes toward Native Americans, beginning with little mentions of Indian children that would stare through his windows when he was a boy growing up in Arizona. Then he handed me Kenneth Roberts’ Northwest Passage (1937) on the French and Indian War, and when I was sixteen, he handed me a mailing from the Exeter or Harvard Alumni Association, a story about one or the other of those two schools sending a letter to a New England Indian chief (actually a speech by an Onondaga chief Canassatego, on colonizing eduction, delivered in 1744, in Pennsylvania, on behalf of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations) inviting him to send some of his young men to learn Latin, poetics and English. The chief politely wrote back, thanking the school and saying that they had found such education had not benefited their young men the way they had hoped it would. But on the other hand, if those schools would send a few of their young men to him, they would learn to run fifty miles, argue persuasively in councils, shoot arrows with accuracy and be leaders of men.

While I was at Berkeley in graduate school, studying Germanic Languages and Literature, the most important person in my life was already dead almost twenty years before I was born, the Yahi Indian Ishi, whom Theodore Kroeber immortalized in her books, Ishi in Two Worlds and Ishi, The Last of his Tribe. As evidence of my reverence for this man I even instructed that my ashes were to be placed at the top of a certain cliff overlooking Deer Creek, Ishi’s home canyon until he was flushed out by surveyors in 1911 and became the “Last Wild Indian.”

In a recent review of a friend’s book A Terrible Beauty, The Wilderness of American Literature, I referred to a short story I had written and how it was evidence of my non-European side. My wilderness side, part of my wilderness cosmology that embraced the original peoples of the north. But I am aware that one form of colonizing is to romanticize the original peoples one’s compatriots have slaughtered. And so, I ask the question, am I doing that in this short tale that follows. You decide.

***

“Those before me came first from New England and then later from Arizona, where my great-grandfather Edwin, a miner, and my great-grandmother Sarah went broke during the depression of 1890. That was when the Apaches of San Carlos, on the Fort Apache Reservation, east of Globe, began to starve and came and stood in a silent line at Sarah’s back door, where day after day, in sunlight and grayness, and drifting powdered snow, she gave away all the food they had, over and over, cooked and served each time in the same few blue-enameled dishes until they, she and Edwin, had no money and also began to starve.

The winter of 1890-91 saw the price of silver fall and mines shutting down and the winter hard and cold, endless in its duration, with coughs and fever stalking the aging couple, finally driving them to their bed, where they huddled and shivered and clung to each other, too weak to go for help, their sons too far away to know what was happening to them. The line of starving Apaches thinned and disappeared, until there was only the sound of the wind at the back door and penetrating cold outside and in.

A day passed, then two, and on the third day, a young Chiricahua sat astride a horse, leaned to look through the window of the bedroom and rapped on the glass. Twice each time, a pause, then another rap rap. Then silence. The horse, a shadow across the window, stomped and stepped forward, then backward. My great-grandparents heard something heavy hit the ground, followed by something soft. A slaughtered calf and a man in moccasins. They heard the front door push open, movement in the front room, and then they saw a young face looking through the bedroom door.

Soon a fire was burning in the kitchen stove, and heat–at first just the sound of it–stole cat-like through the door into their bedroom. They drifted in and out of dangerous sleep. Then they awoke. They heard plates banging, the sounds of cooking, and then the young Indian appeared with two bowls of beef soup with pieces of fried bread floating on top.

The boy helped them sit up, spooned from one bowl into two mouths, then spooned from the second bowl till that too was gone. He lay them back down, covered them with a hide blanket he had brought, put a pitcher of water near the bed to thaw in the temporary heat—then faded away. They heard the sound of horse’s hooves on frozen ground, and then there was silence again.

On the following day, they heard the sound of more horses. Over the next several days, some say as many as twenty Chiricahua entered the house. They were warmly dressed and snow-dusted. A few of them had come all the way from of Agua Prieta and the mountains to the south–and deeper into Mexico. It was a place where the dangers of the coming hunger had been anticipated and food had been set aside for those in need.

Three grown women—one quite old—stayed with my great-grandparents for a week, nursing them and cooking. They stuffed the open chinks in walls with bits of old blankets to keep out the cold. The young man, whose name was Walks With Snow, also came and went. The women rendered and cooked the calf and shared it with Sarah and Edwin—and with other Chiricahua.

When Sarah and Edwin could walk again, without the Indians’ help, the women rolled up their sleeping robes and rode away with Walks With Snow. But first there was hugging all around and tears and thanks—from both sides because the Chiricahuas were the relatives of the starving San Carlos Apaches whom Sarah and Edwin had helped survive. Edwin knew something about the world and therefore as a precaution took great pains to bury any traces of the calf under snow some distance from the house.

The Chiricahua had not been gone more than a day, two at the most, when the sheriff from Globe arrived, with six heavily armed men, looking for an Indian who had been taking calves from the vast 40,000-section Madison holding on the south bank of the Salt River, twelve miles to the northwest, land that had once belonged to everyone.

Edwin, who had been a brevet colonel in the Civil War, on the Union side, and who was at home on horses, accepted one from the sheriff, and agreed it was wrong to steal anything. He said he would lead them where he was sure they’d find the thief and took them—even in his still weakened state—some fifty miles due north, in the opposite direction from the route the Chiricahua had taken toward the Mexican border.

At some point, my great-grandfather, half hidden behind his great coat, scarf and fur hat, dusted white by snow, as the rest were, said he was too faint to continue and they would have to go on without him. He told the sheriff he would return the horse as soon as he could. He was sure, he said, they would find their man camped beside a certain stream which meandered vaguely northwest through a land he made sound real and distinct and so plausible that the party rode some twenty miles more before they gave up and took a short cut back to Globe and to their snug and—because they were really mostly shopkeepers and merchants—warm and still fairly prosperous homes.”

A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American Literature

Posted on by sterlingbennett

When I was reading Jonah Raskin’s book A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American Literature, I began to have wilderness dreams, as I have always had them, about undiscovered landscapes just beyond the daily familiar. If you’re an American and if you believe you have grown up with anything close to a spiritual relationship with Nature, then you owe it to yourself to read this beautifully written book, for the depth of Raskin’s knowledge, his generosity in sharing it, his wit and gentle irony, for his voice of a storyteller.

Perhaps you are like me. All my life, American literature has been the neglected cousin. But here, Raskin brings him tapping at my door, and right away it turns out he’s not my cousin at all but more the intellectual father I’ve pretended not to know.

Because of his book, I began to remember other relatives—books I had been a little ashamed of (a message from a distant Puritan ancestor?), some I had forgotten entirely. Like William Henry Hudson’s 1904 novel Green Mansions, set in 1840, with its Argentine and Guyanan forests and Rima, the bird girl, the perfect embodiment of my wilderness spirituality, my romanticism and a fifteen-year-old’s sexual yearnings. The same English teacher plopped Hillaire Belloc’s essay “The Mowing of a Field” down in front of me, adding rhythmic, sweaty scythe-swinging work to my trinity of yearnings. Both books included the act of cutting, or taking from the paradise, the destruction theme—genocide, tree felling, buffalo slaughter—that Raskin follows throughout the book. Belloc’s wilderness was a domestic one in the South of England, but a world “remote from ambition and fear, where the passage of strangers is rare and unperceived, and where the scent of grass in the summer is breathed only by those who are native to that unvisited land.” A kind of Brigadoon, and dream-like, with mowing as metaphor, an activity Thoreau would have approved of— the honest work of harvest. And of taking.

Cotton Mather (the worst of me), Cooper, Hawthorn, Melville—it turns out I was baptized in their words hundreds if years before my birth. A Terrible Beauty reminds me that I am only one of a long line of travelers through woods and forests. Raskin opens a door to something that has been slumbering for a lifetime in me, in this boy of the forest, this young Transcendentalist, who thought no one else knew about these things. This little Lewis or Clark who also carried a rifle, but without a Sacagawea to guide him, the boy who saw meaning in dark New England ponds and in turtles that passed through the plane of what can be seen and what can not. This boy writer, me, is now old and trying to understand his long connection to Nature, his need for Wilderness, his need to explore and colonize, construct the hidden nest or hut—the little murderer still wanted as killer of innocent rabbits and other living things.

Raskin is a master of exploratory prose, like a weaver who advances, then circles back to pick up a color or texture, who threads in a streak of irony or wit. On Mark Twain he writes: “(He)…had wrestled with a definition (of civilization) for years, he confessed, until, knowing he was near the end of his life, he realized he had to nail the word down or die trying.”

Cooper, Melville, Thoreau, Twain, Dickinson, Cather, Fitzgerald—I carried all of them into the forest with me—along with Hudson and Belloc, along with Kenneth Roberts’ Northwest Passage (1937) on the French and Indian War, handed to me by my father.

My forests were filled with light and dark, with enchanted clearings and the shadows of German soldiers and some Japanese. As far as Indians went, I was the Indian and not the enemy. At sixteen, my father showed me a mailing from the Exeter or Harvard Alumni Association. It was a story about one or the other of those two schools sending a letter to a New England Indian chief, inviting him to send some of his young men to learn Latin, poetics and English. The chief politely wrote back, thanking the school and saying that they had found such education had not benefited their young men the way they had hoped it would. But on the other hand, if those schools would send a few of their young men to him, they would learn to run fifty miles, argue persuasively in councils, shoot arrows with accuracy and be leaders of men.

And so, some of my admiration for Native Americans must have come from him—my quiet father. In my later years, I wrote a story (“It is Wrong to Steal,” www.sterlingbennett.com) about my grandparents giving up their own food to feed hungry Apaches in Arizona, then being nursed and fed by the same Apaches when it was my grandparents’ turn to fall sick. The Indians did this by stealing a white rancher’s calf. When the sheriff and his posse arrived on horseback, my grandfather, still sick, led the troop in the opposite direction, far to the north, away from his Apache friends. With all that said, I never had an Indian friend. Which speaks to the cultural contradiction that I live. Like others of European descent, I romanticized the people who were here before, but do not have one as my friend, did not count their culture as equal. In that way, I follow my literary ancestors and participate in the destruction of the very Wilderness I worship, accept the displacement and liquidation of the American Indian (as well as the what is wild and independent), make him a foreigner in his own land, put him on a reservation in my mind.

While I was at Berkeley in graduate school, the most important person in my life was already dead almost twenty years before I was born, the Yahi Indian Ishi, whom Theodore Kroeber immortalized in her books, Ishi in Two Worlds and Ishi, The Last of his Tribe. I even instructed that my ashes were to be placed at the top of a certain cliff overlooking Deer Creek, Ishi’s home canyon until he was driven out and became the “Last Wild Indian.” If I had known him, would I have allowed him to be my friend? Or would I have participated in an attitude of colonization and exploitation? This is a question I would never be asking had I not read Raskin’s extraordinary book. Devouring every single page of it.

Mexico in Crisis: Eliminating the PRI Within Us

Posted on by sterlingbennett
Please forgive me, Proceso, for distributing this extremely important and hopeful article by Sara Pantoja:

Directed by citizen groups like The Loudest Scream, #Yamecansé, the Sopitas.com platform and Amnesty International, “Ya me cansé por eso propongo” [Enough, I’m Tired, For This, I Propose] is an initiative that, via the website www.poresopropongo.mx, adds to the marches and public demonstrations against the situation of “violence, justice and impunity” which Mexicans are living through.In a press conference, academics, filmmakers, writers, actors, graphic designers, activists and representatives of these groups reported that the campaign began in November last year after the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students and the now familiar phrase [Ya, me cansé] that the Attorney General Republic, Jesús Murillo Karam, said at a press conference on the case.

The campaign consists of entering the website, going to the “Send your postcard” link, uploading a picture and writing your proposal about what the country needs, accompanied by the hashtags #YaMeCansé and #PorEsoPropongo, and sending the postcard.

In the Museum of Memory and Tolerance, Sophie Alexander and Daniel Giménez Cacho, members of the group The Loudest Scream, presented a video that accompanies the initiative and read a statement inviting Mexicans to participate in the campaign.

“The solution to this deep crisis will not come from the government institutions or drop down from the authorities, but will result from the organized strength we achieve to confront the owners and administrators of our country,” they said.

They criticized the decades of PRI culture, which

“have caused ignorance regarding citizen participation, and the popular organization that exists is not enough. The government institutions are closed to us; we cannot even hold popular referendums and the political parties represent only themselves. Democracy for us happens only when the National Electoral Institute asks us for whom we are going to vote.”

MV Note: The Supreme Court denied petitions by the PRD and Morena parties for a popular referendum on the energy reform. Its decision was based on the wording of the constitutional amendment that enables such referendums, which specifically excludes any issue that directly affects government revenues. This clause was designed to exempt the energy reform, which affects the government’s revenues from oil. 

They proposed promoting a cultural change because

“it is necessary not only to be against things, but to end the PRI in all of us so that we become active, informed citizens with our own opinions. We must know that no leader will get us out of this crisis.

“The PRI has gotten inside of us. It is a culture against which we have not yet triumphed. It is a way of living and doing politics to which both parties of the left and right have succumbed. It is a culture that has defeated the unions and employers, judges and the military. It is a culture that is dying but hinders us from advancing. It is a culture of subservience and depression, simulation and demagogy, self-censorship and media manipulation, of the purchase of ideals. It is an enemy of democracy and social development.”

Francisco Alanis, of Sopitas.com said that his participation is to “channel the anger as people. We all build the political and we must create a caring community.”

Perseo Rendón Quiroz, executive director of Amnesty International of Mexico, said the organization will contribute its experience in dialoguing with the government and states so that the proposals related to the human rights crisis “get to the right place and resonate.”

He added: “We have been fighting for human rights for 50 years; we can hold on for another 200. We will continue to mobilize until they listen to us, however long it takes, however long it requires.”

The organizers called on Mexicans to participate in the initiative and invite more people through social networks to do the same.

The Chronicles of a Rat in Mexico City

Posted on by sterlingbennett

No one understands Mexico City, or what will happen next, since it’s sinking and leaning—it was built over a bog—and overrun with complex commercial mafias and hollowed out by inattention. It is said that eighty percent of the historical buildings in the historic center are unoccupied. That is to say, the first floor (U.S. second floor) and on up are empty, except for questionable storage and a few of us.

But how can this be, you ask, when the sidewalks and subways in the same area are teeming with Two-legs. Well, it is partly because of the rent freeze decreed in in 1948 and lifted in 1992, that scared off investors and ceded the walls to us. Earthquakes were always a possibility, but less so than owner indolence, the philosophy of doing just enough, and no more, which is to say, taking the earnings from ground floor stores and shops but not fixing everything above it.

How long can this go on? it is reasonable to ask. The buildings will collapse and we will be back on the streets. The Government should do what it does best. Threaten. Say they’ll give you the pesos, but then you have to bring things up to standards, preserve the heritage—wipe us out. You have five years, and if you don’t do it, we take your property and that will be that. Fortunate for us, the thin-tailed Fates smile and political indolence stands in the way. There’s money but no ideas. Or, more likely, no money and no ideas.

But there are community efforts to buy up individual buildings and restore them, so that there will be apartments, with the hope of bringing middle class families back into the historic center. Here again, the government could control rents, so tariffs rise slowly. Otherwise, young families will not be able to stay and those who can stay won’t want to share the streets with the teeming masses—which would include us.

What you have now is a strange, sprawling museum of architectural ruins that the poor stroll past and admire as theirs, passing fine restaurants they cannot afford and museums for which they have no cultural affinity. Unlike us who visit them all regularly. Hence the name rattus norvegicus intellectualis.

There are exceptions to everything, including to non-investment. Governments like to immortalize themselves and have taken ruins and changed them into breathtaking constructs. The Biblioteca de México “José Vasconcelos” used to be Spain’s royal tobacco factory, finished in 1807, became a prison in 1816, an armory 1825, a base for anti-Madero forces in 1913, a library in 1946—in short, a story of swords into books, with an ingenious over-arching, floating roof, the personal library of Carlos Monsiváis, among others, and a vast reading room for 2,000 readers—in a city and nation that are largely non-reading, and know little of oral history—a tradition sacred to us who embrace all kinds of tails.

Still, be hopeful, there are other kinds of occupations. Two and four-legged Mafias that regulate space, the flow of goods and payoffs. You can see this in places like the Avenida Donceles in the Cuauhtémoc district, just north of the Zócalo, where trucks clog the streets unloading contraband, stuffed teddy bears and pandas—for some reason no rattus norvegicus—oversized trucks for spoiled little boys, red and yellow plastic for Three Kings. Or the western end of the Alameda park, the permanent camp in front of the Hilton Hotel, the last holdout of the ambulantes, the street merchants who used to occupy the whole park. And in the short street on its northern border, mafia types in short zippered leather jackets park their cars in the middle of the street, stand like wrestlers and discuss the various kinds of rents and protections that are due.

This kind of occupation is tolerated, while another kind is not—that vast space called the Zócalo, controlled by the Government in order to preserve the appearance of control and sovereignty. A street or two back, storm-blue police buses squat like turtles sunning. They have screens over the windows to keep rocks out and prisoners in—with, I can testify to this—generous deposits of dried blood on their metal floors. No rat, Norwegian or otherwise, would be caught dead lingering in one of those traps. Men in half riot gear lounge on the benches, fighting off, confronting boredom. They are always present, the buses, because of the threat of occupation is always present. Like the huge November 20, 2014 demonstration against the unexplained murder of the 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa. As in chess, always control the center or, in this case, the Zócalo. To that end, a page out of The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor,” who tells a returned Christ that the people need nothing more than authority, miracle and entertainment. Hence, in front of the Presidencia (authority), the humble wait for hours in long lines to experience skating and sledding (entertainment), on the miracle of ice and artificial snow—a Disney fairytale of sparkle and wonder that keeps the square safe from citizens unhappy with their government.

As I have said, there are different kinds of occupation. Like what occupies my mind. Images of the market San Juan, the sprawling indoor complex that offers everything, in the poorest taste, crocodiles skinned right up to their jowls, their white meat flaky like that of dead snake. But worst of all, and the most foreboding, also white piglet bodies in two or three sizes, bereft, naked, dead. Murdered. A reminder of what can happen to us if the Two-legs decide we should appear clear-wrapped in the counters of Costco. Rattus barbecue-kebabus.

There is one final occupation I feel I should mention. A certain restaurant in this historic center. Where the fine people gather with their happy, safe families, amid courtyard trees and hanging, flickering candle chandeliers. The husbands, the proud controllers of things—it is the happiness of their wives I am concerned about, women threatened by traditional foods that only fatten them and who, without a rodent’s energy, grow soft and plump and depressed, because everything is rigged against them—food, lack of a profession, fashion, religion—so they can not remain the frisky foals that originally caught their husbands’ eyes. If they could listen to me, I would tell them to get out of their cars, take a restored apartment, occupy the historic center, and themselves, invite family and husbands to visit if they really wanted to, but otherwise plunge into the chaos that I the  species Rattus norvegicus, superbus, intellectualis find so tail-quivering alive. I would say, Come join us in fat Diego Rivera’s “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.” Come join Frida and—us. Because we are there too, behind the ragged newspaper boy, proudly included and carefully drawn, but only in such a way that a rat can see it.

Marcador Bookmark Violentómetro Violence Meter

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Violentómetro, Violence Meter

Marcador, bookmark from the Museo de la Mujer in Mexico City, www.museumdelamujer.org.mx

Categoría 1, Category 1: Be careful, violence tends to increase

Ten Cuidado, la violencia aumentará.

Bromas hirientes, hurtful jokes

Chantagear, blackmail

Mentir, engañar, lying, cheating, betrayal

Ignorar, ley del hielo, ignoring you, freezing you out

Celar, being jealous

Culpabilizar, blaming

Descalificar, being dismissive

Ridiculizar, offender, ridiculing, being offensive

Humillar en public, humiliate in public

Categoría 2, category 2: Reacciona! No te deges destruir, take action, do not let yourself be destroyed

Intimidar, amenazar, intimidation, threats

Controlar, prohibir (amistades, familiares, dinero, lugares, vestimenta, apariencia, actividades, mails, cellular)

Controlling, prohibitions (friendships, family, money, movement, clothing, appearance, activities, mail, cell phone)

Destruir pertenencias, destroys belongings

Manosear, unwelcomed touching, groping

Caricias agresivas, aggressive caresses, touching

Gopear “jugando,” hitting “in fun”

Pellizcar, arañar, pinching, scratching

Empujar, jalonear, pushing, dragging, pulling

Cachetear, slapping in the face

Patear, kicking

Categoría 3, Category 3:

Encerrar, aislar, lock up, isolate

Amenazar con objetos o armas, threaten with objects or weapons

Amenazar de muerte, threaten with death

Forzar a una relación sexual, force sex on you

Abuso sexual, sexual abusiveness

Violación, rape

Mutilar, mutilation

Asesinar, murder

Mexico Still Mourns

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I am sorry. I steal this as well, because the world needs to know.

Reforma: Guadalupe Loaeza*
Translated by Danielle M. Antonetti

As I do every year, last Sunday I took my grandchildren to see “The Nutcracker” at the National Theater. Once seated, I gave myself a task: to watch all the people filled with holiday cheer as they entered the theater to admire the last performance of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, the music of which is so familiar to us that even the most ignorant can recall a fragment. Most of the attendees were children and adolescents, bundled up and accompanied by their families. The atmosphere inside the enormous auditorium, with space for 10,000 people, was festive and Christmassy.

For my part, I was a deeply gratified grandmother surrounded by my six grandchildren, two of my sons, my daughter-in-law and Paloma Figueroa, the young professional dancer. With that same festive mindset, I watched young grandmothers wearing 100 percent wool coats with furs and carrying Coach or Marc Jacob purses. Many greeted and waved to each other from afar. The show was only minutes away from beginning.

Suddenly, the lights went down and at the stage’s illuminated center appeared a group of young people holding two banners, one with the hashtag #Yamecansé [Enough, I’m tired]** written on it and on the other could be read the words, “Stop impunity.” Daniel Castillo, in evening wear, spoke on behalf of his fellow members of the National Dance Company:

“Mexico is mourning the unsustainable and heartbreaking impunity that has become a daily story and that violates our citizenry.”

With perfect diction, his words echoed all across the auditorium.

A profound silence fell over us. No one moved in their seats, not the children and especially not the adults. The power of Castillo’s words and the audience’s silence united all of us. Castillo, whose image was projected in color on two enormous screens placed on either side of the stage, continued,

“Mexico, we are no longer just mourning the disappeared teacher college students, but those of Aguas Blancas, San Fernando and the children at the ABC nursery***,”

“I want to read a poem written by one of our company members, the ballerina Sonia Jiménez.”

At that moment, and despite my wearing a red sweater, I felt dressed in black from head to toe.

We are mourning,
We are the cry of our dead,
We are the blood shed on fertile land,
We are the silence on the verge of exploding.
Today we do not recognize the ground on which we stand,
The falling rain does not erase the mistakes,
Our eyes don’t wipe away the truth,
We live blindfolded, we have sold-out,
We speak with the breath of our bodies.
Turn off the lights. Mexico is mourning.

As if moved by an gigantic, invisible spring, the public rose to its feet,  “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…,” until it reached number 43, which they memorialized with their fists raised.
The applause was an enormous and deep expression of our condolences. Everyone was mourning. Everyone felt even more tired than Murillo Karam for all the corruption and impunity. And all of us represented “the cry of our dead.”

I envisioned backstage: 170 dancers of the National Dance Company and the students of the National School of Classical and Contemporary Dance, elegantly dressed as the characters of the ballet’s epoch, applauding. I was imagining the company’s five principal dancers—Agustina Galizzi, Ana Elisa Mena, Mayuko Nihei, Blanca Ríos and Erick Rodríguez—mourning. Those who appeared particularly sad were José Luis González, Mariana Garce and Sofía Villarreal, who that night were saying goodbye to the company, which was celebrating 50 years of putting on the Christmas ballet. Also, I imagined “Clara,” the protagonist of Hoffmann’s tale, the little rodents, the tin soldiers, and the Nutcracker himself mourning, applauding in honor of the 43 disappeared.

“Why did you get so sad all of a sudden, Mamá Lú?, one of my granddaughters asked me.

“Because Mexico continues to mourn,” I replied.

I have the impression that my granddaughter did not understand me. Then, the curtains opened and the show began.
Reforma only allows subscribers to access articles on its website.

 *María Guadalupe Loaeza Tovar is a contemporary Mexican writer and author of many books, including Las Niñas Bien [The Good Girls], Las Reinas de Polanco [The Queens of Polanco (wealthy Mexico City neighborhood], Debo, Luego Sufro [I Owe, Therefore, I Suffer] and Compro, Luego Existo [I Shop, Therefore, I Exist], in which she writes ironically about the Mexican upper class. Twitter: @gloaeza
 
**Reference to offhand remark of Attorney General Murillo Karam at the end of the press conferece at which he announced that arrested members of the Warrriors United cartel confessed they had murdered the 43 Ayotzinapa students and burned their bodies. The remark was immediately turned against him on the social media and in the press.
 
***Aguas Blancas was the massacre by police of protesting farmers in Guerrero in 1995. San Fernando was the massacre, in 2010, of 72 Central American migrants by the Zetas cartel with the collusion of local police. The ABC nursery fire, in 2009, possibly the result of local officials’ attempt to destroy records in an adjoining store room, resulted in the deaths of 49 infants and young children and the injuring of 70 more.

Mexico in Crisis: Time for Bold Action

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I am stealing this because it is too important not to:

Reforma: Eduardo R. Huchim*
Translated by Thomas Mosley

The recent survey by Reforma (12/13/14) on the dramatic decline in citizens’ trust in key institutions, including the president and the military, confirms that Mexico is in a national crisis because of what it is experiencing.

Unfortunately, the institutions have not responded effectively or soon enough, but this is due to their leaders’ inability and/or lack of ethics and commitment. Our institutions, though they can be improved upon, have strengths in their design and the necessary legal powers, but their proper operation requires their leaders to have effort, dedication, and strict adherence to ethics and law: virtues which rarely occur in Mexico.

Although responsibility for the crisis weighs most heavily on the Executive branch, the truth is that it does not exclude the other powers. As a preview, keep in mind three facts that were released just yesterday: the judge that exonerated Raúl Salinas de Gortari [brother of former president Carlos Salinas] of illicit gain, the PRI deputies who refused to allow the Superior Audit Office to audit them in real time, and the PRI and PAN Senators who forced the Senate session to be adjourned and close the [autumn] period due to a lack of quorum. This last left the appointments of electoral and anti-corruption prosecutors, the political reform of Mexico City, and the response to the parents of the disappeared Ayotzinapa teachers college students up in the air, among other issues.

No, the Executive branch is not solely responsible for the current crisis. However, it is they who should head up rescuing the institutions, a bailout which will only be possible if the three branches and autonomous bodies work vigorously. There are essential actions that the Head of State can undertake with a patriotic spirit, far from unhealthy appetites such as wealth and extravagance. The first would be to admit the mistakes and go forward with the public apology suggested by Enrique Krauze in The New York Times [What Mexico’s President Must Do].

The apology would be a good first step toward a horizon of bold actions (yes, those!) that would definitely move Mexico in the right direction, with a premise that the vice president of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera, aptly put recently in an interview with Carmen Aristegui (CNN, 12/15/14):

“The government must tell the truth at any cost and sacrifice anyone necessary… if a lie about something important is left planted, in the future that lie will become a stamp on anything that the government says.”

Without claiming to be exhaustive, some such actions might include the following:

a) Clarifying what actually happened in the painful Ayotzinapa case, without consideration for the federal workers who took part in its genesis and development. Does the “official story” of incineration hold up against the objections that scientifically oppose this hypothesis? Did soldiers and federal police take part in the disappearance of the 43 students? These are questions that must be answered promptly with supporting evidence.

b) Based on current law, immediately fighting against any act of corruption at all levels, and the consequent prosecution when necessary.

c) Accepting the conflicts of implicit interest in the houses of the Lomas de Chapultepec [house of  Angélica Rivera, president’s wife] and Malinalco [house of Secretary of the Treasury, Luis Videgaray], followed by selling the property and donating the proceeds to projects which unquestionably benefit society. [MV Note: Angélica Rivera has announced that she will sell her “share” of ownership in the house being financed by the Higa construction company.]

d) Cancelling the contracts awarded to the Higa Group, of John Armando Hinojosa Cantú, in particular the Monterrey VI project [an aqueduct], which would cost at least 47 billion pesos [US$3.2 billion] and whose usefulness has been rightly questioned.

e) Cancelling the purchase of the luxurious presidential jet, or replacing it planes that are useful to society.

f) Implementing a public infomation policy that excludes all paid government propaganda in the electronic media. [MV Note: The government spends large amounts on paid advertising of its programs and accomplishments. This is seen as producing favorable coverage by the media.]

g) Substantially modifying the failed policy against drug trafficking by regulating the sale of drugs that are currently banned, coupled with prevention campaigns.

h) Reversing all the content of the energy reform that lacks public consent.

i) Correcting the erroneous tax policy [which raised taxes in the context of a stagnant economy] and granting real stimuli to companies. A rich government, an impoverished population, and a discouraged business sector do nothing for the nation.

These are times of crisis, and to deal with them, we must counter with a time of boldness. Will there be one?

Reforma only allows subscribers to access articles on its website.

*Eduardo R. Huchim is a journalist, writer and, from 1999 to 2006, member of the General Council of the Electoral Institute of Mexico City, where he presided over the Audit Commission. His books include The System Crashes (Grijalbo, 1996), The Plots (novel, Grijalbo, 1997), New Elections (Plaza y Janés, 1997), Media (Santillana, 2002) and What’s Up With the Vote (Terracotta, 2006). @EduardoRHuchim

Bvajot

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Bvajot came to see me, and I did not know who he was. The name held recognitions but one I couldn’t put my finger on. I woke from sleep and there it was, like the last reverberation of a name said. But said by whom? An unclear message, clearly sent to me. And so, since there was no apparent agent, I had to assume the name came from far in back of the stage. Not from Shakespeare, and not from Iago. From farther back and from another author.

It is like a call that says, “There is you and me now, and my name is Bvajot, although I have others. Like ‘Not Yet, I’m not Ready’ and ‘So Soon?’ and ‘Choose Another, Someone Who is not Good, Who Tortures and Slices and Gouges and Burns Others Alive.’ “

But then you are gone again, and I barely get your name down. Bvajot. A Slavic-sounding name. Some place I hope not to have to go.

Questions come up, Bvajot. How did you get my number? By lottery? Spin the bottle? The first home your three-legged pig entered when the moon was full and the wind began to blow? And then you said it once. “Bvajot.” Was it to see if I heard it? And if I didn’t awake, what then? Would you have taken me? Taken me all the way? Or just marched me to the canal and thrown me into the icy water so that when I crawled out I began to shiver with my teeth arattle and fever trying to enter my ears like leeches the color of liver?

Will you come each night now and say the name? Bvajot, Bvajot, Bvakot! To see whether I hear it?

Or, feeling more confident, I ask, Is it the name of your dog, not you, who strayed over into the world of the living, but then turned away at my door, spooked by some other power? Perhaps by your own cold authority, the voice that makes wolves cringe and birds fall from the sky?

Did you begin thinking of me much earlier? When I was six and sat alone in a hospital, cross-legged on the iron bed, scrubbing abandonment out of my heart—an attack of tonsils, was that how you first found me and added me to your list?

Please don’t call again, this is a wrong number, there is no one here by that name, please remove me from your list, you do not have my permission to communicate with me. I have other plans, I will not be listening. Please accept my condolences. I will be hanging garlic and formaldehyde everywhere. I will be sleeping with squishy blue earplugs and a pillow over the upper flap. When I do not hear you, it does not count as readiness to join you in your house. And whose name is it anyway? Since it refers back to where it comes from, you are not calling me, and it is therefore your name. The call is self-referential, hence has nothing to do with me. It does not interest me anyway. The previous sentences—all the rambling—represent a lapse. That is all. Enjoy your name, call it out often. But I will not be listening. Since it has nothing to do with me. We are through, Bvajot. Good-bye forever!

Bvajot

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Bvajot est venu pour me voir, et je ne savais pas qui il était. Le nom évoquait quelque chose, je ne pouvais pas mettre mon doigt dessus. Je me suis réveillé et voilà, comme les dernieres réverbérations d’un nom prononcé. Mais, dit par qui? Un message pas clair, clairement adressé à moi. Et donc sans agent apparent, il fallait assumer qu’il était venu de loin, de l’arrière de la scène. Pas de Shakespeare, et pas de Iago. De plus en arrière et d’un autre auteur.

C’est comme un message qui dit, Il y a seulement toi et moi, et mon nom est Bvajot, bien que j’aie d’autres noms. Comme ‘Pas Encore, Je ne Suis pas Prêt’ et ‘Si vite?’ et ‘Choisis un Autre, Quelqu’un Qui n’est pas Bon, Qui Torture et Tranche et Déchire et Qui Brûle Vifs D’autres Êtres Humains.’

Mais tu es reparti à nouveau et j’ai à peine eu une chance d’écrire ton nom. Bvajot. Un nom à consonance slave. Un endroit où j’espère ne pas avoir à aller.

Des questions remontent à la surface. Mon numéro comment l’as obtenu? À travers la loterie? En faisant tourner la bouteille? La première maison que ton cochon à trois pattes a choisi lorsque la lune était pleine et que le vent commencait à souffler? Et puis tu l’as dit seulement une fois: “Bvajot.” Est-ce que ça a été pour voir si je l’entendrais? Et quoi si je ne m’étais pas réveillé? M’aurais-tu pris? Tu m’aurais pris jusqu’au bout? Ou m’aurais-tu seulement conduit vers le canal et m’aurais-tu jeté à l’eau glacée, pour que, lorsque j’en serais sorti en rampant, j’aurais commencé à trembler et claquer des dents, en même temps que le fièvre essayait d’ entrer en moi par les oreilles, comme des sangsues de la couleur du foie.

Viendras-tu maintenant chaque soir pour dire le nom? Bvajot, Bvajot, Bvajot? Pour voir si je l’entends?

Mais, parce que je me sens un peu plus confiant maintenant, il me faut demander, si c’est le nom de ton chien, pas le tien, un mascotte qui s’est égaré vers le monde des vivants, mais qui s’est détourné devant ma porte, effrayé par quelqu’autre pouvoir? Peut-être par ta propre froide autorité, la voix qui fait que les loups grincent des dents et que les oiseaux tombent du ciel?

As tu commencé à penser à moi beaucoup plus tôt? Quand j’avais six ans et que je me suis assis seul dans l’hôpital, les jambs croisées, dans le lit de fer, en frottant l’abandon loin de mon coeur—une attaque d’amygdales contre moi. Est-ce comme ça que tu m’as trouvé pour la première fois et que tu m’as ajouté à ta liste?

S’il te plaît, ne m’appele pas à nouveau, c’est un mauvais numéro, il n’y a personne de ce nom ici, s’il te plaît, retire-moi de ta liste, tu n’as pas ma permission de communiquer avec moi. J’ai d’autres plans, je n’écouterai pas. S’il te plaît, accepte mes condoléances. Je vais accrocher de l’ail et du formaldéhyde partout. Je vais dormir avec des bouchons d’oreilles d’éponge bleue et avec un oreiller sur l’oreille. Quand je ne t’endends pas, ça ne compte pas comme si étais prêt à te rejoindre dans ta maison.

Et de toute façon à qui appartient le nom? Puisque il renvoie à là d’où il vient, ce n’est pas moi que tu appelles, et donc c’est ton nom. Cet’appel est auto-référentiel et pour cette raison il ne s’agit pas de moi. Ça ne m’intéresse pas de toute façon. Toutes les phrases précédentes—toutes les divagations—ne représentent rien de plus d’une lacune. Ça c’est tout. Profite de ton nom. Appele-le souvent. Je n’écouterai pas, parce qu’il ne s’agit pas de moi. Nous avons terminé, Bvajot. Au revoir à jamais!