Tag: Mexico

This is My Land

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Interview with Alfredo Figueroa (Caborca, State of Sonora, Mexico), November 12, 2001:

~ When I was a small kid in 3rd grade we were starting geography. The teacher pointed to a map on the wall and said, “Now this is the United States that we all love so much.” I got up like an Indian and raised my hand and said, “Well I don’t love it too much.” She asked, “What do you mean? You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I said, “My father says they stole this land from us.” I wouldn’t change my mind, so they sent me home and told my mother I was unpatriotic. They kept me away for two weeks. They took me to the principal’s office, where he had a big old paddle they used to call the board of education. And they paddled and whipped me. They made a play named after Philip Nolan’s book, Man Without a Country, and showed it at school, just to intimidate the Mexicans. They named it Boy Without a Country. I was just telling them, “This is my land.” I was just a little kid. Can you imagine, 9 years old? Man! But that’s why they had the Americanization schools, to brainwash all those young Mexicans and Chimahuevos living in Blythe.
My mother always used to say that we were Chimahuevos and my father was Yaqui. We never did classify ourselves as American. Never! It was a battle everyday, and we knew who we were. My mother negotiated with the principal, and I had to write on the blackboard, “I love the United States” in front of all the kids a hundred times. And then I was accepted back as a student at Blythe grammar school. ~

Sunken Children

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A friend heard I wrote stories for children. I told her I had only written one—for my granddaughter when she was five years old. My friend asked if the story was in English. I said it was in English, Spanish, French, and Dutch. She asked me whether I would read the Spanish version at a Catholic shelter here in Guanajuato for children who were victims of various kinds of violence and lived temporarily under the protection of the Church. The reading hour was called the Beatrix Potter Sala de la Lectura, Hogar del Buen Pastor, Guanajuato.

The appointed day arrived. I printed out the Spanish translation of “Biff and the Sinking Coal Freighter.” Its title in Spanish is “Biff y el barco carbonero que se hundía,” translated by Lirio Garduño, a fine local poet.

With barely enough time, I practiced reading it through, repeating the technical words so I would say them correctly. I had never read the Spanish translation very closely—only to see if it had reached a good equivalency. My friend wanted my biography, too. I estimated the age level might be about eight. This is what I wrote:

 

Sterling Bennett, con apodo “Plata,” vive en Guanajuato capital desde hace 9 años.

Sterling Bennett, nickname Plata, has been living in Guanajuato for nine years.

Tiene una gatita negra que se llama Lilus Kikus que sabe más que él.

He has a female cat named Lilus Kikus, who knows more than he does.

Vivió por muchos años en California, en Los Estados Unidos, con su esposa D, que también sabe más que él.

He lived for many years in California, in the United States, with his wife D, who also knows more than he does.

Tiene una nieta de siete años que se llama L. Escribió este cuento para ella. L. también sabe más que él.

He has a seven-year old granddaughter named E, who also knows more than he does.

Tiene dos hijos, M y D, quienes siempre le ganan en ajedrez. Ellos también saben más que él.

He has two son, M and D, who always beat him at chess. They also know more than he does.

Ha estudiado en la más famosa universidad en Los Estados Unidos, que se llama Harvard, donde los estudiantes también sabían más que él.

He studied at the most famous university in the United States, called Harvard—where the students also know more than him.

Le encanta mucho tener esta oportunidad de leer este cuento a ustedes—quienes probablemente saben más que él.

He is delighted to have this opportunity to read this story to (all of) you, who probably know more than he does.

El cuento se trata de dos osos capitanes marineros….que probablemente……(???)

The story has to do with two bear tugboat captains…that probably…..(??)

Then I read the story to them, stopping frequently while my friend made sure they understood what I was describing.

There were four large round tables, at which were seated about thirty girls between the ages of four and thirteen. Most of them were on the younger end of the scale. One whole table of eight very young children almost immediately lay their heads on their table and appeared to be sound asleep—so quickly and so uniformly that it seemed to me that their action was about something else—an invoked escape stupor, a largely psychological exhaustion because of family crisis, an agreed upon behavior in unison to deal with overwhelming anxiety—a block against information they did not know or understand: a man, a gringo, too old to being doing anything, who was doing something they did not understand—storytelling, talking a little funny in their language, using words they had never heard and didn’t understand. What did these things mean: tugboat, captain, cable, sinking ship, Great Lakes, Erie Canal, locks, steam whistles, with each great wave pushing the coal freighter up onto the beach so it would not sink?

Even the fact that the two heroes were bear tugboat captains seemed unable stir them from their curious slumber. Nor the dramatic moment that all seemed lost in the story—until the second tugboat captain came out into the storm at night and helped push the sinking coal freighter up onto the beach. And he was a she—and a second courageous tugboat captain.

We got through it. The story ended. I tried to say something about the elephant in the room (bears?) and mentioned how almost half my listeners were like my black cat Lilus Kikus, who slept ninety-five percent of the time…and knew more than I did.
They wrote me letters—the little ones were roused for that exercise by the two attending women, impressive professionals and volunteers from the outside—drawing flowers and bears, inquiring now and then who I was and even how to write my name—Plata, as in silver, as in Sterling.

Pictures were taken and sent me. I will not show you their faces, because some of the children are in deep protection from various kinds of targeted abuse. I was going to show one child whose face was hidden, propped on her arms—but I have decided not to.

When I got home, I told my love that it was the least successful public reading I had ever done—and the most meaningful one. Since I, in the end, was another audience—overwhelmed by a story told by sunken children.

The Police Throw Rocks

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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.

Danzón

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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.

Gang Mothers Threaten Rape

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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

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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

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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.”

The Offer

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Coming up the last part of the 203 steps to our place, just below the garden gate, we run into M’s mother C—with whom he doesn’t live. We don’t know exactly why. He lives next door with his aunt E. C is spiffed up for some event. She looks quite lovely.

We exchange impressions. Yes, the neighborhood seems calmer. M. is hanging out less with Q, she says. We say that’s wonderful. I’m not sure we talk about the cameras, six of them on four different houses. He’s more serious about his studies, she says. We say that’s wonderful. I say then, if he goes to the university, perhaps we can help (with the costs). I believe she internalizes my remark. We say good-bye, she going down the steps, we up.

I wonder whether the information about our offer will filter through to M, whether it will make a difference, change the equation. In the days that follow, M appears several times in front of our door, sometimes with Q, sometimes without him. The lads choose to have their conversations right in front of our door, they don’t appear to be high on paint thinner etc. Their behavior, we think, is different. Is it the holidays, the cold winter nights, is that why it’s so calm in the alley? Is it also that the message got through? Is that a possibility? Does M know perhaps that tuition will not be the reason he can’t go to the university? We watch all this on the cameras—like looking into an aquarium of somewhat less madness. We wait to see what happens next.

The Woman inside Me

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I woke up more than once last night to consider who was speaking inside me. Three men had been walking out along a point of land, toward a drop-off. It is rainy and cold. The men wear jackets. Two of them hold a woman between them. She is dressed in a long T-shirt—nothing more. Her hair falls across her face. She stumbles, barefoot, over things that hurt.

It is a garbage dump, at night, perhaps an hour before dawn . Depending on your understanding of the world, at some point you realize they are going to execute her. She is slender and young and at a time in her life when she could, if she wanted to, start a family. She has already suffered. I am wondering how long it will be before a she realizes what they are going to do. Her two escorts release her arms and drop back away from her. She picks her way forward, unsteady, docile. She reaches the edge of the place where trucks, by daylight, puffing diesel, stop backing up and dump the city’s waste.

I want her to jump, dive over the edge, take her chances, roll, fall, plunge this way and that, down, down, head over heels, too far down, behind too much debris, maybe buried by a wall of rot, old beer and diaper shit, and out of sight.

And she lies still, and the three men—with skin brown like hers and speaking the same language—decide, “Fuck it, we’re not going to ruin our clothes going down there.” And so they fire a few bursts with their AK 47s at the spot they figure she is, then walk back to their pickup, vowing to do it differently next time.

“Arrodíllate,” says the one man coming along behind her—almost gently. Kneel. But she turns around instead and faces him. The T-shirt clings to her body, to her private breasts and a her private belly. She pushes the hair out of her face. She is already half destroyed. “Okay,” says the man, “it’s alright”—and stands sideways, as if it’s Saturday morning and he’s at the shooting range. Except that he’s standing six feet away from her and lifts a .45, .38, .32, .22 or 9mm, pointing over her head, then brings it down, starting to pull the trigger just as the Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt, Glock, Springfield, Remington, Mauser, Browning, Walter, Ruger, or Luger is almost level with the top of her head.

Nothing happens. Perhaps he is reconsidering, reading her blood- and snot-smeared, non-reacting face. She reaches up to wipe her mouth. Her hand trembles too much. She brings it down. Maybe he tells her to jump backward over the edge of the garbage drop-off. Save yourself, girl.

The gun jumps instead, there is a black hole in her forehead like blackberry crushed flat, without juice. She leans backward, a gymnast starting a backward flip. The man lowers the .45, .38, .32, .22, or 9mm. She arches—a summer girl letting herself fall backward off a warm rock into a clear river pool.

She lies on her back, floating on garbage. The shirt no longer covers the dark hair where her legs meet. I know if I walk closer, after the men leave, I will see they have destroyed her twice-over.

I roll over and rest my leg on the woman I live with and love. She sleeps deeply, floating on her back. The weight of my leg does not interrupt her sleep. She is warm, and smooth, and as troubled as the rest of us. If I try to switch positions and move my leg away, she reaches up out of her sleep and holds my knee where it is—above the dark hair where her legs meet.

I try again—having the young woman awaken from her stupor and leap over the edge. She tumbles down through the shredded plastic and soggy cardboard and pig shit, down through the fleeing rats and styrofoam and rotten vegetables, that have not yet been found and eaten. The bullet sends her reeling backward, and I turn, carefully, so that I don’t pull the covers, and lay my leg over my love. The pigs listen. There may be more to eat.

The horror is deep, my love is warm. I almost fall asleep. He still hasn’t reached her. I urge her to save herself, but when they have you, there is seldom any escape. “Wake up,” she mumbles, as if she has rocks in her mouth, weeping. “See the moment of my extinction, see the dark stump of the tongue they have cut from me…and the mouth below—made for love of my choosing—ripped by their anger and triumph. Watch how they raise the gun, bring it down, and take my summers away from me forever.”

Flowers and Cameras ~ The Threat Diary ~ January 2, 2013

Posted on by sterlingbennett

The cameras are up, six of them, on four different houses, covering sections of four different callejones, alleys. It is like looking into four different aquariums of madness. You turn off the monitor. It is too much to watch. But the cameras go on watching, and the black box goes on recording.

There’s a knock on the door fairly early one morning. S is an attractive, alert young woman, with an intelligent face, probably in her late thirties, maybe a bit more. D opens the door after hesitating a little, first talking to her through the wooden door flap, digesting the woman’s request, the story the woman is telling.

Some young people were throwing rocks down at her house that same morning, she says. Very early. Four-thirty, la madrugada. She and her husband suspected the usual suspects. (I have been instructed not to objectify them by calling them gangbangers; I am not sure I will be able to comply).

Her husband followed one of them in the direction of our house. The husband has some experience in the world of forensics. I am not supposed to say more. The couple knew about the cameras. Would it be possible to check them? the young woman asks. D says, of course.

A few hours later, D calls up C, our direct neighbor. They are the conspiracy of sisters, now about to be joined by this third new one: S. At my computer, in my debris-strewn studio, D and C do the initial research. They play back the black box’s digital tape. We know the rock throwers, if they are the usual suspects (maybe I will call them the Usuals, but that’s more reification), will pass through the alley crossroads in front our house. At least one of them will. We watch the camera screen called “Frente,” front—covering the crossroads in front of our front door.

At 04:38:30 a figure appears at the top of the alley directly in front of us. “There he is!” all of us say at the same time. What we mean is, “Caught in the act!”

It takes the figure about fifteen seconds to pass by the camera, enter another camera’s view, and descend the callejón toward the thieves’ den.

As the figure approaches camera “Frente,” he holds his arm across his forehead, so the camera cannot identify him. The camera is placed too high; the young man is also wearing a white baseball cap. The height of the camera makes him shorter and fatter. We play the tape over and over. From the way he walks and the way he wears his hat, I am quite sure I am seeing M, one of the two Usuals, the less dangerous of the two. He also turns into his own privada, blind alley—which kind of gives it away.

S’s forensics husband confronts M’s aunt later that day. He knows M and his gang of Usuals. M lives with his aunt, next door to his mother’s house. Aunt E denies it is M; he was in his bed all night long, she tells the forensics husband. Denying is a default reflex is this neighborhood, maybe in the whole country. Forensics says his twelve-year old daughter sleeps just below a window. The rocks—thrown wildly—came close to that window. The rocks and the shattering glass could have hurt her badly. Yes, yes, says M’s aunt, but it couldn’t have been M.

We call the camera installers back and lower several of the cameras to make the angle better for identification. I know the correction will provoke a response from the Usuals, because now the cameras are more within reach. I also know any action the Bangers (sorry) take will come at night. I watch them, the Usuals, Q and M, pacing back and forth at the entrance of their privada, glowering up at the closest camera, camera C, on C’s house. Camera C beams its outrageous little red light right back at them, unblinking. A few nights pass. There are posadas in various neighborhood, celebrations, reenactments in the more elaborate ones of Joseph and Mary looking for a place where Jesus can be born. Or there is just punch and beer, sometimes with little bonfires, people sitting around on rickety chairs in the alleys, enjoying the punch and the fire and each other. Sometimes there is singing.

On the third night, I am still awake at 11:45. I hear the Usuals’ unique call, a series of same-note whistles followed by a rising then falling final note. It is the signal that something is about to happen. I get up and stand in front of the monitor, flipping from screen to screen. I watch M and C in their dance of madness, M clapping his hands in some dark individual joy related to nothing—acting out being cool to no audience at all. I watch him kick at the metal door to the vacant lot in front of us—not to get in but just to show his defiance of barriers and limits, maybe acting out something he’s seen on television a thousand times. The boys are unsteady on their feet, their judgment flawed. These are the characteristics of people on inhalants.

I watch them pick up something. It is hard to see. There is some kind of shadow in that area a few steps above C’s camera, almost level with it, fifteen feet away from it. The picture on C’s camera wavers, distorts, flashes white and dark, and something explodes around the camera—which I am looking through—like a cloud of white flies or ocean luminescence. They are, I learn later, exploding fragments of brick. The camera jumps again. The Usuals are stoning C’s camera and being recorded by another camera, the one attached to the little store kitty-corner from our front door. That camera is called Tienda, store. It tries to look into the dim area where the stone throwers are jumping about

Eventually the Usuals leave. Apparently undamaged camera C watches them enter M’s privada. The next morning I go outside and inspect camera C. I pick up the pieces of brick lying below it. I place them on a napkin in our kitchen. They represent some kind of evidence, at least to myself. That afternoon, through Camera Tienda, I see C and her husband out in front of their house, the next one below us on the callejón. I carry the handful of brick fragments down to them—mounted on the white napkin.

A, C’s husband, is too upset to speak. He is repairing a front door light, so there will be better illumination in the area. C already knows about the attack on her camera. She too was watching on her own computer while it happened. If you know the site and have the software and the codes, you too can watch the cameras—from anywhere in the world.

As I am speaking to C and A, banger usual M appears at the entrance of his privada. He is chief suspect in the 04:38:30 stoning of S’s house and last night’s attack on C’s camera. He wears more expensive clothes now: clean, oversized white sneakers, a dark earring, and a clean white baseball cap. He is actually a handsome kid, except that his face is twisted a little and hardened by his iron defenses.

Without thinking, I greet him as he passes, walking uphill, toward our house. “Mira,” I say, look, and I hold out my napkin full of brick fragments. “These are for you,” I say.

His expression says, How so?

“So you can throw them at the camera,” I explain tightly, as I sputter out my sarcasm.

He shrugs and continues.

“They cost 3,000 pesos apiece,” I call after him. “Each camera.”

“Congratulations!” he throws back over his shoulder at me, and struts on, climbing the steps.

I immediately think better of several things. The provocation in my voice, my pique, plus the tipoff as to the cameras’ worth. I imagine them all disappearing during the coming night. The next day, in the evening, the doorbell rings. E, M’s aunt is standing in the callejón. I don’t quite catch watch she’s saying through the flap door. I step outside in my slippers. Then I get it.

“M says you said he stoned a camera,” she says—a good citizen trying to clear up a misunderstanding. I have been watching “Bramwell,” an English television series about a young doctor who defies the sexist hurdles placed in her way. I am coming out of a different world, one fraught cognitive dissonance into another one exuding the same phenomenon. I am not sure where to begin. It is the first time I’ve had a conversation with M’s aunt. I mutter something about the crazy energy M and Q display at night when they’re on inhalants. She introduces me to the woman beside her. I put a name to a face for the first time. It is the stone thrower M’s mother, C. A girl of about thirteen stands beside her, perhaps M’s sister. They are returning from a posada and are interested in clearing up the misapprehension I appear to be harboring. As we are speaking, a troop of gangbangers ages twelve to eighteen comes clumping around the corner and down the callejón, flowing past us, assertive as elephants. Maybe ten of them. Some of them I have never seen before.

I am alarmed. “What’s this?” I say.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” says M’s aunt, whose eyes seem glassier than normal. I wonder if she has been drinking.

M glowers at me as he passes, at the head of the pack. The last to pass is Q’s (the dangerous one’s) younger brother. He used to borrow books from our little lending library—until he discovered inhalants. M’s aunt calls after the younger brother, “You aren’t on inhalants, are you.” A supportive statement. Younger brother turns around. He is four or five long steps lower now. “Y qué le importa!”—“And what’s it to you?” The defiance aimed at me. Then he hits the inside of his elbow with the palm of his hand, his forearm raised in a fist, to say Fuck you, old man. The whole troop has stopped on the steps and turned around, to consider the moment, whether to rush back and trample me to death. But younger brother turns away from us and, taking his signal, the whole herd continues their downward clump.

I know D is waiting for me to rejoin her to continue watching Dr. Eleanor Bramwell’s brave battle with English sexists of all stripes in the safe and well-regulated virtual theater of British television.

M’s aunt is asking me what time M was supposedly throwing pieces of brick at C’s camera, the closest one to their privada. I know the precise time. Eleven-forty-five, I say. Oh, no, it couldn’t have been him. No, not at that hour. He was with me. At home. No, it couldn’t have been him.

I need to get back to the virtual world of 1895 London. We say Buenas Noches. I go back to Bramwell, locking the front door firmly behind me.

The next day, the phone rings. It’s S on the line. She and her forensics husband would like to inspect the digital record of M and Q’s attack on C’s camera. I do not know how she knew about the attack. D is down with the flu. We put S off for a few days. She and her daughter come by anyway with a bowl of fruit for D, to take the edge off her suffering. A heartening gesture.

Another few days pass, then the Neighborhood Ladies’ Detective Agency meets again. This time S is a member, too. I have made an effort to do some vacuuming ahead of time. I go down to my favorite café to write. The Detective Agency works for some three hours. There is now a thumb drive file showing things I hadn’t seen before: M and Q clearly and repeatedly throwing stuff at C’s camera, the camera bouncing in response, the shattering pieces of brick flashing on-screen like an explosion of white flies. M and Q staggering around clapping their hands in dark joy, kicking at the metal door to the vacant lot, as if demanding to be let out of, or into, jail. They are completely unaware that another camera is recording everything they do.

The evidence is direct, clear and damning. S’s husband says he is going to invite M’s aunt to come over to their house and watch the clips. We are told a video recording of a crime is considered prima facie evidence. Also, that attacking a security camera is a crime. We’ve also been told by several people that the cameras mean nothing if misdemeanors, or worse, are not acted upon. At this writing, forensics husband has not confronted M’s aunt and her cognitive dissonance. The Christmas holidays have intervened.

On Christmas Eve day, I am down in my favorite plaza, writing in my favorite café. D’s is still sick with the flu. I decide to take her flowers. Somehow, another idea appears in my head. I’m not sure where it came from. It’s to also take flowers to M’s aunt, M’s mother and, while I’m at it, to the wife of our main nemesis, whose commerce I am not supposed to describe.

I pack my things together and walk across the plaza to the flower lady. There used to be another flower lady, who had gold caps on her two front teeth, took very short steps when she walked and was a beautiful Indian, from what group I never knew. She has disappeared after many years’ presence. Otherwise, I would have gone to her.

I buy four bouquets, each one with four roses. I calculate the meaning of colors. One bouquet will be for the chief neighborhood spy, the wife of Nemesis. I decide her roses should not be red, supposedly the color of passion.

I walk up the side of the canyon with my four modest sprays of roses wrapped at the bottom with tin foil. I have never been down the privada, the dead end alley, toward the dragon’s den, from which seem to flow various mind-altering concoctions, consumed by a parade of mind-altered  clients, and which emits insane teenagers. By daylight, it is empty and innocuous. The idea that seems dangerous is bringing flowers to the Others: M’s aunt, M’s biological mother, and Spy, wife of Nemesis.

My mounting adrenalin takes the pain out of the two hundred some stairs. I turn in to the privada. I pass Nemesis’ door. Everything is quiet. I turn left at A’s door, the porter without education, possibly with some brain damage. His house is a shanty with a metal lamina roof. He lives with his mother. There are rooms like rats’ nests with only gathered rags and newspapers filled to head high, with no room to move about. I know from lingering strong body odors they have no water. I have no idea how they handle human waste.

I turn right and come to an attractive iron gate, the entrance to a kind of outdoor vestibule for M’s aunt’s house, which is bourgeois and colorful. I ring the doorbell on the gate. A woman approaches. It is C, M’s biological mother. I do not know if she lives there too. She greets me with a pleasant smile. I ask if M’s aunt is home. She is, she says, but she’s sick with the flu. I take that at face value. I mention that D, my partner, also has the flu. I say the flowers are for her and her sister, as well as one for A (spy and wife of Nemesis). She opens the gate. I say Feliz Navidad and tell her she has first choice of colors. There is no discussion of why I am giving her flowers. The event seems like the most natural thing in the world. Later, it occurs to me she thinks I’m doing an errand for my D. Either way, she is happy, smiling broadly, appreciative. I not sure how many people ever bring her flowers.

She takes a spray. I tell her to choose a bouquet for her sister, M’s aunt. She chooses another. Then she leads me to A’s door, where Nemesis lives and presides and does business. There is no answer to the doorbell. I ask C if she can give A her roses. She says she can and receives them cordially. I say Feliz Navidad again and find my way back through the alley—not running into anyone I wouldn’t want to run in to.

The whole thing was easier than I thought it would be, entering the lion’s den. What I found instead was a woman happy to be receiving flowers. I decided not to worry about what she thought I or the act represented. I do not think she was faking her friendliness. She had not treated me as the Other, though I am sure in some sense I am. But not in that moment. I also had no idea how the event might be discussed by the three woman, Nemesis and M—who is the next-to saddest rock thrower of them all, with Q taking the absolute first prize for being both dangerous and a lost soul.