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\u201cRoses are Mexican\u2019s favorite flower. I think, how symbolic\u2014thorns and all.\u201d<\/em> She<\/strong> lost him before she even knew it. T\u00eda Alicia lost her son, cousin Beto, to the letters carved on his stomach, the size of freeway signs, announcing cities and streets from far away distances. With those drawings under his clothes and skin, he relived the beatings that echoed in his memory, like the lighter burning the melting brown rock on a spoon, easing the pain only he felt. Too much trippin\u2019 locked primo Beto up in the mind, like the hamster that overfeeds itself and doesn\u2019t know how to stop eating\u2014and dies. But primo Beto didn\u2019t die. He\u2019s locked up in the mind and behind bars.<\/p>\n Back then, if you talked to him, he stared at you but not like he was your cousin or your own son. Beto looked at you to see how you could feed his addiction (with your VCR, TV, tool box or blender). That\u2019s only part of the reason he\u2019s locked up en la grande<\/em>. T\u00eda Alicia has hope\u2014the kind only a mother understands. The kind only she <\/em>understands because her hope reads backwards when I see him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a good boy.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe mom\u2019s right when she says that people bring their children to this country in search of better lives, in search of dreams. Instead, children are lost and yearn for a family while their parents take care of someone else\u2019s kids. While parents work overtime, their children waste away in the streets as beggars of praise and acceptance.<\/p>\n In hardworking parents\u2019 minds, their children don\u2019t work when they study: they\u2019re not working\u2014not with arched backs, not with a shovel or a mop in-between their hands. Parents are so tired they don\u2019t want to talk about school work<\/em>. Instead, they stare at the lives of pretty rich people on TV and wake up at dawn to beat the traffic, so they can keep their bosses happy.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was <\/em>a good boy,\u201d t\u00eda Alicia says. When I hear her talk like that, I can see that she\u2019s locked up in the mind too, but she has faith.<\/p>\n T\u00eda Alicia doesn\u2019t understand how her son\u2019s mind works. In front of her doorsteps, he sees signs and colors. The Lutheran Church divides the west and the east side: The Vatos Locos del Westside and The Vatos Locos del Eastside patrolled their ground. She doesn\u2019t see that. She can\u2019t. Primo Beto claimed a hood that belonged to no one\u2014like the air that we breathe. (Don\u2019t breathe. It\u2019s my air. How does that sound?)<\/em> Similar to how governments mark their <\/em>territory with white, yellow, red, and blue lines to divide streets and borders.<\/p>\n T\u00eda Alicia says he had a good girlfriend who dressed him well, but his girlfriend gave up on him when Beto said he wouldn\u2019t be going to college. The last time I saw him he looked sharp\u2014bien catr\u00edn<\/em>\u2014in his creased pants, black shiny shoes and slick black hair like he worked at a bank.<\/p>\n The primo Betos of today are easy, necessary targets to play the game of pistolitas <\/em>and mad doggers. Similar to an angry grizzly bear, his stare really kills. (Don\u2019t stare too long, or you\u2019ll get clawed.) His generation and next generation fill up prison cells instead of classrooms. They sit lined up against the curb, looking like real bad asses with a police officer calling up for backup and hoping to find a background on the bait.<\/p>\n For what?<\/em><\/p>\n Primo Beto might as well have had a real bullet tattooed to the side of his temple or his neck; that\u2019s what his uniform did. (That\u2019s how my grandfather died, but mother doesn\u2019t want to talk about it; grandfather\u2019s uniform killed him. That\u2019s what I think.)<\/p>\n I heard primo Beto isn\u2019t just locked up in the mind but behind bars in another country. He got that tattoo on his face after the incident\u2014trying to stop his own father from fucking his sister. Beto finally had the courage to strike his own father. With an iron, Beto struck his own father on the temple.<\/p>\n If a stranger looked at my cousin, he\u2019d be scared. I\u2019m not. Every tattoo tells Beto\u2019s story like the crosses, the thorns, paintings and statues at churches. Like a church, he decorates his body with memories of pain. His body is a war and peace zone of both visual and written languages, a miscommunication of sorts. Because numbers, words and images spoken and written own his brown body, according to him, are worth sacrificing for, like most faithful soldiers believe. Without a doubt in their mind, they are fighting a just war.<\/p>\n Behind bars, primo Beto circles and circles like a caged bear at the zoo. He will never feel a chilly night tug at his skin. He awaits in vain for the cage to open to relive his life now that t\u00edo Roberto\u2019s dead. But now, he\u2019s locked up in the mind and behind himself.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a good boy . . . he gave me a rose for Mother\u2019s Day when he was five.\u201d<\/p>\n ********************************************************************<\/p>\n \n .<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI remember we were driving in your car Leaving<\/strong> behind empty cans of beer and bags of Doritos on the beige and worn out Monte Carlos\u2019s tapestry, he hobbles side to side and then almost falls forward in effort to reach the front door step of his house. On his way to the front door, he kneels and crouches forward as he citrifies the grass, next to mother\u2019s crimson red, soft yellow, white and bright pink roses\u2014lots of roses\u2014offerings for a life size replica of the very Virgencita de Guadalupe who always listens to her prayers silently\u2014\u201cmake the drinking go away.\u201d Por favor Virgencita, te pido con todo mi coraz\u00f3n que Pancho ya no tome. S\u00ed, yo s\u00e9 que es muy trabajador, pero mira el ejemplo que les est\u00e1 dando a los muchachos. Tambi\u00e9n te pido que protejas y libres de todo mal a cada uno de mis hijos. Y por \u00faltimo te pido que me quites este c\u00e1ncer porque quiero vivir y ver crecer a todos mis hijos. Gracias por escucharme.<\/em> (1)<\/p>\n In those days, dad was EL BORRACHO, right out of La Loter\u00eda<\/em> (2), with lots of pictures to read. \u201cEllll borrachooo<\/em>,\u201d the cardholder called out. A lucky winner announced, \u201cAqu\u00ed. Buenas con el borracho<\/em>,\u201d (3) as he claimed the jackpot composed of nickels and dimes, and all players cleared their beans or pennies off their favorite card that brought them luck. But not so buenas<\/em> (4) for those who lived with an obnoxious and hot-tempered borracho like my father who drank on weekdays, weekends and drove back drunk with mother closing her eyes and praying to all her saints and clenching her right hand onto the unraveling tight stitches while us children enjoyed the roller coaster ride.<\/p>\n \u201cCome on dad! Go faster! Faster!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNi\u00f1as por favor no hablen con su pap\u00e1 que no ven que est\u00e1 manejando<\/em>.\u201d (5)<\/p>\n One time dad \u201craced a real pendejo <\/em>on the freeway\u201d\u2014a cop. The police officer dropped off my little brothers at home that time. Nothing changed after hours of AA meetings. The drinking continued. Some borrachos <\/em>sobered up on Mondays while working and, of course, always <\/em>denied they had a drinking problem. A drunk will always tell you that you can cure a hangover if you drink another beer, which does work because he\u2019s on an endless drunken state of mind. A drunk will always claim he\u2019s perfectly healthy because his numbing his illnesses with an antidepressant.<\/p>\n Parties without beer, according to dad, \u201cvalian pura madre<\/em>,\u201d (6) so at fiestas where alcohol was prohibited, which were very few, he\u2019d cut out a Pepsi can and place it like a label over a Budweiser can and sit like a king holding his latest invention while the mariachi played Jos\u00e9 Alfredo Jimenez\u2019s \u201cEl Rey<\/em>.\u201d (7)<\/p>\n On weekdays, we knew better and remained behind walls and out of sight or else at 2:15 a.m. on a school night, dad would call a meeting, where he always spoke the last word and demanded we\u2019d listen and was especially hostile with his words. \u201cAs\u00ed que estas dos pendejitas van a tratar de decirme que estoy mal. Ya dec\u00eda mi madre, \u2018Cr\u00eda cuervos y te sacaran los ojos.\u2019<\/em>\u201d (8) The worse part about his drinking problem was always enduring the silencing and the biting of my tongue because mom always said, \u201cNo digas nada. Qu\u00e9date callada. Sof\u00eda, \u00bfQu\u00e9 no has aprendido nada?<\/em>\u201d (9)<\/p>\n For most of my life, father had been not just a good man, a great man of acts and words. He had taught me how to read Spanish even though he didn\u2019t know how to read himself, paid us to learn how to make flour tortillas, for bringing home good grades, (and when he hit thirty), paid us to pull out his grey hair. He taught us that both smoking and coffee were drugs and corrosive to the human body. Father was a good man until the drinking and mother\u2019s cancer spells began when he started working his new construction job, and those hot summers with a 105\u00b0 beating sun and cold winters with the cold wind whipping his face broke him. Beer always took the edge off so much that he was forgetting the meaning of family. And drinking was blurring my father\u2019s vision, and I was beginning to fear his presence because his words cut deep, and I wished El Borracho remained trapped on a card, not in my father. What could I do? I was only his daughter and not even the eldest.<\/p>\n *********************************************************************<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n Mexican <\/strong>commercials and news didn\u2019t care. You\u2019d be eating dinner with a mouthful of tortilla, beans and green salsa, and sure enough, on my parents\u2019 big screen TV that took up half of the living room wall, you\u2019d get bombarded with commercials that advertised anti toenail fungus treatments\u2014and the before and after close-up photos, which always proved the effectiveness of the wondrous products. And sometimes in between commercials, something hard to believe would escape the news reporter, something that when I first heard I couldn\u2019t believe, something that sounded straight out of the yellow \u00a1Alarma!<\/em> (10) magazines, I had come across as a kid when we would cross the border\u2014except this time it was on TV.<\/p>\n The human carcasses, including a pregnant body, had been recently found mutilated, tortured, strangled, raped and disposed like battered old TVs, VCRs and putrid refrigerators in the outskirts of Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Chihuahua, in empty lots, in sewage channels, in ditches, on roads, especially the road to Casas Grandes, in baseball fields but mostly in the city\u2014anywhere that left someone alone, sick and devouring a woman\u2019s body.<\/p>\n And who could that person or those people be?<\/em><\/p>\n These deaths, claimed the reporter, were growing in number with each passing year. \u201cAng\u00e9lica M\u00e1rquez Ledezma, 16; Sonia Ivette Ram\u00edrez, 13; Elizabeth Castro Garc\u00eda, 17; Olga Alicia Carillo P\u00e9rez, 19; Silvia Elena Rivera Morales; Not Identified, 14\u201318; No Name Woman, approximately 30 . . . .\u201d Some victims were students\u2014usually with long hair. Others were killed in their own vicinities or were on their way or coming back from the maquiladoras\u2014and sometimes looking for work<\/em>. \u201cEighty-five percent of the factories are US owned,\u201d added the reporter. Who were these big and large companies?<\/p>\n Bodies were being found like used bullets with empty shells in the desert. Women\u2019s bodies<\/em>. When I heard the Mexican news, I wanted to believe that it was really an error on the teleprompter. It must have been an error because I had never heard anything of this nature on the news in English.<\/p>\n On the American news, I had heard about cat and dog food poisoning pets. But the newscaster said mujeres<\/em>, not dogs, not cats. As the living room caved in on me and the TV screen transmitted warped images that would have never been shown on the English news, what the TV was saying was that lives of one hundred American cats meant more than a Mexican woman\u2019s body. The lives of endangered animals caused riots among American pet owners and animal rights activists. When all along, historically, women were <\/em>the endangered species.<\/p>\n Along the United States and Mexican border, resided Ju\u00e1rez and Texas, where according to my government teacher\u2019s guest speaker, NAFTA would create more jobs for impoverished countries. My parents\u2019 news taught me that the desert created a salted sea of mermaids and their bodies were tangled in the fishermen\u2019s nets, with no country to run to, because some\u2014not all\u2014of the women wore fishnet stockings.<\/p>\n Mexican news didn\u2019t cross the border. Because to the American government, the lives of their <\/em>women didn\u2019t mean a thing\u2014maybe their deaths could help, by keeping women in their place.<\/p>\n These women hadn\u2019t enlisted for war, but everyday they walked through minefields. Bodies popped up like rodents in a real Whack the Gopher game. Dead bodies didn\u2019t go away with a blow to the head, and burlap sacks only served to annoy companies that didn\u2019t need the spotlight on the news that only served to ruin the image of global relations.<\/p>\n In the meantime, these mastermind fishermen turned a blind eye to an easy catch. Why bother\u2014they were just Mexican women\u2019s bodies.<\/p>\n ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<\/strong>+++++++++++++++<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCucurrucucu, Cucurrucucu, Cucurrucu Paloma ya no llores.\u201d<\/em> (11) The<\/strong> night before, I had dreamt my sister, my brothers\u2014crying. Against the cold-glass window, the warm rain poured. We held each other. On my sister\u2019s forehead, a third eye she could not see.<\/p>\n He was so drunk and mad as he stumbled in the kitchen Paco started screaming.<\/p>\n \u201c\u00a1Pap\u00e1!\u2014Paco<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u00a1Paco qu\u00e9! \u00a1Mira lo que hago con este pinche p\u00e1jaro!<\/em>\u201d (12)<\/p>\n When my father\u2019s construction hands squeezed Paco violently, I thought Paco was dead. His green feathers fluttered like a chicken trying to escape as she\u2019s being wrung by the neck. Wheezing for his last breath, Paco lay at the bottom of his cage not as a bird but like a fish flopped on its belly.<\/p>\n \u201c\u00a1Este p\u00e1jaro me importa una madre! \u00a1Mira! \u00a1Mira!<\/em>\u201d (13)<\/p>\n Minutes later, in my room, my wings had been trampled by this man I called father. Locked in my father\u2019s white room, I was sure Paco had suffered a heart attack as his screams replayed in my memory, and that day I screamed with all my might\u2014on paper.<\/p>\n The day Paco almost had a heart attack, Paloma and I left fluttering through the front door as we escaped into the darkness from a drunken man\u2019s bird cage we had called home. Our cooing mother grieved all night as if her feet and arms had been torn from her as she lay in her empty nest.<\/p>\n With trails of tears behind us, we stepped out of drunken man\u2019s house, who was no longer our father. That night the floor shook violently under our feet, but we regained strength as we learned to walk for the first time on our own two feet.<\/p>\n We had been let loose, and the bird cager\u2019s imaginary door had been opened wide, and on this side of the border only we could shut the bars upon ourselves because we had inherited the dreams of illiterate minds.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t know\u2014yet, but we were two Adelitas<\/em> (14) with limitless boundaries in a world of reconcilable differences, and Pancho Villa wasn\u2019t here to stop us.<\/p>\n That, not a stranger\u2019s words, not a father\u2019s words, not a mother\u2019s silence, or a boss\u2019s words, could stop us from kissing dreams from a distance because we had been taught that visions are where dreams began. And like my father foresaw for his children\u2019s future, a pen filled with ideas was a necessary tool in order to paint our dreams with paper and letters, and I knew<\/em> and never forgot I owed that to illiterate minds.<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n AUTHOR’S NOTES<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n 1. Please Virgin, I ask with all my heart that Pancho not drink anymore. Yes, I know he\u2019s a hard worker, but look at the bad example he\u2019s showing the boys. I also ask that you protect everyone of my children. And lastly I ask that you take this cancer because I want to live and watch my children grow. Thank you for listening to me.<\/p>\n 2. Mexican Bingo.<\/p>\n 3. Bingo with The Drunk.<\/p>\n 4. Not so good.<\/p>\n 5. Children\u2014please\u2014can\u2019t you see your father\u2019s driving?<\/p>\n 6. In Spanish, the word Mother is used as a curse word. The English equivalent would be: \u201cwere full of shit.\u201d<\/p>\n 7. Jos\u00e9 Alfredo Jimenez, one of Mexico\u2019s famous singer and composer who was an alcoholic epitomizes the Mexican macho. His song \u201cEl Rey\u201d translates to \u201cThe King.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. So these two idiots are going to try to tell me I\u2019m wrong. Like my mother said, Raise crows, and they will take your eyes out.<\/p>\n 9. Don\u2019t say anything. Stay quiet. Haven\u2019t you learned anything?<\/p>\n 10. Alarma!<\/em> is a Mexican magazine that presents both gore and sometimes nude images of both male and female victims.<\/p>\n 11. Coo, Coo, Coo. Dove, do not cry anymore.<\/p>\n 12. Paco what? Look what I do with Paco.<\/p>\n 13. I don\u2019t give a damn about this bird! Look! Look!<\/p>\n 14. A Mexican soldadera<\/em>, a female revolutionary soldier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She lost him before she even knew it. T\u00eda Alicia lost her son, cousin Beto, to the letters carved on his stomach, the size of freeway signs, announcing cities and streets from far away distances. With those drawings under his clothes and skin, he relived the beatings that echoed in his memory, like the lighter burning the melting brown rock on a spoon, easing the pain only he felt. Too much trippin\u2019 locked primo Beto up in the mind, like the hamster that overfeeds itself and doesn\u2019t know how to stop eating\u2014and dies. But primo Beto didn\u2019t die. He\u2019s locked up in the mind and behind bars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[12,18,8,13,11,30,17,10,31,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alternativepublications.ucmerced.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2014Gloria Anzald\u00faa<\/p>\nEl Borracho<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nThe speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
\nCity lights lay out before us
\nAnd your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder
\nAnd I had a feeling that I belonged
\nAnd I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone . . . \u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014Tracy Chapman\u2019s \u201cFast Car\u201d<\/p>\nAmerican Cats Mean More Than a Woman\u2019s Body<\/span><\/h2>\n
The Day Paco Almost Had a Heart Attack<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n\u2014Lola Beltr\u00e1n, Mexican Singer<\/p>\n