Review: Maxine Borowsky Junge and Con Safos (staff). Voices From The Barrio, “Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio”. San Bernardino, California: [publisher not identified], 2016. Available via print on demand.
ISBN 153463200X

Michael Sedano

“El movimiento” is the foundation myth that satisfies a hungry need for inclusion and identity. Say the words “el movimiento,” or one of myriad terms for that period in the late 1960s and beginnings of the seventies, and evoke rich tapestries of ideas, events, and personal recollection. These memories are punctuated here and there with honored luminaries and passing personalities, triumphs and desmadres, a sense of one’s own place as part of something major.

There’s a sense of doneness about the movement, as in it is over. But the notion of the movement is an idea that especially today, can motivate people to come together in a deliberate search for new knowledge and shared experience. Movimiento is the idea that coalesces publics and holds communities together.

That perception of movimiento as finite, and ended, is one of the reasons Maxine Borowsky Junge and Con Safos’, Voices From The Barrio, “Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio, belongs on every researcher’s reading list, every library history shelf, in the hands of anyone who wants to remember the movement because they were in it, woulda liked to be pero, tu sabes, or a reader of cultural history who enjoys compelling narratives of history-making events told by the makers.

Distribution being a bugaboo of independent publishers, World Cat lists two west coast libraries with copies, Cal State Channel Islands and Portland State. Amazon publishes the book on demand and ships upon payment, about thirty-two bucks.

Recounting the history of a legendary magazine during its existence between 1968 and 1970, Voices From the Barrio presents itself in a hybrid of academic analysis heavily interspersed with intimate looks and the personal voices of the magazine’s various staff configurations. It is a book on paper, not an ephemeral web presence. It’s an artifact that people can pass from hand to hand, store in physical permanence, incapable of erasure without unimaginable horror. Then again, it would probably be banned in Arizona.

Today’s information economy can create social and literary channels with a few keystrokes, a few dollars for a website, and messages become accessible by a potentially global audience. Facile experience and fragile knowledge could come of scrolling glances at hundreds of webpages a day. A book creates a different form of knowing.

The history of “old-fashioned” print media offers instructive examples for modern publishers, print or web. For raza, this history of Con Safos Magazine offers particularly useful and interesting insights into the times, the gente, the ganas, the writing, that makes C/S an important resource, a template for resistance and resisters today. Do it the right way.

Building the product, the magazine itself, models a microcosm of how movimientos come together. Structurally, the editorial hierarchy of WWII-generation editors kept a firm and flexible hold on policy. They have clear goals and standards, they hold a steady course toward goal. Both core and changing staff share a talented drive to produce worthwhile messages. Content reflected current events, indelible opposition to the war in Vietnam, multilingualism. Literature included consciousness-raising poetry and fiction, writing grew out of a rhetoric of identification. Style aimed for the sublime, for exactitude in language and a writer's sense of cultural inclusion. The C/S family figured it out as they went along but always motivated for quality. The combination of good illustration, good writing, clear logic, funny when it’s supposed to be, made Con Safos Magazine a sought-after buy in a restricted distribution network. Complete sets of the magazine are rare, and the FBI seized the final issue.

There was leadership by example—“I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a drunk” realism sealed the deal for the new literary editor; leadership by dint of qualification—the final art director, Magu, was an MFA candidate at UC Irvine; leadership by qualification—Ralph Lopez can write the pants off an essay or a memoir. C/S quoted Camus. The originators share a clear sense of vision even as the vision created itself from the raw materials of everyday life and politics. Being-in-becoming is one definition of movimiento sensibility.

Frank Sifuentes, Alurista, Oscar Acosta in 1973

C/S published rrsalinas, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and of 131 prose pieces, 8 by women. Other studies will address such gender disparities which weren’t unique to the magazine but typical of movimiento institutions that kept women in the background. Que gacho that at least one C/S staff woman's foto is identified only by first name. None of the interviewed remembered the woman’s last name.

Borowsky Junge doesn’t pull punches to guard against remembered hurts and newly injured pride.  She calls out that gender imbalance. She relates how Frank Sifuentes’ folky story-telling couldn’t get past the editor and Pancho didn't get published in C/S. He found an audience with technology; a short time before he died, Frank began podcasting his stories. He beamed with pride when the organizers of the 2010 reunion floricanto at USC included him to read on the first, Veteranas Veteranos day of readings.

There’s a profundity about this history and what Con Safos Magazine stands for and comes out of. Some of the writers and editors crossed over, qepd, but there’s a healthy lot of them still breathing. Borowsky Junge’s interviews bring their voices before today's audience.

Voices From the Barrio includes a generous set of excerpts from Lopez’ memoir, “Running With The Brown Buffalo. Roaming The Heights Of Lincoln Heights With Oscar Acosta, AKA ‘Zeta’ Circa 1968-1975.” On other pages, readers find sterling exemplars of Chicana Chicano arte, fiction and essays, poetry from rrsalinas’ “A Trip Through the Mind Jail,” some gems from Sergio Hernandez’Arnie and Porfi cartoon.

The set of oral histories that form the heart of the volume inform a conclusion that C/S Magazine owed its popularity not simply to C/S being the first independent Chicano literary magazine—anyone can publish a magazine--but more because the persona of the magazine and the distinctiveness of its voices resonated with readers. Its creators were, as the book title says, from the barrio.

The people who put together the magazine weren’t in publishing for the money but their mutually created and nurtured message. In McLuhanesque language popular during the era, C/S was cool media, C/S involved multiple senses simultaneously engaged—touch, vision, graphics, and identification. This characterizes physical media. But for Con Safos Magazine there is an enhanced dimension: raza sought out and remember C/S because it pierced deep into the corazones of their cultural being.

Voices From The Barrio, “Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio” is a magnum opus. Three hundred eighty-seven pages accompanied with vii pages of Forward by Jesus Treviño, five pages of useful Preface by Borowski Junge, some footnotes, no indexing. Sadly the printed copy I received from Sergio Hernandez reflects compromises between heft and paper quality. Illustrations work fine as line art but photographaphs, fine work by Oscar Castillo for example, remain flat on the coarse grain looking like box camera snapshots without snap. Voices From The Barrio, “Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio”is available via print on demand. Maybe a buyer can upgrade to coated stock and hope the image files are equal to the images.

I know several of the people interviewed here and they are cool people. I would love to have been part of the phenomenon of writing and publishing Con Safos Magazine when I was growing up. But I was in Isla Vista or the Army then. Ni modo. Fans of the sixties will get a kick out this insider's view of the popular magazine.

I know for sure I would have been overjoyed to get copies of Con Safos Magazine while I was on duty on a Korean mountaintop at the heyday of the magazine. It is the stuff dreams are made on. Come to think on it, there are lots of gente around who need some of those dreams right now. If you can’t go home again to re-assemble a Con Safos Magazine renaissance, reading its history is satisfying and edifying. “We” did this once and we can do it again.




Visit Jesus Treviño's Latinopia for video of various C/S tipos and Hernandez' revivified Arnie & Porfi cartoons. Jimmy Velarde, Diane Hernandez' brother, nears completion of his film of this vital history. La Bloga will share details when available.

MVS
C/S


Related Reading: Notable New Books

Mestizos Come Home! Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity. By Robert Con Davis-Undiano. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2017.


Independent presses and academic presses are becoming the last, and first, refuge of razacentric books. Case in point is the Chicana & Chicano Visions of the Américas series published by the University of Okahoma Press.

The newest title in the series is Mestizos Come Home! Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity by Robert Con Davis-Undiano.

California born and schooled, Davis is a graduate of Cal State East Bay (Hayward State) and UC Davis.

Per the publisher, the book "focuses on defining, confronting, and contesting [the terms] 'Mexican American and mestizo.'"

Examining six areas of cultural and social change since the 1960s, including the rise of chicanismo in literature and academic fields of study, Mestizos Come Home! sounds like an ideal companion to a reading of the history of Con Safos Magazine.



Aztlán : essays on the Chicano homeland. Eds. Rudolfo A Anaya; Francisco A Lomelí; Enrique R Lamadrid.

This is a newly revised and expanded  edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlán. Another academic accompaniment to understanding movimiento and useful adjunct to a reading of Voices From the Barrio.

The publisher, University of New Mexico Press, shares a book blurb from La Bloga friend, Roberto Cantu, who observes, "As a symbol for political action, a place of spiritual plentitude, or as a challenge to transcend ethnic borders, Aztlán emerges throughout these essays as one of the Chicano Movement's fundamental ideological constructs. This volume will be of interest to students and critics concerned with the understanding and comprehensive reconstruction of one of the Chicano cultural emblems of the late 1960s. Given the present emphasis in Chicano studies on discourse analysis and critique of ideologies, this volume is a contribution to Chicano cultural criticism."

Remembering: The Last Days in Vietnam
Daniel Cano

As another April 30th nears, I recall, a couple of years ago, a colleague asked if I’d say a few words to introduce Rory Kennedy’s film “The Last Days in Vietnam,” which had received excellent movie reviews and was being screened at Santa Monica College where I was teaching at the time.

At first, I declined. I’d had enough of war. Then, after thinking about it more, I reconsidered.

Since the publication of my book Shifting Loyalties in 1993 (click link in title), I’d received letters from Chicano veterans and their families, expressing their gratitude for the stories I’d written about my time in Vietnam. At my readings, many Chicano veterans thanked me for using my voice to give their voices life.

Of all the mainstream books and movies about Vietnam, one would think that Chicanos had no place in the war. I remember teaching a Chicano literature class. We’d been reading Charley Trujillo’s book Soldados and Jorge Mariscal’s Aztlan in Vietnam. A Vietnamese-American student raised her hand to admit she’d never known Chicanos had fought in Vietnam. Her statement perplexed me. It reminded me of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: no matter how many sacrifices and contributions Americans of color make to this country, we remain invisible.

A letter I’ll always remember was from a Chicana who told me her father had died in Vietnam when she was a child. After reading my book, she said she felt closer to him, understanding what he might have experienced. So, how could I not say a few words to introduce Ms. Kennedy’s film about the Vietnam War’s last days?

For 42 years, I’ve sought a justification for the Vietnam War—or, at least, my role in it.

In 1969, when the Army discharged me, the country was in turmoil over the war, so I pretended that I’d never worn a uniform. I just wanted to hide. But no matter how much I tried to hide, I couldn’t.
Over the years, the reminders were everywhere: Tet, Kent State, The Chicano Moratorium, My Lai, Hearts and Minds, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and ISIS.

Since I couldn’t escape, I immersed myself in the study of Vietnam, the land, the people, the history, and politics --always searching, I suppose, for the war’s elusive justification.

April 30, 1975, along with millions of Americans, I watched on television as Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese communists, or looking at it from our so-called enemy’s perspective, Vietnam’s liberation, the images flickering across the television screen, the last helicopters flying off the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. I felt ill--then angry, bitter, and finally betrayed. “What a waste it had all been,” I’d thought.

How ironic that the Vietnamese student told me she didn’t know Chicanos had fought in Vietnam, when we now know the first American to be captured by North Vietnam was a pilot, Chicano Everett Alvarez, and the last American out of Vietnam was Chicano Marine Sgt. Juan Vasquez. Then there were the thousands of Chicanos who gave life and limb in those sweltering jungles.

After I watched Saigon fall, I refused to vote, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or to hold my hand over my heart during the National Anthem. I hid the Army in a cardboard box: the photos, medals, and citations. I didn’t want my son or any of my nephews seeing them and glamorizing war.

As the years passed, I asked myself, if communism was the justification for war, why then did Nixon open relations with communist China? Why did the Soviet Union and East Germany collapse under their own weight? Why do we trade with Vietnam and open relations with Cuba (finally)? Why did we kill two-million Vietnamese and sacrifice nearly 60,000 Americans and bring so much pain and suffering to so many families? (And that’s not counting the terror wrought on Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador under the auspices of salvation from communism.)

In 1995, the ex-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara published his memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.“The lessons,” I considered the phrase, as if the slaughter in Vietnam had been some sort of scholarly exercise. McNamara concluded his memoir by telling us how to do it better next time. I took his thesis to be, “Sorry. Looking back on it, we made a terrible mistake.”

As early as 1967, McNamara realized the war was wrong, even immoral. He pressured President Johnson to end it. By speaking out, McNamara found himself booted from his job as Secretary of Defense and reassigned to head of the World Bank.

We now know that many politicians and generals knew early on that the war was unwinnable. But they, too, remained silent and allowed the massacre to continue.

So, who was benefiting from this war? How many millions went into the pockets of Colt and other weapons’ manufacturers and the corporations that supplied the uniforms, vehicles, food, and supplies? In the Golden Triangle, the sale of opium and heroin flourished (but that’s a whole different story).

A few years ago, as I walked through a local bookstore, I noticed a title glaring at me from the stack-- The Tiger Force: A True Story of Men at War.

My artillery battery supported a recon outfit called the Tiger Force, guys we admired, wild, insanely brave men (mostly kids, really), who’d go into the jungle in small groups and sometimes initiate contact with much larger forces.

I thumbed through the pages. Sure enough, it was the same Tigers that we had supported. Maybe I’d find a justification for the war in these pages.

Instead, I read that from June through October 1967, in the pastoral Song Ve River Valley, after communist forces had killed the most experienced Tigers, the remaining Tigers, many inexperienced recruits, took their revenge by executing, in the most heinous ways, hundreds of Vietnamese farmers, and civilians. The Tigers who had self-destructed, turned rice paddies and farms into blood-soaked fields. And it hadn’t been a secret. The brass knew but didn’t stop them, in fact, in some cases, they ordered it.

“June through October 1967,” I remember thinking. That’s when I was there.

My artillery battery supported the Tigers. So, when they called in artillery strikes, was it for fun, to just to watch the villages burn? It was my job to remove those shells from the canisters and hand them to the gun crews who loaded them into the Howitzers and send them crashing into those villages.

What sin had those villagers committed to deserve such a fate? They refused forced removal from their farms and hamlets into filthy, unsanitary compounds the military called Relocation Camps.
How much blood is on my hands? Can I be like Robert McNamara and say, “Well, in retrospect….”? Can I pass it off as a lesson learned?

A reporter who saw McNamara years later said he looked like a “haunted man.”

For me, like many veterans, the Vietnam War is not abstract or theoretical. It isn’t an academic problem. It’s as visceral as a fist in the gut. That’s why it is difficult for many of us to talk about it. I can’t think about Vietnam without thinking of myself in it.

As I watched, Rory Kennedy’s film, “The Last Days in Vietnam,” I had I hoped I might find the justification for that war.

But no, though it is a beautiful, uplifting movie, when I exited the theater, I found no justification, not even in the faces of those Vietnamese desperately seeking escape at the American Embassy, or, surprisingly, on the faces of the South Vietnamese throngs waving communist flags to welcome the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese into Saigon.

As another April 30th crawls closer, I wonder if has anything changed? We see the same desperation on the faces of Syrians, Afghanis, Yeminis, and Iraqis. Maybe, in the end, we should heed Lennon’s words and “give peace a chance.”

Editor's note: La Bloga implored Bloguero Daniel Cano to share his decorations and badges from his service in the United States Army because these are important parts of his, and the nation's, histories.  Lest we forget: only 7% of the population ever wore the uniform.

La Bloga salutes the men and women who served and shed blood in foreign wars. 

Daniel observes, "Vietnam vets still suffer from society's mixed messages of pride and humiliation."

Melinda Palacio

Patricia Spears Jones and Melinda Palacio at AWP 2016

Earlier this week, Poets & Writers announced the winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize of $50, 000. It went to Patricia Spears Jones. If you don't know her work, consult some past La Bloga issues. Linda Rodriguez did a thorough review of her most recent book A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems. I've also featured her poetry as she is a fellow Tia Chucha Poet and someone whose work I admire. I'm super pleased to hear the news of her award. Patricia Spears Jones is the 11th winner of this award, Elizabeth Alexander was the first. The panel of judges describe her poetry as 'made of fever, bone, and breath' and as a poet who 'has steadily and quietly enriched the American poetic tradition with sophisticated and moving poems. More of us should know who she is, and even more should read her.' The full citation is on the Poets&Writers website. This announcement comes on the heels of La Bloga's Amelia Montes receiving a Fulbright for next year in Serbia. Read the interview with La Bloga's Amelia and Xanath on Monday.

A Lucent Fire by Patricia Spears Jones

The next day, Dr. Cristina Herrera, professor of Chicano and Latin American Studies at CSU Fresno and author of (Re)Mapping the Latina/o Literary Landscape New Works and New Directions, (Re)Writing the Maternal Script, and Reading/Speaking/Writing The Mother Text, received the Provost Award for Research, Scholarship and Creative Accomplishment. Her reward consists of a stipend, a reception, honors during the next graduation, and she will be invited to participate in the following year's Provost's Lecture Series. Dr. Cristina says: "It's a huge deal for me because I'm the first Chicana to win in this category, an award usually given to faculty members in math, science, or engineering. It's such an honor."

Dr. Cristina Herrera

That famous Honda Element with CA Plates NOLA.

There's more good news for me and Steve. Our stolen car was recovered and this means more ease to travel to the next literary event. April may be National Poetry Month, but the poetry continues into the rest of the year. Next month, I will be reading at Core Family Winery in Santa Maria May 13 and as part of Tia Chucha's new Anthology: Wandering Song at Beyond Baroque May 27.

My Wonder Woman Button

Although the thieves cleaned out the car and took everything inside that could be hawked or given away, including my yoga mat and eye pillow, there was one small item they missed, a Wonder Woman button that I made when the All Wonder Woman Walking Krewe welcomed me into the group last Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The thieves missed this button. They did some damage to the car, slashing the ceiling fabric and steering wheel, leaving a bullet hole scuff on the hood and leaving a bullet shell in the car, along with food trash, random keys, and a strong ashtray stench. Steve and I are glad to be reunited with the green Honda Element. The car was taken to a tow yard by Midas Touch Towing. According the NOPD reports, it is unclear whether the thieves abandoned the car or simply parked it in a spot that allowed the towing company to identify it as stolen and thus haul it away. The Wonder Woman pin and a voodoo doll, made by my friend Karen Kersting, proved to be powerful car charms.

Karen Voodoo Doll

Since much news happens on Facebook, Karen wrote an open post to the thieves back in February when we didn't think we'd see the car again:

"To those heartless thieves: my voodoo dolls have a good track record in recovering stolen cars. This doll is made from a scrap of fabric that was used as part of a prison work program. The Mardi Gras beads are specifically positioned to give you the greatest discomfort and the feathers are from a bird that was attacked by a cat. Save yourself, and return that car -- or at least call-in an anonymous tip. Bad Karma is floating your way."

New Orleans Poetry Festival 2017

Good news about the Honda's recovery in April meant that I am in New Orleans this week and able to attend the 2nd Annual New Orleans Poetry Festival, something I hadn't planned on earlier in the year. It turns out many friends from California are in town for the festival, including Xochitl-Julissa Bermejo, Michelle Detorie, and Lee Herrick. Thanks to having the trusty, ten year old Honda Element back, I was able to pick up Xochitl-Julissa Bermejo and Soraya Membreno at the airport. Xochitl-Julissa and Soraya are presenting a panel, SGV Food Club, on building community, Saturday at 10 am at the 2nd annual New Orleans Poetry Festival, hosted by Bill Lavender and Megan Burns. Festivities began yesterday with an opening party and event featuring poets who play in bands. The readings and panels continue throughout the weekend and culminate in a reading at the Maple Leaf Bar on Sunday at 3pm. For a complete list of events see the NOLA Poetry Festival Website.

Poets Xochitl-Julissa Bermejo, Melinda Palacio, and Soraya Membreno in New Orleans

And more good news comes from poet Jenn Givhan whose third poetry collection, Girl with Death Mask won the Blue Light Book Prize from Indiana Review. Indiana University Press will publish her book next year. 


What's your good news?

Time for NHCC to Bring Back the NLWC

Michael Sedano

A foto on Facebook brought back warm memories. There were Greta Pullen and Carlos Vazquez smiling out at the lens. I last saw Greta and Carlos at the 2014 Rudolfo Anaya academic conference Roberto Cantu organized at Cal State Los Angeles. It was a joyous reunion.

Pullen and Vazquez, along with Katie Trujillo, organized a decade of National Latino Writers Conferences, cementing a reputation for the National Hispanic Cultural Center (link) as a pre-eminent cultural incubator.

Seeing Greta and Carlos on the screen was a remembrance of good things gone too soon. The National Latino Writers Conference brought important raza writers, literary agents, and emerging writers into a paradise for writers. The event sparkled with spirit and sense of purpose, enhanced by the physical plant of the National Hispanic Cultural Center.


Times are tough in the land of enchantment, forcing NHCC's shift from identifying itself as an important cultural institution to a role as a regional entertainment venue. That should work in a high-culture deprived market, but I hope the director and staff get more out of the effort than they put in. It's a courageous undertaking. I hope also the gente on top open their hearts and squeeze a few thousand dollars out of the Off-Broadway road shows to resume hosting latina latino writers. A cultural center, especially one named for a gente, should be a place to nurture cultura, as well as display it.

I am following the evolution of the National Hispanic Cultural Center with concern. Recently reorganized in a changing of the guardians, the center took on the ethos of an entertainment center that keeps itself funded selling tickets and subscriptions to a mix of local productions and a steady diet of traveling acts, often those who rent the auditorium and put on their own show, a "four wall" production.

Entertainment programming takes a high risk for a middling return. But hit big with an audience and count the revenue as income rolls in from donations, subscriptions, individual seats, collateral spending, and customer loyalty. That’s how it works. Make a product, sell the product, satisfy customers. Then do it again.

NHCC survives facing off against an arts-hating governor who atavistically watches all the state’s cultural institutions twist slowly in the wind. They're going to have to make it on their own. Hijole, there’s no wonder major art acquisitions are a rarity at NHCC. Curators mount exhibitions from the art museum's stunning collection. This rich resource lets the museum fashion new themes out of familiar canvases and work rescued from the vault. Another strategy is long-running exhibitions.

An exhibition on the patron saint of farmers, Outstanding in His Field: San Ysidro—Patron Saint of Farmers, runs now, through the harvest. Curating on a shrinking subsistence budget must be daunting to people who care about art. They send out resumes.

Renting out the hall pays bills but it’s doubtful even the governor would want to see NHCC rent out one of its multiple performance spaces to cualquier tipo just to fill the calendar.

The impresario promoting NHCC’s season pursues bright lights, big city entertainment lineups. In March, for instance, the center drew a sold-out audience the night Pussy Riot performed the world premiere warm-up for its upcoming world premiere in Seattle. An Elvis impersonator rented the venue for a one-night stand in April. The Philharmonic—they rent the hall as their home auditorium—satisfies with a steady diet of sweeps week music featuring up-and-coming virtuosi soloists.

NLWC writers in el Torréon with muralist Frederico Vigil NLWC policy forbids fotos of the mural.

There are food events, readings, crafts sales, workshops, gallery walks, and the myriad experiences that draw people to a place; couples for a big night out, families for an afternoon’s low-cost and educational recreation. A visit to the woefuly underplayed el Torreón is reason enough to detour off Interstate 25 at Ave. César Chavez and visit the arts center when in Alburquerque.

The National Hispanic Cultural Center is a gem of a cultural destination but it’s also the nation’s best-kept secret. United Statesians are hungry for affirmation, raza are starved for inclusion. The National Hispanic Cultural Center has a lot of what it takes to satisfy.

Interior, el Torreon. Link below opens interactive view of the Vigil mural. http://mundos.nationalhispaniccenter.org/torreon_interactive/

Pero, sabes que? There’s a major emptiness in Alburquerque. What is missing from NHCC’s cornucopia of cultural delights is a writers conference. For ten years, NHCC’s National Latino Writers Conference admitted a small number of emerging writers to workshop various genres and issues with professional writers, meet with publishers and literary agents, hone their art. For three years, I workshopped “Reading Your Own Stuff,” with the goal of helping writers become more effective oral presenters of their own work.

The National Latino Writers Conference went by the wayside with a staff change-over a couple years ago. Chisme probably fills books over that but I don’t know anything I didn’t read in the board minutes. I lost track of the NHCC when NLWC went away and after a year, didn't renew my membership.

Over the years I saw a musical chairs game of new guys in charge. I met three of them, I couldn’t really figure them out, organization men, not arts people. The new leader is a woman, Rebecca L. Avitia. It’s her vision that drives the programming and audience strategy. She has to answer to the Board. Above all, she has to turn her cultural centro into an active, busy, modern theater. Tbe rest is gravy, or goes away.

2010 NLWC Writers

Avitia and her NHCC board need to reignite the center’s commitment to literacy and training writers, as a way of investing in their raison d'etre as a cultural centro or an entertainment destination. For sure, nothing gets on stage until someone writes it down. A libretto doesn’t write itself. A nonverbal dance performance follows a written score. Every movie and film started with words on paper and after every day’s filming someone sat down and revised tomorrow’s lines. It’s ironic in a sad way that a cultural center riding the coattails of talented writers isn’t proactive about nurturing writing.

It’s a bitter realization that when our cultural institutions don’t support our own writers, pues, peor. Writers and critics struggle to foster a culture of written expression, banging at the doors at AWP, starting their own presses, managing their own blogs. The noble struggle will go on, only without the national cultural centro. And that’s a lástima.

Years from now, historians will look back and wonder why New Mexico and the Nationial Hispanic Cultural Center abandoned writing, how NHCC didn’t find its way back to the NLWC. They shot our cultura in the foot. Rhetoricians will ask after the ethos of the place, how the institution made profits on spectacles and reinvested in more of the same without diverting a sum to support a renewed NLWC. How the institution recruited donors for highbrow endeavors but couldn’t scrape up the funding equivalent of a penny for the old guy.

Eliot’s vision of “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion” is what glittery stage happenings are, without writing. They don’t happen. Taking care to nurture and advance writers guarantees the possibility of having new spectacles to lure ticket-buying audiences. Avitia’s got her work cut out for her. I wish her energy and staff to accomplish all that, and one more goal next year: renacimiento of the National Latino Writers Conference.

NLWC writers 2012

Sponsoring the rebirth of NLWC defines a distinctiveness and importance for NHCC, an important step for NHCC recovering its national stature no matter how the political winds twist. I have a vision of talented raza writers walking across the broad plaza rushing to a seminar, smiling at the sound of the acequia's agua gushing into the pool. There's also a vision of those artists today, standing at the gates of the NHCC, shaking the bars and angrily kicking at the gates wanting to be included, wondering why they got kicked out in the first place?




Bless Me, Ultima Opera Premiere Scheduled for February 2018

La Bloga has followed with interest developing news of an opera based on Rudolfo Anaya’s novel Bless Me, Ultima. In January 2017, La Bloga-Tuesday (link) featured an interview with the opera's creator Héctor Armienta. Performance dates were still pending as Armienta was still finishing the music.


Recently La Bloga friend Teresa Márquez shared the good news Armienta, Opera Southwest, and the NHCC have set a date for a workshop performance in February 2018. The company has hosted tryouts and workshops in San Jose, CA and is taking the show on the road for the first time.

This premiere creates the ideal opportunity to visit New Mexico in Winter, both to enjoy the state’s spectacular landscapes and to see the work in progress for Héctor Armienta’s opera, Bless Me, Ultima.

Ticket-buyers don’t have to wear tuxedoes or evening dress to opera productions, but it’s likely some tipas and tipos like to show for the opera all dressed up in their Thursday best, especially February 18 for the first night. Others will be equally well turned-out through the Sunday matinee on the 25th. I wear my Pendleton or a sweatshirt when I go to an LA Opera spectacular. Placido and crew don’t care, as long as I enjoy the show.

Opera is a genuine visual and aural treat, with a few conventions about when to applaud and stuff, that someone inevitably miscues and gets dirty looks from the cognoscenti. Raza can be cognoscenti, too. Just be there and dig it. And dig it you will.

A night at the opera is fun so long as one remembers it's the “u” in fun that counts. Wrap yourself in the music—the power of the human body to produce sound will be a punch in the gut to some. Ultima’s cast features a 14-year old boy singer. This could be the launch of a major career.

In opera, the story, humor, melodies, and visual riches like sets, costumes, lighting and staging can be enchanting. I don’t know if the Producers plan on supertitles so listeners can read the words in Armienta’s English-language libretto. Subscriptions are open now. Individual seats go on sale in July.

I would not wait. Click here for ticket information: http://www.operasouthwest.org/operas/bless-me-ultima


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Arte Público Press' Kanellos Honored




GetLit Poetry Slam Hosted by LATC
Michael Sedano


Los Angeles Theater Center is a theater multiplex of five performance spaces joined to a luxurious marble-walled grand hall and lobby. The descent to the basement rest rooms takes visitors along a massive bank vault. Remodeled stairs to the balcony feature half inch thick glass and stainless steel rails. the balustrade overlooking the lobby gives unobstructed vistas of the huge and luxurious space.

The LATC is a great place for theater and a fabulous place for a poetry slam competition among teams from local high schools. That's what drew me to Spring Street early Thursday and Friday morning. Lend a hand with administrative chores and share the energy of dozens of Get Lit staffers and a thousand or more kids gathering to perform or cheer on their spoken word artists.

GetLit Classic Slam follows a wondrous format. The contestant chooses a poem by a well-known poet and writes a response poem. The contestant knits the two with narrative, working from memory to meet a time limit. It's a beautiful way to link generations by remembering in one's own voice good work from another time.



Registration keeps the kids outside as the coaches sign in and take a bag of credentials outside to waiting and cheering teams. A signal from Get Lit executives Diane Luby Lane or Amanda Pittman and the lobby doors fill with excited kids thronging toward their stage. There, an MC whips up enthusiasm before introducing the first contestant.

A panel of judges scores the panel of competitors. A few get selected to compete in the day's second round of competition, the afternoon's semi-finals.

The Get Lit experience cannot be matched by any other competitive activity. Reciting and performing spoken words to audiences of hundreds of peers produces pure exhilaration. At the end, the kid walks off stage into the waiting arms of the team.

For finalists, the experience of taking the Orpheum stage to a screaming full house will make all the work of honing the performance into a winner worth it. And it is.

Teams and individuals pose in front of a Get Lit seamless. An official photographer is there to document every team.  When the formal pose is done, the cell phones come out for exuberant selfies.

Get Lit published its first collection of work by Get Lit participants. A single copy sells for fifteen dollars at the venue. For details, click here. I sold one person the show special, 10 books for a hundred dollars. In addition, Get Lit would donate ten books to a participating high school, or a school of the customer's naming.

My heart went out to the schools who prepared for the competition but didn't make it to LA on time. On Friday morning, two forlorn registration bags lay tossed behind a sign. Maybe those teams can find a donor to pay for an overnight stay in DTLA. These kids and their coaches deserve a night in the big city.



On-line Floricanto On the Verge of Spring
Chuck Cuyjet, Devi S. Laskar, Jolaoso PrettyThunder, Jenuine Poetess, Get Christie Love


“Untitled” by Chuck Cuyjet
“Alive, Burning” by Devi S. Laskar
“winds of the West murmurs” by Jolaoso PrettyThunder
"mother of all bombs" by Jenuine Poetess
“Dear Pepsi” by Get Christie Love

“Untitled”
by Chuck Cuyjet

We woke up 49 years ago and the world was on fire. Today we wake to gassed children and wonder...
Someone asked the question
Who raised these crazed men
who gas children
who poison our air
who pour filth into our water
who fill our schools
with ignorance called knowledge
and who pontificate on their
own greatness?
We did.
No, of course not.
We shield
our loved offspring
with our own bodies
and love.
We teach them to respect
themselves, our values,
to work hard, to look
out for the other fella,
to protect our tribe,
And honor our god.
But as we look across
oceans, into the
hearts of darkness,
as we rattle our self righteous
swords, do we seek justice
or vengeance, or glory?
The riches the few gather
befoul their souls yet
in our secret selves
we envy them their ease
and never question
the cost.
So we replicate it
in our screams and calls
to our god to punish
them and reward us,
the good fathers and mothers
who have no sin, no stain
for we gas no children
in our warm houses
in winter and cool our frosty
asses on patios in the summer
sipping tea with ice cubes
rum drinks mixed with faux
concern of deaths so far away.
We don't gas children
We starve their souls
with the contempt for those
we arm.



Alive, Burning
by Devi S. Laskar

Burn everything to the bone.
Start clean and again will rise
hibiscus, diesel, dung, mango
mingling with night skin in this taxi.
Start clean and again will rise
a rw odor of green—
mingling with night skin in this taxi.
Money, envy, hunger filling the air.
A raw odor of green—
cauliflower patches and cabbage replace the landfill.
Money, envy, hunger filling the air.
From garbage grows food, from thieves spring farmers.
Cauliflower patches and cabbage replace the landfill.
The road hooks like shoelaces around shantytowns.
From garbage grows food, from thieves spring farmers.
All you see are red clay roofs and jaded faces.
The road hooks like shoelaces around shantytowns.
On his dashboard the driver keeps a statue of Durga.
All you see are red clay roofs and jaded faces.
The bronzed feet of this goddess of war will never touch the ground.
On his dashboard the driver keeps a statue of Durga.
But for my American dollar I would be you.
The bronzed feet of this goddess of war will never touch the ground,
pounding a rich man’s laundry on stones by a man-made lake.
But for my American dollar I would be you
eating food off the sooty plate of the street,
pounding a rich man’s laundry on stones by a man-made lake
alive and filled with resentment and wonder.
Eating food off the sooty plate of the street --
hibiscus, diesel, dung, mango,
alive and filled with resentment and wonder.
Burning everything to the bone.



winds of the West murmurs
by Jolaoso PrettyThunder

we summon you winds
of the West,
mother sister Jaguar,
come protect our medicine space
hunt down and devour those energies that do not belong to us,
teach us your ways beyond fear beyond anger beyond death,
beyond guilt,
beyond shame,
beyond all the mythologies and beliefs that no longer serve us.

teach us to be impeccable luminous beings who have no need
to engage in battle,
internally or eternally,
unless we choose to.

help us to be able to support ourselves and
have the ability to ask for and receive what we desire
so that we may step into who we are becoming.



"mother of all bombs"
by Jenuine Poetess

you cannot call a bomb
"mother"
mother is one
of any gender
who protects life
who gives life
who cherishes life
who nurtures life
who sustains life
who fosters life
who celebrates life
who empowers life
who cultivates life
who nourishes life
who heals life
you cannot call that
which destroys
which kills
which carves scars into the flesh
of people
of villages
of Earth
"mother"
do not poison such a word
with your filthy
greedy
murderous
treachery
no bomb is a mother




Dear Pepsi
by get christie love

Dear Pepsi
If you want to be a product of the revolution
Then send yourself into the fray,
Get gassed and pepper sprayed get trampled
Become marginalized and scary
Become irrelevant then made into a fetish.

There are steps involved and you haven't followed even the first rule of a revolt.
Say
Something.

Are you for all lives matter, against women who receive lower wages and
Yes you hired the tatted up gurl with the weave to deliver soda but,
Wait,
Nevermind
That was coke.

Pepsi,
If you wanted a March you should have
Sponsored one.
If you wanted product placement you should have sent
The Million men to the March on
Pepsi buses.
Given away pink pussy hats with every
Case of pop sold or
Maybe pink cans with cat ears.

You could have sent backpacks to underfunded schools or
Put Pepsi swirls on the drum kits at HBCU'S

Pepsi if you want  to be a product of the revolution
Why send the most generic  culturally ambiguous person alive-
No ass
That flat
Ever created a civilization

Dear Pepsi
 if you want to
Be a product of the revolution,
Write your manifesto on a spool of aluminum
Then send it to factory for cutting into cans.
Then tell the people to talk to each other, ask each person to post
Hashtag-
'What part did you get'?

Pepsi,
No jenner, no Kardashian,  no trump
Will ever be culturally relevant to any group who ever needed a spokesmodel.
Madonna at least
Would drink  the Pepsi then lift her leg to pee it out on the boot of a stormtrooper.

Dear Pepsi
To be a product of the revolution,
You will need more than stolen recycled images from Vietnam protests

You will need a legacy of
Conscious thinking,
And permission from water protectors
There is water in Pepsi, right?

Fly Pepsi to  Syria for
A photo op-
And see if I don't
Drive it all back in my chevy.

Dare me
Be daring

Corporate redundancy
Lack of imagination
Lazy marketing

Zero empathy
Zero taste
Zero filling
Zero flavor

You managed to anti revolt.
And you spent a lot of money on
Air.




fge

[En el género de narrativa no se hace distinción entre narrativa fantástica, realista contemporánea o realista histórica. Las biografías, recuerdos autobiográficos y los libros informativos pueden estar escritos en prosa o verso libre.]

by Ernest Hogan

MENTAL MENUDO: The Next Incarnation
By Sandra “Pocha” Peña
Fotos by Msedano

foto: Pocha Peña. Menudo bowls hover above Mental Menudo participants: Sergio Hernandez, Naiche Lujan, Susan, Michael Sedano, Manuel Urrutia, Victor Payan

On a balmy night this past week, Mental Menudo ignited anew in the heart of historic Los Angeles. As the Santa Ana winds cleared the air, a group of true believers in the power of community-building discourse gathered at La Plaza de Artes y Culturas to continue the circle of charlas created by the late great Gilbert “Magu” Lujan.

A Los Angeles-based painter, sculptor, and muralist, Magu was a founding member of “Los Four” and a beloved creative force. He drew sketches for seminal Chicano Art zine “Con Safos,” designed the Hollywood & Vine metro station, and inspired thousands with his fanciful depictions of Magulandia, a utopia of vibrant Chicanismo fused with nostalgic Americana.

Early in his college days, Magu saw a pattern of dysfunctional communication emerge from his fellow artists and activists. People in the movimiento were tearing each other apart when discussing everything from fine art and folk culture to science and social issues. Worse yet, vicious gossip and petty broncas were keeping some groups from even speaking each other. Magu recognized that these ideological &social divisions keep Latinos isolated from each other and disempowered. He set about to analyze and address the issue, creating Mental Menudo in the 1970’s.

Mental Menudo: Dinner and de-brief. Foreground, Victor Payan and Naiche Lujan, middle, Sandra "Pocha" Peña, Susan, Mario Trillo back, Diane Hernandez, Manuel Urrutia

Much like the soup these meetups were named after, “Menudo” a mix of cow entrails and vegetables, the ingredients need to be carefully cleaned and simmered before the mix can become a nourishing meal; similarly, the MENTAL Menudo needs volatile ideas carefully presented, transforming them into nourishing discussions.

In fleshing Mental Menudo out, Magu devised ground rules based on indigenous customs and non-violent communication, and created the3-part structure, led by 2 moderators, followed by a post-discussion feast. The result is a discussion that is far more dynamic than contentious. Many times, former adversaries emerge as allies, strangers often become friends. The post-discussion Mental Menudo feast is an equally important component of each session, where many great breakthroughs and connections happen.

Flash forward several decades and the impact of these gatherings is evident. Countless professional relationships, torrid romances, creative partnerships, political alliances and treasured friendships were fueled by these ideological feasts. Los Angeles, Pomona, San Diego and other host cities have seen great benefit from the networks Mental Menudo helped forge within the Latinx community.

Mental Menudo de-brief: Mario Trillo, Susan, Sandra "Pocha" Peña back, Naiche Lujan, Victor Payan

Today, Mental Menudo is poised to relaunch after falling dormant after Magu’s death. In a Getty-funded initiative, LA/LA, which spotlights Latinx contributions to contemporary art, Gilbert Magu Lujan is in the spotlight once again. The Getty is extending its celebrated Pacific Standard Time initiative into the Latinx Arts & Culture, celebrating the impact artists have made to contemporary arts in Southern California. This Fall, Magu’s UCI retrospective will become an important milestone for a body of work, returning to it’s creator’s alma mater in glory. Continuing the artist’s legacy, his son, Naiche Lujan was invited by the Getty to advise on Magu’s exhibit and incubate a new Mental Menudo cohort that will stage a live demo in October.

“The central idea is to communicate, inform and network with other artists.” – Magu Lujan

Stay tuned for Mental Menudo: The Next Incarnation, amulti-generational convening of Mental Menudistas this October 2017 to coincide with Magu’s UCI show. Not only will the Getty showcase a new group of Mental Menudo moderators, but also stage a full demonstration of a traditional gathering. Mental Menudo practicioners believe that in consciously connecting our youth, peers and elders through nurturing platicas; we help our community survive & thrive beyond any difficulties ahead.

Help your community blossom, have some Mental Menudo!

For more information on Mental Menudo, visit the Mental Menudo Facebook page or contact Naiche Lujan: naichelujan@gmail.com

Mental Menudo April 2017 front, Susan, Diane Hernandez, Sandra "Pocha" Peña back, Sergio Hernandez, Naiche Lujan, Manuel Urrutia, Mario Trillo, Michael Sedano, Victor Payan

About today's Guest Columnist: Sandra Pocha Peña


 Sandra Pocha Peña is a multi-disciplinary artist based in California and Texas. Growing up Chicano and Bolivian in the shadow of Disneyland cultivated her skill at subverting pop culture. She produced a music video for OC punk band The Vandals that aired on MTV and went on to study video art in Spain. Peña received two BA’s, in Sociology and Visual Arts from UC San Diego and completed the prestigious UCLA School of Film MFA program.  Throughout the ‘90s and 2000s, Pocha worked in Spanish-language television, producing game shows, variety shows and promos for Univision, Telemundo and Fox Latin American. She was also one of the producers on hit indie feature East Side Story written/directed by Carlos Portugal, creator of the Hulu hit series East Los High.

Peña went on to program/direct film festivals in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Antonio's CineFestival, the longest-running Latino film fest in the US.  A dedicated writer,Peña is best known for her seminal film essay, "The Pocha Manifesto" published in Jump Cut film journal, reprinted in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures by Scott MacKenzie and featured in Chon Noriega’s classic Chicanos and Film anthology.  She has also written features for La Opinion, the OC Register, Tu Cuidad, Frontera and Chicano Art magazines among others.

As a fine artist, Peña won a Warhol Foundation prize for video/performance; a NALAC artist fellowship for her textile art; Woman of the Year for the 46th Congressional District; University of Washington diversity speaking fellowship;and media arts teaching residencies from LULAC, the James Irvine Foundation, San Anto Cultural Arts, OCCTAC, as well as directing the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center “Cine en el Barrio” program.

Pocha currently serves as Vice Chair of the Santa Ana Art Commission, continues writing, teaching, and lecturing on matters of race, silent cinema and women in the arts.



Rola After Rola: A New Latinopia Feature


Tune in to all day raza rock and otras rolas at Latinopia. You can run it behind your other screens and dig the sounds.

Click this link: http://latinopia.com/blogs/this-week-on-chicano-music-chronicles-dr-loco/

•             Hardcover: 352 pages
•             Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (October 17, 2017)
•             Language: English
•             ISBN-10: 1524700487
•             ISBN-13:978-1524700485

Daniel Cano

When people ask me where my stories come from, experiences or imagination, I often answer, “Yes. Both.” The question is a good one. Not all experiences make good stories, and imagination, often, falters. The well runs dry, so to speak. It is those times, I hit the road, like the band Steppenwolf says, “Looking for adventure.”

Sometimes, I return to find the adventures not so adventurous nor the imagination so imaginary. But, then, something strange happens. Given time, like a good mole ranchera, I allow the ingredients time to blend and simmer. Little by little, they, often, acquire the right taste. But unlike mole, for me, this might take years.

Recently, as I re-read Cervantes, a line leaped out at me. After Quixote’s victory over two herds of sheep he saw, not as sheep but as marauding enemy armies, the narrator told us: “In spite of this, however, the worthy gentleman contrived to behold in his imagination what he did not see and what did not exist in reality.” So, do we really see what we think we see?

September 11, 2001 had just passed. The U.S. was still raw. I’d planned to take a bus from the corner of Venice and Sepulveda boulevards, near my home, and head into Mexico to see how far I could get, and, of course, search for a story. Two and a-half weeks later, I reached the guitar-making capital of the world, Paracho, Michoacan.

I’ll start at the beginning. The 333, Orange Line, took me east to the downtown L.A. bus station. Really, I didn’t even know if there was still a bus station anymore, or if the Gray Hound or Trailways were still operating. So, I figured I’d just jump onto the local Metropolitan bus and go to the end of the line. Of course, my wife wasn’t happy with my plan—or lack of one. How could I go to a bus station I didn’t even know it existed?



I’m an existentialist by nature. I reasoned that of course it must exist. People take buses all the time. So, you can understand how relieved I was when the 333 pulled into the L.A. bus terminal, and I saw the long-distance buses lined up.

I bought a ticket to Hermosillo, via Nogales. I had breakfast and talked to a few backpackers, mostly Europeans. We left the station around 2:00PM. I began to question my plan when it took us three hours to reach Riverside, where we stayed for 15 or 20 minutes, just enough time for a snack and a cup of coffee. When I returned to my seat, I spotted a Chicana, probably in her 40s, a bit hefty, sitting in the seat next to me. (It had been empty.)

As we pulled out of Riverside, the woman asked me where I was going. “That sound like fun,” she said when I told her my plan. She said she was on her way to Miami, and since 9-11, there was no way she was flying. I said, “Miami is a long way.” She said, “You don’t understand. I have the worst luck in the world, worse than anybody. If I had been flying on 9-11, I would have been on one of those planes. That’s how bad my luck is.”

We talked for a while. The sun had set as we passed the Colorado River. She pulled out a magazine and reached up to turn on the overhead light. I could hear the button click, but no light appeared. She kept clicking the button. Nothing. She turned to me and said, her tone dead serious, “See. It’s already starting.”

We entered Nogales around 3:00AM. Those heading east stayed on the bus. Those of us traveling into Mexico crossed to the Nogales side of the border. A bus waited for us, and we headed to Hermosillo, where I spent the rest of the day and night, getting the kinks out of my body. I bought a book, Narcotraficante, by a Mexican writer, and a CD of Chalino Sanchez to keep me entertained.

The next day, I made it to Alamos, Sonora, a town that had captured my imagination since I interviewed Fred Machado a few months earlier. Fred was a descendent of the Westside Machado family. He told me his relatives had been with the first party of pobladores who left Alamos in 1779, or thereabouts, to settle Mission San Gabriel.


In the late 1700s, in the Mexican mind, nothing existed north of Alamos. Except for Fray Crespi’s earlier expedition, white men considered Alamos the end of civilization. Anything north was the heart of darkness, a primitive, mythical land filled with images of fantastical people, animals, and death.

Fred told me that the pobladores, composed of soldiers, their families, Indian and African guides headed into this god forsaken desert in the hopes of settling this new land. Two parties left Alamos, one party crossed El Golfo de Mexico by ship, and the other by land into what is today Arizona.
The Machados left with the overland expedition. Some place near Gila Bend, running low on supplies, the expedition leaders decided to split up. Half the group, mostly women and children, continued into San Gabriel. The other half, mostly men, stayed behind hoping to be resupplied. As the story goes, Indians who felt threatened by intruders, attacked, and killed them all.

By the early 1800s, the Machado family and other relatives, the Lugos and Talamantez received grazing rights to settle Rancho La Ballona, which covered what we know today as Marina Del Rey, Venice, and Culver City.

I hit Alamos in time for their annual fiesta. I had a good time, though I was disappointed that no monuments existed telling the history the town played in settling Alta California and Arizona. When I talked to a few old-timers, none of them knew anything of their town’s place in history. So, finding nothing adventurous in Alamos, I once again boarded the bus and headed into the wilds of Sinaloa, through Culiacan, birthplace of the Sinaloan cartel. My next destination was Rosario, Sinaloa, sister city of Santa Monica, California, my mother’s place of birth.

Rosario, the birthplace of La Grande, Lola Beltran, is a small town an hour or so from the coast. The people are friendly and mostly everybody has been to the States. There are few restaurants or hotels but plenty of pictures of La Grande, her house now a museum.



I wasn’t sure of the town’s attraction until some older men insisted on telling me the best places to visit. They argued about location and directions, which they never did get straight; though, they seemed satisfied with their attempt, as if sincerity carried more weight than correct information.
After visiting ruins, like the Portal Colonial, which one woman claimed had been a store and another remembered as a bus terminal, I walked to what appeared to have been a basilica, today in a slow process of decay. A plaque on the wall noted the date as 1760. A gardener working on the grounds told me the townspeople destroyed the church looking for gold, which was said to be hidden underneath. “Did they find it,” I asked? “Yes,” he answered. “And they are still finding more, not just gold but silver and ore.”

A traveler must be skeptical. Who knows what to believe, what is real and what is imagined? Could a herd of sheep in all actuality be a marauding army?


The swankiest restaurant in Rosario is located at the top of a hill, overlooking a lagoon, surrounded by trees and vegetation. More hungry than tired, I made the trek to the top. As I walked to the entrance, I noticed a five or six-foot alligator—or crocodile (I don’t know the difference, something about the snouts) splayed near the main doors. When I looked closer, I saw part of the head had been destroyed. My imagination took flight. Maybe the owner of the restaurant was a big game hunter and the alligator a trophy from Africa or Malaysia, at the very least Cancun. What I did know was that Sinaloa wasn’t home to either alligators or crocodiles.

After I ordered my food, I asked the waitress, a matronly woman, about the alligator. She told me that it was caught and killed in the lagoon. “Maybe it made its way up from the beach,” she surmised.
I didn’t think that was very likely, the beach being an hour away by car. I didn’t recall alligators hatching in oceans, anyway. She was busy and didn’t show much interest in my curiosity.

Before I left the restaurant, I took another gander at the alligator. It looked sad, like it didn’t belong here.

Near the town, I saw a young man I’d met earlier, Miguel, a security guard at La Grande’s museum. He was in his yard swinging in a hammock, shaded by palm and banana trees. I asked him about the alligator. I knew there just had to be a story there.

Miguel told me that a man had brought the alligator, at the time no bigger than his hand, to his home. He built a pond in his yard and let the kids come around to see it. When the alligator reached two-feet in length, it escaped from the yard and made its way to the lagoon. The man went down, and with the help of some weekend fishermen, he caught the overgrown lizard and returned it to the pond in his yard. The incident got attention. People now could say they got to view the alligator that had escaped captivity.

Time passed and the alligator grew. The man’s yard was no match for the monster. Once again, it escaped and found the lagoon. The man looked for it, but the “thing” had gotten too smart, outwitting him at every turn. Still, nobody seemed to care much since the lagoon had become polluted and kids no longer swam in the water. But when fish started disappearing, the rumbling began. Of course, everyone figured it was the alligator having its way. But the situation didn’t seem enough reason to cause any great alarm, so they let the creature slide. Of course, the beast continued to grow.
Then chickens and roosters began disappearing. People who lived near the lagoon did grow alarmed. The last straw, was when Senora Mendoza couldn’t find her suckling pig. If the alligator could down a pig, what would stop it from devouring a child?

Miguel described how each night, the boats filled the lagoon. Flashlights and lanterns lit up the night, night after night, the alligator hunters out there trying to bring in the wily monster, a scene right out of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Just when it seemed that they would never find it, they all heard a shotgun blast, one single blast. That was it. They’d killed the terrorist, which was really a giant lizard.

Folks argued what to do with the body. The skin wasn’t fine enough for boots, belts, or other quality leatherware. So, the owner of the restaurant put in a bid to buy the beast. Nobody could top his offer. He had the animal stuffed, and set it at the entrance of his restaurant, a curiosity piece, of sorts. He figured, it would draw out-of-towners to his establishment, and business in Rosario would boom.
Miguel said, “But that was a long time ago. Most people don’t even remember the alligator is up there, and for sure, most of them don’t remember how it got there.”

The next day, I woke early and walked to the bus stop, nothing more than a bent sign at the side of the road, a hungover, but talkative, young beauty keeping me entertained for the three-hour wait. I didn’t care. I wanted to catch whatever bus came my way.

Like I said earlier, I made it as far as Paracho, where I had something of an emotional meltdown, which had nothing to do with the alligator, or crocodile, whichever you prefer.

Or maybe it had everything to do with the alligator when I began to realize, the deeper into Mexico I travelled, the more of a foreigner I became. Like the alligator, my home was elsewhere, and no matter how Mexican I thought I was, something kept reminding me that I was just a visitor.

From Paracho, I caught the next bus, northeast, heading towards Jalisco, where I still had some family living out on the ranchos. With luck, I could make it to Parral de Chihuahua in four days and visit the corner where another execution had taken place, that of general Francisco Villa.

Melinda Palacio

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Welcomes Cuba

My post for today will be short and sweet. This week I am traveling back to California in our recovered Honda Element. (In case you missed the story on La Bloga, read all about it). Considering our car insurance company was only going to give us at most four thousand dollars for our old car, we feel fortunate that our stolen car was recovered. This means we don't have to think about spending forty thousand for a new car. I always forget how challenging it is to write a post while traveling from coast to coast. Don't get me wrong, I have much to report on, such as the first week of Jazz Fest in New Orleans and the crazy people guarding the monuments. The confederate statues in New Orleans are coming down, but there are some who feel the need to leave candles and confederate flags because they don't want their history of slavery erased. Also, this year, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival celebrates Cuba with non-stop cuban music and yummy cuban food. If you go, make sure you try the ropa vieja. At jazz fest, the food is almost as important as the music. Today, you can get your Cinco de Mayo on with Mariachi Jalisco at 1pm at the Jazz and Heritage Stage or Earth, Wind, and Fire at 5pm at Congo Square, or salsa and rumba all day at the Cultural Exchange Pavilion Celebrates Cuba. Here's the complete line-up for today. Tomorrow, the day belongs to Stevie Wonder and the lucky ticket holders. I, unfortunately, will not be there for the closing weekend. I'm already setting my sights on next weekend, when I will be reading poetry with Mark Fabionar (Back Home: A Clean Purple Haze and Radical Spaces of Possibility) in Orcutt at the Core Winery, May 13, Saturday at 7:30 pm in Old Town Orcutt.

La Loba Loca

La Loba grinding hierbas

Hierbas

Elder Mujer hands preparing herbs

hand milling with stone

Truth. Beauty. All you need to know.
Michael Sedano


“¿Es del monte, o de la casa?”

I was acquiring language, English at home, Spanish at my grandmother’s house. Gramma divided the world into wild and domestic, a good way to understand the role and function of things that are safe and things to avoid for a 3-year old who was allowed to wander at will in the spacious back yard and garden.

Gramma had gallinas, chivas, a marrano, and a huge white Leghorn rooster who, one day, beat the heck out of me when I entered the jaula. Gramma came running when she heard my screams as the rooster leaped on me, beat my face with flapping wings, pecked furiously at my tiny chest. He probably knocked me to the dirt, I don’t remember that part. I remember we ate caldo de pollo that day.

My gosh, I loved that back yard with its nopal boundary, excusado, los animales de la casa. Even more, I loved the jardín with its coffee cans and pots holding canela-scented claveles, geraniums, and myriad flowers, where vegetables of all sorts sprouted from the earth to our plates. One plant particularly drew me, a brilliant red flower that covered the pencas of the hanging plant, whose tiny espinas were potent reasons not to touch but only look.

That was my first Epiphyllum.

Scion of my first Epiphyllum

My grandmother migrated from Michoacan to Texas, to Kansas, Texas again, eventually to Colton and San Bernardino before setting down roots in Redlands, Califas. That plant made the journey with her. When my mom left home to start her own family, one of her few possessions was that red Epiphyllum. The red one is the first cutting I took after I got married then returned from overseas and set down roots in the LA area.

My mother became an Epiphyllum collector, expanding from the red to any color she could find. We’d go to the Presidio at San Diego where old plants snaked around the grounds. Snip. The zoo. Snip. The Fuschia gardens at Point Loma provided several specimens, often gifts after she struck up conversations with the nurseryman or a Mexicano gardener. Snip. She’d exchange cuttings with friends and her collection expanded. She attended Epiphyllum shows at the Orange Show, or the LA Arboretum, to see and buy precious cuttings.





She rented out the family home when my Dad was transferred to Utah and they moved. One inspection tour, Mom was upset to discover the Air Force wife had set up a table and had made cuttings of every plant. That wasn’t in the lease, but my Mom got over it. After all, Epiphyllums are supposed to be shared. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

When Mom grew ill and lay in her hospital bed, I brought her dozens of fotos of her flowers, some from my own cuttings of her plants, others from her garden. She cheered up at the sight of her precious treasures, named them, told me their stories. She came alive! Truth and beauty heal.

When she came to live with me, I brought some of the smaller specimens with her so she could be near them. When Mom died, I moved the rest of the collection to my Pasadena home and loved them as I knew she wanted them loved. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”


Here is truth, a gallery of the 2017 blooms. Some of them--the season is still going. It's my mother's collection but I grow it every year from friends, and sales. In SoCal, visit the Pacific Epiphyllum Nursery in Baldwin Park CA for a heart-breakingly wondrous collection--totally affordable but you can't buy them all. Can you? I've bought only two from this place. link


Many of my Epiphyllums come to flower in the Spring months. Others will wait for summer’s heat to bud, swell, and open. The plant prefers to open at night. I track their progress daily, anticipating, hoping. Every morning, I rush out with first light to photograph the truth nature has given me overnight.

I've had blossoms in December, convincing me that Juan Diego didn't bring rosas to the Archbishopric, but epiphytes. Since the invaders didn't have names for the Epiphyllum, the closest word was "rosa." See "The Miracle at Tepeyac" where I recount the story. (link)

An Epiphyllum blossom lives a day, two, three at most. Their most glorious existence is that first morning. Only a few wear perfume, that a human nose can smell. When the flower has a scent its dizzying sweetness permeates the air around it.

This dinner-plate size Yellow and White Epiphyllum exudes a wondrous perfume.

The “epi” is easily nurtured. Keep it in a small pot to promote blossoming. Water and feed every few weeks, and when the earth dries. Epiphyllum fanciers have written books about the plants, knowing the names of the hybrids and coloration styles, and all manner of technical stuff. Me, I like to remember my gramma’s lesson on the universality of growing things: that red “orchid cactus” was del monte but it finds a welcome home en la casa. That’s why, above all, the most important element of raising Epiphyllums is generosity: share cuttings with friends.

“that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

White-fringed Purple Epiphyllum opening. In the morning there will be a glorious show.

White-fringed Purple Epiphyllum in early a.m. light

Scott. E. Haselton. Epiphyllum Handbook. Pasadena CA: Abbey Gardens Press, 1951. Fading white giant, third day.

Photography note. I use a 100mm lens on my Canon T2i, a low ISO setting, a tripod, and remote control to allow for long exposures at f/32 to show depth of focus into the heart of the blossom. For wide framing, I use the 18-55mm lens racked out to provide the best view and focus. These print spectacularly and look powerfully alluring on a wall. I use dye-based ink on 13" x 19" archival paper to offer a one hundred year lifetime to each print.

In her glory she was white with yellow and wore a sweet perfume. A couple days and a night of rain and she's Cinderella's gown at 12:01 a.m.

Gentrification Threatens Here & Now

Crowd-sourcing can be a wonderful way for gente to share in good works and causes. Trouble is, there are so many people asking for gifts for anything from a funeral to a summer vacation. It's easy to disregard frivolous pleas, but vitally important to lend a hand when one's able.


El Sereno's Here & Now community center, has been forced to join the crowds of causes asking for help. In this case, it's the type of worthwhile goal that I hope will attract 180,000 people with one dollar each, or six people with $30,000 to offer, or anything in between. The magic number is $180K.

Here's what Iris de Anda, poet, musician, healer, community activist says about this cause:

For the last 15 years, The Eastside Café has been an autonomous collective that’s been working towards building self-determination and providing free self-empowerment services. For the last 3 years, we’ve been working towards creating a feasible deal to purchase our building due to gentrification.

This past week we were made aware that there was already a purchase deal in the works for the building.

On Thursday, May4th, at 10am, we confronted that buyer and negotiated a 10-day interruption of a sale. This sale would compromise our occupancy and the wellbeing of our community severely. We have 8 days, Sunday, May 13th, to fundraise $180,000 to get the buyer to back out and began the acquisition process with the donations we’ll be receiving

We the people from Eastside Café, community residents of El Sereno, Artists, Activists, Professors, students, parents, grandparents and so on are here today, to humbly ask you for your financial support to help us purchase the building that sits on the corner of Maycrest and Huntington Dr. in El Sereno, North East Los Angeles. Your contribution will go directly towards the acquisition of the building that will continue to be a thriving space and sanctuary for our rooted communities. The time is now to start buying land for ourselves. Thank you!

Click here to view the Facebook video Here & Now put together to move your heart from moral support to a credit card:

https://www.facebook.com/iris.deanda/videos/1513332398706682/




Santa Fe Springs, CA Art Fest This Weekend!

At The Clark Estate.
10211 Pioneer Blvd, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670



Where in the world is Santa Fe Springs? The one in California, that is.

That's where there's a major art festival and sale happening. Featured artist Pola Lopez has been feverishly creating work for this. Here's an opportunity not only to see Pola's masterpieces, but to take one home for that spot on the wall that's screaming for beauty, truth, and Pola Lopez!

 Ada’s Violin written by Susan Hood and illustrated by Sally Wern Comport. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2016. ISBN: 978-1481-430-951 


 The Only Road written by Alexandra Diaz. Simon & Schuster, 2016. ISBN: 978-1481457507



Honorable Mention Titles 


Malaika’s Costume written by Nadia L. Hohn and illustrated by Irene Luxbacher. Groundwood Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-1554987542 


The Distance Between Us written by Reyna Grande. Aladdin, Simon & Schuster, 2016. ISBN: 978-1481463713



Commended Titles 


Burn Baby Burn written by Meg Medina. Candlewick Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0763674670 


Juana & Lucas written by Juana Medina. Candlewick Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0763672089 


Lion Island written by Margarita Engle. Simon & Schuster, 2016. ISBN: 978-1481461122 


Lowriders to the Center of the Earth written by Cathy Camper and illustrated by Raúl the Third. Chronicle Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-1452123431


 Mamá the Alien / Mamá La Extraterrestre written by René Colato Laínez and illustrated by Laura Lacámara. Children’s Book Press, Lee & Low Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-0892392988 


Margarito’s Forest / El Bosque de Don Margarito written by Andy Carter and illustrated by Allison Havens. Hard Ball Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0997979701 


Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat written by Javaka Steptoe. Hachette Book Group, 2016. ISBN: 978-0316213882 


Rainbow Weaver – Tejedora del arcoirís written by Linda Elovitz Marshall and illustrated by Elisa Chavarri. Children’s Book Press, Lee & Low Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-0892393749 


Shame the Stars written by Guadalupe García McCall. Lee & Low Books, 2016. ISBN: 978- 1620142783


Somos Como Los Nubes / We are Like the Clouds written by Jorge Argueta and illustrated by Alfonso Ruano. Groundwood Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-1554988495 


The Memory of Light written by Francisco X. Stork. Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic, 2016. ISBN: 978-0545474320


The Princess and the Warrior written Duncan Tonatiuh. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2016. ISBN: 978-1419721304


The School the Aztec Eagles Built written by Dorinda Makanaōnalani Nicholson. Lee & Low Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-1600604409

by Ernest Hogan

And now ... some Mexicans that recently crossed the border -- screw any wall or other pendejadas trumped up by North American politicians or Hitler fan boys.  Humans migrate and so does good literature.

This week's lineup features new books (to U.S. readers) from Mexican authors.  The list includes a political thriller from a gutsy journalist; a metaphorical masterpiece from an author hailed as Mexico's greatest living novelist; a young adult story set in a magical library; history from a crime novelist; and the release of a "lost" treasure by one of Mexico's more famous authors. Something for everyone?



Milena, or The Most Beautiful Femur in the World
Jorge Zepeda Patterson
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
Restless Books - May, 2017

[from the publisher]

A Mexican Master’s Global Thriller of Sex, Power, and Corruption

The Los Angeles Times reported that Mexico is "one of the world's deadliest places for journalists," being surpassed in 2016 only by Syria and Afghanistan. That harrowing fact puts into stark relief the kind of bravery it takes to expose the truth there, and the powerful forces determined to suppress it. Jorge Zepeda Patterson has been one such journalist for decades, reporting on crime and corruption at the highest levels of power. In recent years, he's turned his talents and experience to fiction, exploring our darkest human impulses—and the better impulses that resist them.

His novel Milena, or The Most Beautiful Femur in the World dives into the gritty world of international sex trafficking. Inspired by a 17-year-old girl he encountered in Mexico who'd been forced to become a sex slave, Zepeda explores human resilience in the face of the worst extremes imaginable, as well as the vast underworld of human traffickers and its many links with power. Along with Milena's story, who's on the run after escaping from her imprisonment, we get the tale of three impassioned friends who, each for his or her own reason, turn detective and race to find Milena before her former captors catch her and force her back into sex slavery. The result is a pulse-pounding romp across Europe and the Americas that reads like a Mexican version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

When it was first published, Milena, or the Most Beautiful Femur in the World won the Premio Planeta, the Spanish-speaking world's richest literary prize. We're proud to be bringing this important international voice to English-language readers.

Economist and sociologist Jorge Zepeda Patterson was born in Mazatlán, México, in 1952. He received a masters degree from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales and a doctorate in political science from The Sorbonne. After his journalistic training at El País, he was the founding editor of the newspapers Siglo 21 and Público in Guadalajara, and was later editor-in-chief of El Universal. He has authored numerous books on political analysis, and his weekly column appears in over twenty newspapers in Mexico. He currently edits the news website SinEmbargo.mx.



The Golden Cockerel and Other Writings
Juan Rulfo
Translated by Douglas J. Weatherford
Deep Vellum Publishing  - May, 2017

[from the publisher]

The Golden Cockerel is the legendary lost novella from Mexico’s mega-influential Juan Rulfo, published here in English for the first time on the 100th anniversary of his birth, introducing this masterwork into Rulfo’s timeless canon, collected with previously-untranslated or hard-to-find writings by the author, most never before published in English, heralding a landmark event in world literature.

Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) was one of Mexico’s premier authors of the twentieth century and an important precursor of “magical realism” in Latin American writing. Rulfo has been credited with influencing the work of several generations of Latin American writers, including Sergio Pitol and Gabriel García Márquez. He is well known for his novel, Pedro Páramo, and short story collection, The Burning Plain (El llano en llamas). Deep Vellum’s forthcoming publication of The Golden Cockerel & Other Writings introduces his cinematic novella, originally made into an award-winning film, into English for the first time, along with a collection of rare, previously untranslated writings. Rulfo received Mexico’s National Prize for Literature (Premio Nacional de Literatura) in 1970, was elected to the Mexican Academy of Language (Academia Mexicana de la Lengua) in 1980, and received the Cervantes Prize (Premio Cervantes), the highest literary award in Spanish, in 1985. Rulfo suffered from lung cancer in his final months and died on January 7, 1986 at his home in Mexico City.



Patria 1: 1854-1858 (Spanish Edition)
Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Planeta México - May, 2017

[from the publisher]

«—Benditos seamos los mexicanos, de derrota en derrota hemos abierto las puertas de la victoria definitiva. Se inicia la era de la razón, nuestro Siglo de las Luces.

—¿Y por cuánto tiempo? —preguntó Guillermo Prieto, el airecillo ramplón de la tarde le sacudía la cabellera leonada.
 
Ignacio Ramírez, llamado por sus amigos y enemigos El Nigromante, dudó; durante un instante se mesó la dispareja barba de chivo. Prieto no lo dejó seguir pensando:
 
—Perdón por mi ataque de pesimismo. ¿Acaso importa? Un segundo de fulgor, diez minutos, dos años... Y luego a volver a empezar. ¿No es ese el destino de un pueblo sabio?, ¿pelear eternamente?»

En tan sólo 15 años México se vio sacudido por la Revolución de Ayutla, que acabaría con la dictadura de Santa Anna; la batalla por la Constitución de 1857, el golpe militar y la Guerra de Reforma; la intervención anglo-franco-española, la agresión militar francesa y la guerra de guerrillas contra el imperio de Maximiliano.
 
Los protagonistas de la resistencia, de la república armada, fueron una generación de ciudadanos endiabladamente inteligentes, agudos, esforzados, laboriosos; personajes terriblemente celosos de su independencia y espíritu crítico, honestos hasta la absoluta pobreza. Los liberales puros, los llamados rojos.
 
Una década de exhaustiva investigación culmina en esta obra de tres tomos en la que Paco Ignacio Taibo II consigue retratar las simpatías y enemistades, los errores y las genialidades de uno de los periodos más decisivos y fundacionales de nuestra historia nacional: los años que van de 1854 a 1867.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Gijón, España, 11 de Enero de 1949
Historiador y escritor es, entre otras muchas cosas, prófugo de tres escuelas superiores, participante del movimiento estudiantil del 68 y fundador del género neopolicíaco en América Latina, además de profesor universitario y fundador de diferentes publicaciones culturales. Autor de diecinueve novelas, tres libros de cuentos, libros de historia, varias antologías, libros de reportaje y crónica publicados en veintiún países, sus obras han sido mencionadas entre los "libros del año" en The New York Times, Le Monde o el L. A. Times. Ha recibido el Premio Nacional de Historia INAH (1986), el Premio Internacional de Novela Planeta-Joaquín Mortiz y tres veces el Premio Dashiell Hammet a la mejor novela policíaca, y fundó -y dirigió hasta 2012- el festival literario de la Semana Negra de Gijón. Entre sus obras de ensayo destacan Ernesto Guevara, también conocido como el Che o Pancho Villa. Una biografía narrativa.




Kingdom Cons
Yuri Herrera
Translated by Lisa Dillman
And Other Stories - June, 2017

[from the publisher]

In the court of the King, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part crime romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.

A powerful and memorable meditation on the social and economic value of art in a world ruled by the pursuit of power. Publishers Weekly

Born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970, Yuri Herrera studied Politics in Mexico, Creative Writing in El Paso and took his PhD in literature at Berkeley. His first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, was published to great critical acclaim in 2015 and included in many Best-of-Year lists, including The Guardian‘s Best Fiction and NBC News’s Ten Great Latino Books, going on to win the 2016 Best Translated Book Award. He is currently teaching at the University of Tulane, in New Orleans.




 The Wild Book
Juan Villoro
Translated by Lawrence Schimel
 Restless Books - October, 2017

[from the publisher]

Juan is looking forward to spending the summer having adventures with his best friend when he gets terrible news: not only are his parents separating, but he has to go live with his strange uncle Tito, who lives in a rambling home with three cats and about one million books. Shy and wary, Juan starts to explore Tito’s library, which is unlike any Juan has ever seen: the books are arranged in strange sections like "Motors That Make No Noise,” "Cheeses That Stink But Taste Delicious,” and "How to Govern Without Being President," and some of them seem to change location each time you look for them. In fact, Tito tells him that a book finds a reader when it’s needed, and not the other way around.

Soon, Tito lets his nephew in on a secret: Juan is a Princeps Reader, to whom books respond in a very special way, and Tito needs his help finding a special volume called The Wild Book, which has never allowed itself to be read. Juan is joined in the quest by his little sister and the pretty girl who works at the pharmacy across the street, and together they battle the nefarious Pirate Book, which steals words out of existing stories. Over the summer, with the help of his new friends, Juan learns all sorts of secrets about world classics from Alice in Wonderland to The Metamorphosis, and overcomes his fear of change and the unfamiliar.

Mexican master Juan Villoro’s The Wild Book is an unforgettable adventure story about books, libraries, and above all the power of reading, with as many life lessons as introductions to literary classics.

Juan Villoro is Mexico’s most prolific, prize-winning author, playwright, journalist, and screenwriter. His books have been translated into multiple languages. Several of his books have appeared in English, including his celebrated 2016 essay collection on soccer brought out by Restless Books, God Is Round. Villoro lives in Mexico City and is a visiting lecturer at Yale and Princeton universities.

____________________________________________________________

Later.


Manuel Ramosis the author of several novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction books and articles. His collection of short stories, The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories, was a finalist for the 2016 Colorado Book Award.My Bad: A Mile High Noirwas published by Arte Público Press in 2016.