a publication of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

October 2011 | Vol. 24 Issue 8

San Antonio, Tejas

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INSIDE: La Voz del Zocalo series returns: What kind of a place is home? • We Want Environmental Justice in San Antonio • The Hays St. Bridge at Risk Plus! Rigoberta Menchú announces run for president of Guatemala, a book review tribute

VOZ VISION STATEMENT: La Voz de Esperanza speaks for many individual, progressive voices who are gente-based, multi-visioned and milagro-bound. We are diverse survivors of materialism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, violence, earth-damage, speciesism and cultural and political oppression. We are recapturing the powers of alliance, activism and healthy conflict in order to achieve interdependent economic/spiritual healing and fuerza. La Voz is a resource for peace, justice, and human rights, providing a forum for criticism, information, education, humor and other creative works. La Voz provokes bold actions in response to local and global problems, with the knowledge that the many risks we take for the earth, our body, and the dignity of all people will result in profound change for the seven generations to come.

ATTENTION VOZ READERS: If you have a correction you want to make on your mailing label please send it in to lavoz@esperanzacenter.org. If you do not wish to continue on the mailing list for whatever reason please notify us as well. La Voz is provided as a courtesy to people on the mailing list of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. The subscription rate is $35 per year. The cost of producing and mailing La Voz has substantially increased and we need your help to keep it afloat. To help, send in your subscriptions, sign up as a monthly donor, or send in a donation to the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. Thank you. -GAR

La Voz deEsperanza

October 2011vol. 24 issue 8

© 2011 Esperanza Peace & Justice CenterAll Rights Reserved.

EditorGloria A. Ramírez

DesignMonica V. Velásquez

ContributorsMarisol Cortez (in collaboration with

María Berriozábal, Genevieve Rodríguez & Graciela Sánchez),

Gary Houston, Yoly Zentella

La Voz CollectiveJuanita Gallardo, Gloria Hernández,

Gina Lee, Elpidia López, Margarita McAuliffe, Ray McDonald,

Denise Medellin, Maria Medellin, Angelita H. Merla, Lucy & Ray Pérez,

Eliz Platz, Sophia Riveram, Rose Rodríguez, Eric Tagle,

Lucila Vicencio

Esperanza DirectorGraciela I. Sánchez

Esperanza Staff Imelda Arismendez, Verónica Castillo,

Jessica O. Guerrero, Amanda Haas, Monica V. Velásquez

Conjunto de Nepantleras-Esperanza Board of Directors-

Brenda Davis, Jessica O. Guerrero, Araceli Herrera, Rachel Jennings,

Amy Kastely, Kamala Platt, Ana Ramírez, Gloria A. Ramírez, Rudy Rosales, Nadine Saliba, Graciela Sánchez

• We advocate for a wide variety of social, economic & environmental justice issues.• Opinions expressed in La Voz are not

necessarily those of the Esperanza Center.

La Voz de Esperanza is a publication of

The Esperanza Peace & Justice Center 922 San Pedro, San Antonio, TX 78212

(on the corner of Evergreen Street)210.228.0201 • fax 210.228.0000

www.esperanzacenter.org

Inquiries/articles can be sent to:lavoz@esperanzacenter.orgArticles due by the 8th of each month

Policy Statements* We ask that articles be visionary, progressive, instructive & thoughtful. Submissions must be

literate & critical; not sexist, racist, homophobic, violent, or oppressive & may be edited for length.

* All letters in response to Esperanza activities or articles in La Voz will be considered for publication. Letters with intent to slander

individuals or groups will not be published.

The Esperanza Center is funded in part by the TCA, Alice Kleberg Reynolds Fdn, Astraea

Lesbian Fdn for Justice, the NEA, theFund, The Kerry Lobel & Marta Drury Fund of Horizon’s

Fdn, Coyote Phoenix, Movement Strategy Center Fund, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone

Foundation y nuestra buena gente.2

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In the April 2008 issue of La Voz, we introduced a new series called La Voz del Zocalo. We had chosen the concept of the zocalo as representative of a space where people had access to free expression and use of that space. In Mexico City, I had observed many times

people moving freely about the zocalo, with children chasing balloons, riding trikes or running around without fear of being harmed. Protestors would be present in tents or booths with large banners calling for justice. Vendors would set their wares out on cloths or walked about offering their goods for sale. Danza groups would warm up and practice as people watched. Lone musicians would play an instrument or sing. Some evenings public events or concerts would be offered free of charge to the thousands that would gather and mill about. There would be no corraling of people with temporary fencing, no admission gates. I’ve seen Lila Downs perform at the zocalo, Juan Gabriel, Eugenia León, and many more. The idea of having a public space was very much alive in Mexico City each time I visited.

In San Antonio and throughout the U.S., the idea of public space and public services is being challenged more and more as the government is being asked to step aside and let private enterprise be entrusted with our natural resources, our parks, our health, our schools, our lands, our homes, and the very air we breathe. As we have struggled to save the Maldonado House on the Westside, we have realized that even neighborhood histories have become a threat to private enterprise and the push to corporatize everything. The neighborhood association (AGA) that we have struggled with to save the Maldonado House cries about retail space, jobs and modernization invalidating the history contained within the space and time of the Maldonado House’s existence. They insist Maldonado House cannot be preserved even as the Mayor has asked that every effort be made for it to be preserved.

At this writing, the Avenida Guadalupe Association has been sold a piece of property by the city at a discount price to begin building retail space that will be adjacent to the Maldonado House. The fate of the Maldonado House remains in the hands of the AGA who will now do a “feasibility study” paid for by the city to determine its worthiness in terms of preservation. We continue to support the efforts towards full preservation of the Maldonado House and want to see it become a viable site within the Promesa Project now that the city has made it possible for AGA to move forward with the construction of a new building. We have gone so far in our compromising efforts as to allow for a portion of the Maldonado House to be removed if needed to make the new building fit within the property that will house both the new building and the Maldonado House. We have worked closely in good faith with the AGA and entrust them to work with us in the same spirit.

In this issue we return to the La Voz del Zocalo series and begin again to examine issues of public space. Historic structures and monuments to a people’s past validate the lives and daily existence of people within a neighborhood. These histories are made visible through the preservation of public buildings and monuments that are constantly being threatened by corporate interests as has happened throughout history. The restoration of the Hays Bridge on the Eastside is another example of business interests threatening the neighborhood interests of a public space. And, we also examine recent developments in the energy policy of San Antonio and how this affects public interests vs. business interests. We return to La Voz del Zocalo, because the erasure of whole communities, cultures and basic human rights will only happen if we do not remain vigilant and call out the injustices to that which affects public space whether that space is of the mind, the heart or of the earth. More in the coming issues of La Voz de Esperanza. To add your voice, send your articles to lavoz@esperanzacenter.org before the 8th of each month. –Gloria A. Ramirez, editor of La Voz de Esperanza

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I ask this because my own history, over generations, gives physical shape to the trajectory of upward mobility for Chicana/os in this city. The movement of my father’s family around the city—from the Westside in my grandparents’ time to the central city in my parents’ time and my own early childhood to points North and beyond during adolescence—suggests the geography of class and race that has taken me far away from where I began, where my father began, where his parents before him began (with my Minnesota farmgirl mother, another story, altogether). First, out of the city limits, then to other Texas cities for college, then out of the state altogether as I traveled first to California for graduate school and then to Kansas for teaching work. In between bouts of leaving I’ve felt compelled to return, as if trying to remember something lost. Something to which, if I could only remember what it was, I could finally return for good. Some memory of home.

I start to become aware that I’ve lost something by what I don’t feel in those other far-flung places, the transient spaces of acquisition in which I find myself. For a long time I don’t even recognize that what I am feeling is an absence or loneliness, a nowhereness. I think it is normal, that it must be part of me, a dysfunctional part. Anxiety, depression. I don’t realize until later that there is actually something missing. There is actually a difference between a place you go to get something, to light temporarily for a degree or a job, and a place you call home, call community. There is a difference between living on a surface and living within, underneath, embedded. As I begin to contemplate declining the promise of a secure position in Kansas—the certainty of a comfortable life for struggle alongside those I love—I think that I would give up the world for this difference. I think nothing matters more.

It has only been recently, after years of intermittent participation in and ongoing reflection on the development politics that link the fight for the Pink Building to earlier struggles around energy, water, streets—only recently that I have been struck by the realization that the reason we moved north to begin with, out of the city, was because our house got torn down. When I was a child we lived on East Mulberry Street, right where it intersects with Highway 281, in a big old wooden house with peeling white paint. Trinity encroached and we got bought out. It could have been far worse. We could have displaced, as so many poor and working class families are, without fair compensation from developers or the city. Instead, Trinity’s offer was a boon to my parents, who took the money and built their own house out in the country: Bulverde, the middle of nowhere back then. But I remember

my father’s sadness. For him it was a tragedy to lose a house in this way, to be forced to move. I remember him taking me for a drive into town one Sunday to take pictures of the demolition debris, the gaping holes where houses once stood, like the sockets of teeth punched out in a fight. Right before we moved he had

What kind of

place is a home?by Marisol Cortez

La Voz de Zocalo

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8•taken pictures of the inside of the house as we slowly began to dismantle it. For a long time I’ve kept a photograph of the dining room, its contents partially packed, taped to whatever wall is nearest my writing desk as I move, again and again and again. There are no people in the photograph, only furniture and boxes, and white-bright light shining in through a curtained window. I’ve never really understood why I would tape that to my wall, but now I feel like I do.

Kansas recruits me in part because they know I work on urban environmental stuff, and they want me to participate in a project tentatively called New Cities. Someone has given someone else money, with the promise of more. A green development company has put up $20K so that the University of Kansas will act as a kind of think tank, producing models for planned residential communities that will address the impending crisis as millions of Boomer-age adults begin to retire at roughly the same time. A housing crisis prompted by shifting demographics.

Freshly transplanted from San Antonio, fresh from grassroots EJ (environmental justice) work, it is so weird for me to be in the room where a development project is spawned, the predetermined set of options later to be presented in earnest to those who will live in these spaces. And what about the people who will never live there, the kinds of elders who won’t be retiring because they are poor, for whom plans are not being made? My department, American Studies, has been invited to participate as the social conscience of the think tank; we are supposed to ask those kinds of questions, about power and privilege and who will and won’t benefit. We are supposed to look out for the communities we variously represent—the brown and the black and the native and the female, the queer and the trans and the poor. We are like emissaries from these communities, these histories of exclusion from process, from people gathered in a room or at a table, emissaries to the academy. I am the emissary of my Westsider grandparents, of a grandfather who once dropped out of Lanier to follow the cotton crop up to Arkansas. In a different way I am the emissary of my Minnesota grandparents, Irish and German tenant farmers who never owned the land they worked all their lives. Now we are here; we are supposed to have arrived.

Except it’s not enough anymore. It never was enough for those not present, and now it is not enough for me. Because now I know this is not really process, real participation—being able to pick between designs already drafted somewhere else, between decisions already made. I know what gente would say, if something was pitched to them like this. A deal already made elsewhere, at a campus in the Midwest where I have landed, tossed by a tanking academic job market. I know these things now because I’ve glimpsed other possibilities. I have seen how process looks when it is respectful and horizontal, with community at the heart from the first step to the last. I have seen what it looks like when the basis for figuring out how best to inhabit a place is stories rather than the authority of technical expertise, the local knowledge of elders rather than the master knowledge of city staff and professional planners.

So what gente would say, I say too: Who says we want new cities, anyway? Who does that newness benefit, who gets left behind? Who gets to say what newness is? Maybe newness is something already here that you just don’t see. Maybe the new city is within us. Maybe we already know what we need, it’s just

Leaving/ReturningIn the night my daughter calls for me. In thebed across the room. I’m right there but she needs me closer, she needs mein the same bed sleeping, and when I doshe claws at my chest and desperately tries to nurse through the blankets, through my shirt,nearly four. She cries when I try to detach.During the day she needs to know where I am, she looks for me, always calling out even when I’m right there,in the next room. She senses my absence:it is because I don’t know where I am orin what strange place I have found myselfIt is because we have been hereand then there and then here againever since I left—left what, where, when?Back and forth, north and south, chasing after work, chasing love, then chasing home and dreams of home remembered suddenly, clawing at blankets. I have been here and there, my body presentbut my heart and thoughts somewhere else: some other state, someother room, some other bed as I wakein the night to a memory or dream of that somewhereAnd she feels it, andshe calls for me, wondering:where?

by Marisol Cortez

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that no one’s listening. Maybe we’re already doing it and you don’t even know. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be here; you would be there, asking how you could help. Instead of inviting us in at the very end to pat you on the back for doing what you were going to do from the very beginning.

I know there are other possibilities. I know I can say that, sitting at the table—I know we have been brought there to say it. But it is a formality only, a ritual saying. The entire process itself could not go forward if it were anything other than that. American Studies has to say what no one else will, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t already been decided. Money has been spilled, master plans are in the works. I know this already; I can see it.

And it’s then that I start thinking more about nowhereness, about the home I am missing. Other kinds of gatherings, other ways to work and to live. I think about food, meeting food. Strong black coffee and tacos with nopales and conchas in greasy paper sacks, so fresh they are almost crispy around the edges. Plates of melon. Lemonade with ice. I think about hugs and kisses on the cheek. I think about home, and houses.

Today I had one of those coincidental crossings that reminded me of home: less the physical place than the sense of living under the skin, of knowing and being known. It was the kind of crossing that feels fertile, the product of things coming together in a way that gives rise to a feeling of creative possibility. I was at home on a Sunday afternoon in Lawrence, Kansas when I received a call from a number I did not recognize, although I knew from the 210 area code that the call (or at least the caller) had some connection to San Anto. Against my inclination for an unfamiliar number, I picked up and heard the voice of one of my favorite people to encounter via exactly these kinds of weird, fortuitous coincidences. When I run into Brenda Davis at the library or on the other end of my phone, I feel I must be back home. I feel I have returned somehow, to something. Our chance encounters make me feel I am on the right path, moving in the right direction. In this case, toward the writing I have been struggling to begin in this reintroduction of La Voz de Zocalo, a column that considers the politics of public space brought so vividly to the fore once again in the recent case of the Casa Maldonado, which itself continues a longer history of struggle in San Anto around access to a variety of public goods: water, air, streets, sidewalks, green space, culture, political process.

Brenda was surprised I still had a San Antonio area code, given that I’ve been up in Kansas for a year now. I reminded her that you can do that with a cellphone, move locations but not your number, and we laughed together. Then she told me her reason for calling. She remembered that I had been involved with another grassroots organization whose location was on the Eastside, and she was wondering if they would be interested in getting involved in a struggle around public space and historic preservation on that side of town.

She got involved, she said, after participating in the monthly circles at the Casa de Cuentos, listening to the stories of vecinas and vecinos who remembered a different Westside. Their stories of now absent woodframe houses and storefront tienditas made her

remember her own childhood on the Eastside; they reminded her that her own mother’s house had been demolished by the city.

Since then she had begun organizing informally in her own Eastside neighborhood, talking with people door to door about what they remembered, how things had changed and why. There was talk of starting up an Eastside group analogous to the Westside Historic Preservation group organizing to save Casa Maldonado. Different side of town, same struggle, same shared history of purposeful disinvestment and neglect followed by an urban renewal policies predicated on the erasure of cultural history and the appropriation of public space—open space, green space, residential quality of life—for commercial use and private investment.

At stake in this case, she informed me, was the fate of the city-owned land surrounding the recently renovated Hays St. Bridge.

Like the Guadalupe Street bridge to the Westside, the Hays Street Bridge is the connective tissue suturing the Eastside to downtown, and many community residents hoped that the city would use the open space beneath it for a park. Instead, discussions are underway as to whether the city should sell the space as “surplus land” to a developer interested in building a brewery, part of ongoing efforts to revitalize the Sunset Station area as a spillover tourist destination from downtown. No matter the side of town, the arguments are always the same, and on their face self-evident and indisputable: economic development. Jobs creation. Removal of “blighted” structures and spaces.

The difficulty community has had convincing city officials of the value of historic and cultural preservation, especially for the working class African American and Chicana/o neighborhoods of the East, West, and South sides, lies in the seeming transparency and givenness of these arguments. Who doesn’t want jobs, when

Seeing that the Pink Building is old and dilapidated is

easy. Understanding why, and thus the importance of preservation or open space

is harder. It takes time and patience and the right public forum, the right way

of reaching people.

unemployment rates in communities of color are staggering? Who could deny that Casa Maldonado is falling apart? Who doesn’t prefer new to old? The task of explaining why the most self-evident claims are problematic is difficult precisely because it requires us to look beneath the surface appearance of things. It requires a consciousness of history, the beyond-our-lifetime forces that have shaped land use to serve some economic interests and not others—not just here in San Anto but in most major metropolitan areas around the United States. Seeing that the Pink Building is old and dilapidated is easy. Understanding why, and thus the importance of preservation or open space is harder. It takes time and patience and the right public forum, the right way of reaching people.

On the phone Brenda directed me to another person heading up efforts to present these more difficult arguments to Mayor Castro and City Council, Gary Houston, who mentioned a number of parallels between the brewery situation and the Pink Building struggle. Of particular interest is the issue of a fair and participatory public process over these questions, made acute by the ways in which the Avenida Guadalupe Association and the Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association both represent “community” interests to the city, yet at the same time push forward the model of economic development that has long characterized growth in San Antonio. Only in the context of this kind of conflict between public face and private interests can we make sense of the kind of doublespeak we witnessed during AGA’s flawed charette process, described by Susana Segura in last month’s issue of La Voz. Here a “preservation” option initially presented as “compromise” with and “due diligence” to community in fact turned out to entail demolition of the actually existing structure, in order to build something new that simulates what is no longer there.

So many stories of having to leave: much of San Antonio is in some vital way the diaspora of the Westside (and Eastside). How can we know what home is when we have been displaced so long ago that we cannot remember?

Much of the impetus for returning to La Voz del Zocalo, then, is personal: wanting to think about all the reasons and ways we both leave and return, and decide to stay. If I listen to the logic of the academic career path, returning means I stay in Kansas but migrate back to keep writing about these things, back and forth like a bird, north to south to north along the flyways of winter and summer breaks. An image of return, a simulation. But maybe returning means actually going back to actual places. Emplacing my actual body where I write, in actual struggle alongside and within community. Because it is where I am from. Because it is home. Because I believe in coming back to put what you’ve gained in leaving to use.

When the parade ordinance prompted the first appearance of La Voz del Zocalo in 2008, the image selected to represent the column was floral or solar in design, with many radiating strands (air, water, bodies, stories, cultura, streets) converging on a central point labeled “space.” The space of the city, the spaces and places where we live: home. This image and motif have continued to guide our revival of the series in 2011. Every few months or so, we hope to feature a number of articles linked by their common

concern with the politics of urban space, the politics of home. In this issue are contributions that further explore many of the issues and themes already touched on in these introductory testimonios. We hope to regularly feature updates on fights to save different community buildings; on access to streets; on struggles to organize the Riverwalk; on environmental justice issues; on community rights to its own cultural history.

Given that many of us participating in this project are contingent academics—thinkers and writers on the margins of a higher ed in crisis—Zocalo is also an experiment, an attempt to create the kinds of alternate intellectual spaces and institutions that Luz Guerra calls for in the July/Aug issue of La Voz from this year. If for many of us academia is no longer a place where we can

make a living wage—or where we have to choose, unsustainably, between a living wage and the communities we care about—what sorts of alternative educational spaces can we create? For if we are serious about challenging the forces of privatization that threaten to limit access to public goods, the university cannot be exempt from this challenge. At the same time that our research and writing recovers a new city already existing within the old and within us, we must critique the corporatization of the university and ask how we can create new spaces for thinking, writing, and sharing ideas.

More to come. Or, to appropriate a common commercial phrase to public ends: Watch this space. q

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Marisol Cortez (left) at the San Antonio International Woman’s Day March & Rally Press Conference in 2010.

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Social upheaval in Latin America including the Caribbean is not a contemporary phenomenon. The impact of imperialism and colonialism loaned itself to uprisings in response to horrific injustices. The repression of indigenas in Guatemala is but one link in this long line of atrocities. One need look no further than Leon-Portilla’s The

Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, to witness through indigena eyes early widespread destruction in the pursuit of territory. This is the backdrop to David Stoll’s Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans, a critical, academic response to I, Rigoberta Menchú (1984) a testimonio, or narrative, by a Quiché indigena in which she generalizes political repression to poor Guatemalans through her personal experiences. Both books are the basis of the continuing Rigoberta controversy.

Testimonio is a class specific oral tradition focusing on the “I” through which the narrator links the personal to the group experience. It is a Latin American genre with roots in the Maya culture used to make known the urgent political and social situations of the voiceless, poor disenfranchised, and the shunned indigenous, through the words of a narrator from the same group. Testimonios demand to be heard and have been successful in building solidarity between the narrator and the reader in the realm of human rights despite the differences of class and race that may exist between them.

Stoll describes Rigoberta’s book as having “a cult following and wide influence on international perceptions of Guatemala” (p. 274), and gives three reasons for reassessing her story: to present

“(1) how Guatemalan violence was misconstrued, (2) how myths about guerilla warfare continue to misguide the urban left, and (3) how legitimacy in social sciences and the humanities is being redefined to discourage investigation and debate” (p. 274). He believes that by examining these issues through verification of data and the establishment of “chronologies, vantage points, and probabilities, can we have any hope of evaluating the reciprocal

stories of victimization that are used to justify violence, or how these claims become rationales for larger political interests, or how human beings can be induced to commit mayhem” (p. 274). This is Stoll’s approach to a testimonio that courted and secured international attention and support ending the brutal situation in Guatemala, winning Rigoberta the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. Her narrative became an important component of university courses, catapulting Mayan rights organizations in Central America, focusing on independence of choice of culture, language and political direction.

Painstakingly written, free of scholarly jargon and absorbing, Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalan is as disturbing as it is enlightening. It presents a composite picture of atrocities committed by the army and endured by countless Guatemalan indigenas, it tells of their being caught in the marginalized position of having to take sides - the army or the guerillas in an effort to survive, or fleeing

destitute to the coast. It describes the vulnerability of indigenous campesinos and the re-occurring issue of left intellectuals making decisions for the masses. It examines the testimonio as a phenomenon that is subject to the nuances of memory, the experience of trauma, political alliances and manipulations, survival, and editorial struggles between narrator and compiler. It

A review by Yoly Zentella of David Stoll’s Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. (Boulder: WestviewPress, 1998)

Author’s note | This review was written with several intentions, one of which was to acknowledge the importance of the testimonio as a way of giving a voice to the voiceless in the face of disregard and criticism. But, today, my purpose has changed its course somewhat. While I still offer the reader a review that addresses issues that go to the heart of the relationship between exploitation and power, it is now given in the spirit of celebration in recognition of Rigoberta Menchu who is running for President of Guatemala. This is, indeed, a day of thanksgiving not only for Rigoberta’s determination to represent her people through her story published for all the world to read, I, Rigoberta Menchu, but also for her perseverance in the face of obstacles and setbacks. Based on this it is an honor for me to link my humble words to the future of the Guatemalan people.

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challenges political correctness, as Stoll meticulously dismembers Rigoberta’s narrative in his search for authenticity and credibility, a responsibility that he urges social scientists to embrace when responding to cultural narratives about human rights violations.

Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans confronts supporters of Latin American left wing intellectuals and guerilla movements assumed to be liberating forces working in the interest of the people, although they are often non-indigenous, paternalistic, self-appointed guardians (Baud & Rutten, 2004), their views based on revolutionary models in other parts of Latin America. Stoll correctly calls into question the assumptions held by both the left and guerillas in their regard of the indigenous populations as vanguards of popular revolutionary movements, views based on the belief that indigenas will naturally side with guerillas - erroneously, if one considers the conflict between the Miskito and the Sandinistas and Che’s problematic relationship with the Bolivian peasants.

Stoll does exhibit a particular disdain for left politics as he describes the disillusionment of social scientists in the face of strategic blunders by guerilla movements sparking army reprisals of Guatemalan villages. He critically discusses complex issues; authoritarian governments, brutal army repression, American complicity in Guatemala’s dirty war, and the internal conflict over land among indigenas. The latter, a common issue of the region resulting in feuds between families, aptly illustrated by Mao’s contradictions among the people, appears to be a major issue of contention with Rigoberta’s book.

The argument begins by Stoll examining different dimensions of Rigoberta’s testimonio, her accuracy of events - her education, her knowledge of Spanish and her father’s involvement in the struggle for land. Through post dirty-war interviews of village residents in places such as Chimel and Uspatán, he attempts to reconstruct pre-existing communities before the guerilla movement and the army made these their battleground. The role that Rigoberta’s maternal and paternal families played in the indigena struggle for increased family land holdings and their relationships with Ladinos, are among his topics of inquiry. He finds Rigoberta’s father Vicente as having established friendly working relations with Ladinos and with American peace corps volunteers, often labeled government conspirators. He contrasts these findings to Rigoberta’s portrayal of her father as fighting for his lands usurped by Ladinos, becoming revolutionized in the process, and, consequently, becoming a victim along with other family members, of army repression. Rigoberta’s testimonio portrays her father as the archetypical universal peasant and patriarch, a model for the Maya and a source of inspiration for continued struggle for justice.

While insisting that Rigoberta misinformed her audience when she describes the manner in which some family members died, Stoll does recognize political repression as a well known government response to activism. It was precisely this that she successfully described to the world through her testimonio based on memories and interpretations worded in a manner that implies a developing political consciousness.

For Rigoberta Menchú, writing her narrative in a manner that could be generalized to countless Guatemalan indigenas brought home the experience, despite gaps and omissions, of sustained marginalization, humiliation, degradation, forced migrations and genocide, occurring first at the hands of the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century and later at the hands of an army that, at times, included forced indigena recruits.

Rigoberta’s book is essentially a sad narrative, in particular the chapters on her family. Comparing her work to that of Stoll, the discrepancies appear to be less in the area of facts and dates and more in the manner of approach. Rigoberta describes family deaths and various avenues of thought that radiated from these experiences within a political context. She describes her change of attitude toward Ladinos, from usurpers to comrades artificially separated from the indigenas by class and race, the separation of tribes due to language barriers - an impediment to organizing - and the dilemmas facing indigena women in the liberation struggle as they experience males as both macho and revolutionary comrades. She discusses the importance of literacy and the learning of Spanish, the language of the colonizer and native rituals and tribal secrets not to be divulged to outsiders and the difference between the church of the poor and the institutionalized privileged church. She tells of indigenas capturing government soldiers, their politicization during captivity, and their description of conscription as survival. She does not give a chronology of events or an outline of the peaks and valleys of her personal experiences.

Rigoberta gives a testimonio resembling a monologue occasionally interrupted by answering a question, most likely posed by Elizabeth Burgos, the editor of both the Spanish and English edition of Rigoberta’s book. Spanning over a week during which time Elizabeth Burgos recorded 24 hours of conversation in the editor’s Paris flat (Menchu, 1984), Rigoberta’s tape recorded narrative reflects just that, a narrative by a 23–year-old, given in Spanish, not her native language, later taped, transcribed, arranged and edited by Burgos, changing the narrative from original utterance to the polished, published product; I, Rigoberta is a composite of editing and experience and traumatized memory, the latter a universal concept to consider when coming to terms with the past.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (2003), a Black South African psychologist, explores traumatized memory as she reflects on the discrepancies she alarmingly experiences when remembering a violent apartheid incident from her childhood:

I can only suggest that when the safe world of a child is shattered by the violent invasion of police, the intensity of the moment is something that the experience of a five-year-old cannot absorb. She lacks the psychological capacity to contain the brutality

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Borrowing from Pumla’s explanation of this process, one can generalize. Rigoberta was exposed in some form to the brutality inflicted on her people; she may have observed or heard of factual or mythical abuse, or carries genetic, ancestral memories of brutal repression, resulting in the trauma becoming “embedded in [her] identity” (Gobodo-Madikizela, p. 82). In 1960 Rigoberta was one year old

when civil war became widespread.The realm of abuse existing within the

everyday phenomenological experience can be manifested in myriad ways. As Gobodo - Madikizela describes, “The narratives of trauma told by victims and survivors are not simply about facts. They are primarily about the impact of those facts on victims’ lives”, (p. 86), and while “there is no closure” (p. 86), the mind continues to reconstruct past events, which inevitably fail to manifest as truth. Like the relationship between text and history,

narratives of witnesses or victims are a deflection of

reality, constructed through the impact of events on memory and perspective. Psychological issues are deeply imbedded in testimonio, thus the detail that Rigoberta gives to the torture and death of her family members, those hallucinatory images and sensations that she compels the reader to experience, give one the sense that she is reliving their deaths and attempting closure.

Taking the inconsistencies of memory and the impact of trauma aside, what needs to be remembered here is that

Rigoberta’s motivation was to tell her story to the world of the injustices and atrocities leveled on indigenas and to gain international support for their cause. She was not dictating an academic treatise nor giving legal testimony– she was telling her interpretation of various incidents in her life and generalizing: retracing, re-tracking, correcting, omitting, generalizing, thinking aloud. She presents without aspirations to literary fame. Coming from the

phenomenological perspective she implies truthfulness and expects acknowledgment of the greater issues by the reader.

For Stoll Rigoberta’s narrative is discredited and is the instrument of further violence, “. . . critical theory can end up revolving around romantic conceptions of indigenous people,

mythologies that can be used to sacrifice them for larger causes” (p. xxv). Should I, Rigoberta be then discarded?

Romanticism and larger causes brings to mind the Dairy of Anne Frank published in English in 1952, a phenomenological experience recorded by a young adolescent existing in the throes of the Nazi holocaust in Holland. Its authenticity has also been criticized and found to be fraudulent (Faurisson, 1982), based on investigations of events and interviews with witnesses, including Anne’s father. Yet, Anne Frank’s narrative is one of the major works of personal memoirs that has given holocaust literature a descriptive significance. Called the “icon of the holocaust” (Bebbington, 2003), Anne’s diary has been published in a multitude of languages, consistently reprinted, and used in literature and holocaust studies courses. It is parallel to Sophie’s Choice (Barish & Pakula, 1982), a film based on a script, portraying the painful psychological implications of holocaust trauma for Polish Christians.

If Anne’s narrative was written by someone else as Faurisson claims, if Sophie’s experience originated in a writer’s mind or if Rigoberta’s narrative, born out of turbulence in Guatemala is riddled with discrepancies, they are nevertheless portrayals of holocausts, screaming for the world to know and to learn from these horrors. Accusations of fraud as in the case of Anne do not negate the fact that she, her family and friends, save for her father, were exterminated. In Anne’s own words, “And suppose they do exaggerate the news, the facts are bad enough anyway, because you can’t deny that millions of peace loving people were just simply murdered and gassed in Poland and Russia” (p. 150). Should we discard her diary because romantic notions of the Jewish holocaust can be used for larger causes?

Stoll’s criticisms in Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans appear too excessive a response to a narrative based on traumatized memory given what we know about the subject. It also suggests a lack of understanding regarding the meaning and function of the testimonio in Latin America. Nevertheless, Stoll’s critical analysis and I, Rigoberta appear to represent the struggle between the unsubstantiated phenomenological experience and the need to establish credibility in qualitative investigations, and in this way are valuable in their own right, begging to be used together. Stoll’s book challenges the use of the phenomenological narrative within the historical context but supplies the historical background and chronology to the horror through his critical analysis. Rigoberta gives a public space to marginalized voices demanding attention in their own right, demanding that the reader feel the emotion and the intellect of a holocaust survivor.

As the reader, student, academic and intellectual wade through the words and ideas that continue to whirl about the Rigoberta controversy, one issue is clear: the right of the indigena to decide their own post colonial path, to achieve their independence as they see fit and to not be used as critical chess pieces in the war between right, left and academia. q

Note: Components of this review previously appeared in the Journal of Third World Studies, published by the Association of Third World Studies, Inc., which holds copyright to this work. Complete references available from: lavoz@esperanzacenter.org.

Bio: Dr. Zentella is an independent scholar, writer, licensed psychotherapist and psychology faculty at Walden University.

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his summer we learned that San Antonio was poised to participate in big developments, heralded by the Express-News as a “new day at CPS Energy.” Making the announcement official at a press conference held at the downtown campus of UTSA on Monday,

June 20th, Mayor Julián Castro stated that “by building a critical mass around research and development that will grow and attract the brainpower of the 21st century, San Antonio can be for the new energy economy what Silicon Valley is to software and Boston is to biotech.”

For those who missed it, here’s a quick breakdown of these new developments:

CPS plans to close the nearly 40-year-old Deely coal plant in 2018, which currently produces 871 MW of electricity for the city. To offset a portion of this loss, CPS Energy will purchase 200 MW of electricity from Summit Energy’s Texas Clean Energy Project, a “clean coal” plant outside Odessa. The Department of Energy recently gave Seattle-based Summit $450M to develop and construct the TCEP, which converts coal into gas and captures the carbon produced in burning it for electricity.Making up for an additional portion of coal-fired electricity lost, San Antonio plans to contract with SunEdison for 30MW of solar power in CPS’s service area, and with an as-of-yet-unselected solar company which would manufacture equipment for producing an additional 50MW.In addition to Summit and SunEdison, the City of San Antonio will bring three other clean tech businesses to the city to partner with CPS. These include companies that manufacture and install energy conservation software, energy efficient streetlights, and charging stations for electric and hybrid refrigerated trucks. Together, these companies are expected to generate a minimum of 230 “green jobs” and engage in research partnerships with UTSA’s Sustainable Energy Research Institute.As community organizations that fight for the health and

wellbeing of the urban environment and the communities whose bodies bear the burden of a dirty energy economy, we do not underestimate the significance of the city’s decision to voluntarily

shutter “dirty Deely,” nor its choice to invest instead in energy efficiency, solar power, and green job creation. We commend the Mayor, UTSA and CPS for taking these actions, but feel there are other opportunities to seize in our quest for a truly sustainable future.

To that end, we wish to offer some critical thoughts on these announcements, and on other decisions made in the name of being “clean” and “sustainable.”

First, it is important to point out that investment in renewables and efficiency is not a gift from the city, but rather the victory of a long history of organizing and movement building on behalf

by Marisol Cortez, in collaboration with Maria Berriozabal, Diana López, Genevieve Rodríguez, and Graciela Sánchez representing Southwest Workers’ Union, The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and groups and individuals concerned with the City of San Antonio’s energy policies.

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Artwork by Bec Young | www.justseeds.org

of grassroots groups and thousands upon thousands of ordinary residents. This longer view also reminds us that community had to push its own public institutions for many years to get it to invest in renewables over coal, gas, and nuclear. Arguments that nuclear energy is neither clean nor green continue to be ignored by city

leadership, while the renewables-centered Rifkin plan commissioned by the city

was once dismissed as “too expensive.” Even the Deely closure decision is ultimately

a b o u t money, not health or jobs—the plant was only slated for closure when repeated promises to install carbon scrubbers (which never materialized) proved, again, “too expensive.”

Second, it is important to challenge the idea of “clean coal.” It’s true that the IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) technology used by Summit would reduce the amount of carbon put into the air. But there is no “away” in nature. In a process similar to the hydrofracking currently tearing up the watershed of the Barnett Shale, the Summit plant would compress its captured carbon, sending it deep underground via pipeline to support what’s known as “enhanced oil recovery”—or, sucking out that last little bit of crude from an oil field already drained dry. Better solution: shut Deely down for real and keep the crude in the ground.

Third, it is imperative that we continue to ask not just what kinds of energy are more sustainable but also why energy consumption in San Antonio is unsustainable to begin with. This means asking hard questions about the kinds of economic development San Antonio has historically encouraged, in particular within the tourism industry. Offering tax breaks to downtown and northside developers, the city has actively promoted a kind of economic growth that both relies on dirty energy sources and fights unionization among the low-wage service workers who power its hotels, theme parks, restaurants, and retail outlets. The solution is not (just) clean technology, but more fundamentally to build cities for people rather than hotels, tourists or cars. We could then invest even more aggressively in renewables and weatherization for the working households who make the least and pay the most in energy costs.

A final point concerns the much touted job creation “triangle” between business, government, and UTSA’s Sustainable Research Institute. We have already raised concerns with the selection of Les Shepard as its head, given his former position at Sandia National Laboratories, the nuclear weapons lab. An additional concern is that a very narrow segment of the university is represented here as “research.” Will UTSA’s vision of sustainable energy research include faculty and students from sociology, political science, history, ethnic studies, women’s studies—fields with expertise in the systemic inequalities that shape energy decisionmaking? Will

it include partnerships with communities struggling against the health impacts of energy companies? Or will they include only those departments and researchers with access to corporate money and large federal grants? We feel that UTSA and CPS’s vision of both “sustainability” and “research” unfortunately continues to be a narrowly corporate, militaristic, and technocentric one, devoid of the kind of deep, historical analysis that must be part of any

attempt to redress legacies of environmental destruction. Institutions can and do change for the better, and that is a great

thing. But where our lives are at stake, the question cannot sim-ply be whether we will have “sustainability” or “clean energy.” It must also be who gets to define these terms and how. For we can move from coal to “clean coal” to solar and wind—but if power, resources, knowledge, and decision making remain concentrated in the hands of technical experts and corporate heads, we will lose the chance for a sustainability that is deeper and more lasting because it is based on social justice. q

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. . .the solution is not (just)

clean technology, but more fundamentally

to build cities for people

rather than hotels, tourists or cars . . .

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“Mother Earth Speaks”You only harvest what you reap;

Why marvel at floods, hurricanes, tornadoes,

fires, or the curious curse of cancers?

If you so shaped your world,How can you expect me to endure?

I must do what must be done:Resist.

I am your mother and without meYou do not exist;

Understand you are Because of me.

Respect is all I ask forAll I expect.Wake up!

–Norma E. Cantú

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Hays St. Bridgeat risk

City planning is largely influenced by the developers of real estate. Promoting economic growth has be-come such a strong priority for elected officials and urban administrators that few other considerations so strongly influence the deliberations that deter-

mine most land use public policy decisions. At every level of gov-ernment there has evolved a short-sighted definition of economic growth that threatens to short-circuit quality-of-life decisions in favor of any practices that can be remotely related to increasing jobs or tax revenues. In the case of the Hays St. Bridge, the City may deliver to private interests not just contested land but a sig-nificant and beloved landmark. Those enabling the brewery have crossed a line toward a spirit of utterly shameless and unquestion-ing boosterism in support of a single business proposal in callous disregard of other interests such as historic preservation or recre-ational facilities for families and children.

City planning is largely influenced by the developers of real estate. Promoting economic growth has become such a strong pri-ority for elected officials and administrators that few other con-siderations so strongly influence the deliberations that determine most land use public policy decisions. At every level of govern-ment there has evolved a short-sighted definition of economic growth that threatens to short-circuit quality-of-life decisions in favor of any practices that can be remotely related to increas-ing jobs or tax revenues. In the case of the Hays St. Bridge, the City may deliver to private interests not just contested land but a significant and beloved landmark. Those enabling the brewery have crossed a line toward a spirit of utterly shameless and un-questioning boosterism in support of a single business proposal in callous disregard of other interests such as historic preservation or recreational facilities for families and children. Since Spring, steps have been made to reverse the work of dozens of people over more than 15 years. The consummation of the Restoration process as public park now appears unlikely. There are reasons why all of the published and official plans for the land adjacent to the bridge call for a public park. A park there remains an element of the Neighborhood Master Plan and part of the City’s Eastside Economic Development Plan and thereby a component of the City of San Antonio’s Master Plan.

Imperfect Land Transfer | The citizens’ group that led the restoration process of the Bridge was successful at seeking a dona-tion of land as “community public space” and “other recreational

uses”. The documents, prepared by City staff, made no explicit references to the use of the land as a “park” which is why there is a controversy. The City Dept. of Capital Improvement Management Services (CIMS), custodian of the land, took the vagueness of that language to move in an entirely different direction suggesting the land be made available to the brewery promoters. This represents de facto land confiscation and a betrayal of good faith. When there is a case of vagueness in the interpretation of a legal document, an inquiry is made to determine the original intent. No such inquiry was made this year. Instead, the City staff in the CIMS Department has viewed that vagueness as a loophole to enable the brewery.

The Bridge as a Landmark | It was not until the 1970’s that alternatives to the narrow underpass at Nolan St. and the Hays Street Bridge evolved as the means of access to downtown during hours that trains blocked passage via other streets. Thou-sands of San Antonians identify with that experience and consider the Bridge a monument to that past. And more identify with the Bridge as a defining local landmark. Eastside San Antonio has no other remaining public works’ landmark. The Bridge design, actually two bridges that were merged when transported to San Antonio in 1910, is such a rare combination of 19th Century pat-ented trusses and structural members that it was certified in 2001 as a Texas Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Professional Engineers.

The rebirth of the Bridge was conceived by City Staff and Bridge advocates (and celebrated by a broad spectrum of the pub-lic) as a component of a hike and bike trail and a pedestrian Gate-

Author’s note: Plans are moving forward for the trans-fer of land adjacent to the Hays St. Bridge for the de-velopment of a micro-brewery. The Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association voted in favor and Coun-cilwoman Ivy Taylor and City Staff are following that lead. The following article by a member of the Hays St. Bridge Restoration Group is critical of those plans. The Group does not object to the development of the brewery per se. It acknowledges, however, that such an enterprise could be appropriate elsewhere in the rail-road corridor. The objection is to development on the 1.7 acres of land adjacent to the Bridge donated to the City of San Antonio for use as a public park. The words below reflect the observations of the author, not those of the Restoration Group.

by Gary W. Houston

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way between the Eastside and the Museum Reach north of Down-town. As a Gateway it conveys a sense of transition and arrival in both directions while offering spectacular and unique views of the surrounding townscape. This Gateway would not be enhanced by the intrusive role of a brewery as gatekeeper.

Key Role of Open Space | There is a reason that open space is fundamental to the perception of a bridge within its environ-ment. Most bridges are readily visible from or through the open space which they span (a lake, a valley or the Riverwalk). That is not the case with the Hays St. Bridge because it spans the less traveled railroad tracks and neighboring warehouses. This is why a park is the most respectful use for the land there. For similar rea-sons many urban bridges across the U.S. are complemented by a major park at one end. If existing plans are not modified, the com-munity could be left with better views of the Hays St. Bridge from the northbound lanes of I-37 than from neighborhood streets.

Because the Bridge is surrounded by existing buildings, its re-lationship to any projected new structures requires careful exami-nation of their impact on the few remaining views of the bridge from surrounding streets and the vital role played by open space. A large structure that rises higher than the platform of bridge itself, as the brewery designs call for, would constitute an encroachment that extinguishes the dramatic impact of the Bridge and practically erases its role as a landmark. For any structure to be perceived as a landmark, it must first be highly visible. A relatively small bridge surrounded by more massive and taller buildings essentially be-comes about as visible as a tunnel. Any massive structure would intrude on the sightlines to the Bridge, rendering it no longer visible from Lamar and Cherry Streets, the last iconic view of the bridge. Moreover, the views from the bridge obstructed thereby would limit its role as an observation platform, especially toward the Northeast.

Private vs. Public Access | The brewery would not only encroach on the sightlines from and to the Bridge, it would routinely use the Bridge right-of-way placing that commercial use in direct competition with the public’s right to free access. This amounts to granting an exclusive commercial concession, similar to the Bracken-ridge Eagle miniature railroad or the Tower of the Americas restaurant. The major difference is that there were compelling needs for those exclusive grants of access because they met a public inter-est in complementing the existing land use. The compelling public need in the case of the brewery is one defined exclusively for developers. Under existing plans, the Bridge becomes part of the commercial brand of the brewery, which conflicts with rather than complements the existing public use. Because they already control the remaining partial view of the Bridge’s span from the south along Burnet St., once the brew-ery developers are granted control of the land north of the Bridge, they will essentially control the Bridge itself.

It is a well-established principle in real estate, that the control by a single interest of the land use on either side of a third parcel (or even a public right of way) is the key to the path of controlling the fate of that land use in between. This would amount to a sound, or even shrewd, business plan, but for the fact that in this case the

“parcel” in between is the public’s Hays St. Bridge.

“Highest and Best Use” | This is the term that is used to de-termine private investment and public land use policies. Usually applied through a cost/benefit formula it has been invoked by the City’s CIMS department in support of the brewery. The shortcom-ing is that it looks mostly at the fiscal bottom line and does not address the fact that the use of the land at issue completely defines the Gateway and Landmark functions of the Bridge, themselves high order uses. A park or a greenbelt could be considered the “highest and best” use where the protection of those functions is a higher priority. “Highest & Best Use” should refer to more than the direct economic or tax generation potential of the 1.7 acres next to a local monument. The standards that apply in these cir-cumstances should recognize the potential positive leverage of the landmark and the ultimate adverse impact of its inappropriate commercial exploitation on aesthetic and quality-of-life consider-ations. “Lowest and worst use” is perhaps a more appropriate term that should be invoked to describe the outcome resulting from the imposition of rigid and unimaginative standards that fail to adapt to unique circumstances and the greater public good.

A Park as Catalyst | An opportunity that the land next to the Bridge represents is as a catalyst for more economic development in the neighborhood. Were it to be developed as a destination park it could inspire the type of redefinition of the industrial wasteland along the railroad corridor north and east of downtown. A park that generates vibrancy along the streets in that zone of transition could inspire development in precisely the pattern contemplated

by each of the City Council-sanctioned Master Plans that call for a mixture of land use. Other cities have begun successful, creative “Living Streets” move-ments in such neighborhoods. A park addresses and inspires pro-jected land use mix more effec-tively than another industry and its associated warehouse.

Every few years the threat-ened demolition of a treasured San Antonio structure provides a national precedent in the areas of community development and historic preservation. Those les-sons are not always positive. The course that permits the appropri-ation of the Bridge to commerce could become tantamount to a

constructive demolition of a public monument and landmark. That San Antonio enjoys a national reputatiLA is that our more stellar policies and actions are often the result of the actions of citizens committed to a protracted campaign. Inappropriate commercial development prevails not because of its inherent merits, but too often because those who should know better are inclined to look only at the bottom line and to accept its simple solutions. q

Bio: Gary W. Houston has lectured on urban and environmental issues at institutions of higher education in San Antonio for the past 35 years. For the past 17 years he has been a faculty member of the Department of Political Science and Geography at UTSA.

Hays St. Bridge

Those enabling the brewery have crossed a line toward a spirit of utterly shameless

and unquestioning boosterism in support of a single business proposal in callous disregard of other interests such as historic

preservation or recreational facilities for families and

children.

Amnesty International #127 meets on 4th Thursdays at 7:30 pm at Ashbury United Methodist. Call 210.829.0397.

Anti-War Peace Vigil every Thurs-day 4-6pm @ Flores & Commerce. See: ivaw.org veteransforpeace.org

Bexar Co. Green Party info@bex-argreens.org or call 210.471.1791.

Celebration Circle meets Sundays, 11am @ JumpStart at Blue Star Arts Complex. Meditation, Weds @ 7:30 pm @ Quaker Meeting House, 7052 Vandiver. 210.533-6767

DIGNITY S.A. mass at 5:30 pm, Sun. @ Beacon Hill Presbyterian Church, 1101 W. Woodlawn. Call 210.735.7191.

For S.A. Free Speech Coalition meetings check esperanzacenter.org or call 210.228.0201

Fuerza Unida, 710 New Laredo, Hwy. 210.927.2297, www.lafuer-zaunida.org

Habitat for Humanity meets 1st Tues. for volunteer orientation @ 6pm, HFHSA Office @ 311 Probandt.

LGBT Youth Group meets at MCC Church, 611 E. Myrtle on Sundays at 10:30am. 210.472.3597

Metropolitan Communi-ty Church in San Antonio (MCCSA) 611 East Myrtle, services & Sunday school @ 10:30am Call 210.599.9289.

PFLAG, meets 1st Thurs @ 7pm, 1st Unitarian Universalist Church, Gill Rd/Beryl Dr. Call 210. 655.2383.

PFLAG Español meets 1st Tues-days @ 2802 W. Salinas, 7pm. Call

210.849.6315

Proyecto Hospitalidad Litur-gy each Thursday at 7 pm at 325 Courtland. Call 210.736.3579.

The Rape Crisis Center, 7500 US Hwy 90 W. Hotline @ 210.349-7273. 210.521.7273 or email Dro-minishi@rapecrisis.com

The Religious Society of Friends meets Sundays @ 10 am @ The Friends Meeting House, 7052 N. Vandiver. 210.945.8456.

San Antonio Communist Party meets 2nd Sundays | Next mtg: Oct 9, 3-5pm at Bazan Branch Library, 2200 W. Commerce St | Contact juanchostanford@yahoo.com

San Antonio Gender Associa-tion. meets 1st & 3rd Thursdays, 6-9pm at 611 E. Myrtle, Metropoli-tan Community Church downstairs.| sagender.org

SA Healthcare Now Coalition meets 1st Thursdays at 6:30pm @ National Nurses Organizing Committee office 7959 Fredericks-burg Rd. 210.882.2230 or health-carenowsa.org

Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Center classes are on Tuesdays at 7pm, & Sun. at 11:30 am. at 1114 So. St. Mary’s. Call 210.222.9303.

The Society of Latino and His-panic Writers SA meets 2nd Mon-days, 7 pm @ Barnes & Noble, San Pedro Crossing.

S.N.A.P. (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Con-tact Barbara at 210.725.8329.

Voice for Animals Contact 210.737.3138 or voiceforanimals.org for meeting times

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Please use my donation for the Rinconcito de Esperanza

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¡Todos somos Esperanza! It takes a whole community to work for social

change. You can support this work financially by becoming a monthly donor to Esperanza.

Esperanza works to bring awareness and action on issues relevant to our communities. With our vision for social, environmental, economic and gender justice, Esperanza centers the voices and

experiences of the poor & working class, women, queer people and people of color. We hold pláticas and workshops; organize political actions; present

exhibits and performances and document and preserve our cultural histories. We consistently

challenge City Council and the corporate powers of the city on issues of development, low-wage jobs,

gentrification, clean energy and more.

It takes all of us to keep the Esperanza going. When you contribute monthly to the Esperanza you are

making a long-term commitment to the movement for progressive change in San Antonio, allowing Esperanza to sustain and expand our programs.

Monthly donors can give as little as $3 and as much as $300 a month or more.

What would it take for YOU to become a monthly donor? Call or come by the Esperanza to learn how.

¡Esperanza vive! ¡La lucha sigue!

Contact Amanda @ 210.228.0201 or esperanza@esperanzacenter.org for more info

Be Part of a Progressive Movement

in San Antonio

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Notas Y Más Brief notes to inform readers about happenings in the community. Send announcements for Notas y Más to:

lavoz@esperanzacenter.orgor by mail to: 922 San Pedro, San Antonio, TX 78212.

The deadline is the 8th of each month.October 2011

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San Anto Cultural Arts invites you to the 14th Annual Huevos Rancheros Gala and Silent Art Auction on October 1st from 9 am to 12 pm at the Plaza Guadalupe (1327 Guadalupe St.). Tickets can be obtained for a donation of 99¢ to $999. Artist, Juan Miguel Ramos, and former Councilwom-an Maria Antonietta Berriozábal will be honored as King and Queen Huevo of 2011. See www.sananto.org

Tan Cerca de la Frontera in Austin, Tx. is sending a delegation to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico on October 7-9 in solidarity with Comité Fronterizo de Obreras/os. See www.atcf.org or call 512.474.2399 for info. Email JRosenberg@atcf.org or call Judith, 512.494.8377 to register.

San Antonio Communist Party USA meets Sunday, October 9, 3-5pm @ Bazan Library Meeting Room, 2200 W. Commerce. Sister Martha Ann Kirk, CCVI, Th.D., Professor of Religious Studies at Incarnate Word & author of Women of Bible Lands: A Pilgrimage to Compassion and Wisdom

will speak on “Deconstructing Stereotypes of Iraqis, Listening the Voices of Families.” Contact: juanchostanford@yahoo.com

A Girls’ Empowerment Conference spon-sored by Girls Inc. takes place Saturday, October 15th, 10 am-4 pm at Café College, 131 El Paso St. for girls exploring the next steps after middle or high school. Free! Lunch provided. Contact: Anais Biera Mir-acle at abiera@chshel.org or 210.212.2598

Mexic-Arte Museum’s Día de los Muer-tos Procession takes place October 22nd, 6-7 pm. Gather at 5 pm at Plaza Saltillo in Austin for the parade. See: www.mexic-artemuseum.org or email parade@mexic-artemuseum.org. Deadline: October 14th.

Catholic Charities Immigration Dept. of SA is hosting a Naturalization Clinic on October 22nd, 9am - 2pm at the Guadalupe Community Center, 1801 César Chávez [Durango St.]. Pre-register for $20. Contact Yolanda at 210.433.3256 ext. 115 or yher-nandez@ccaosa.org

The South Texas College Library Art Gallery program has several exhibits free and open to the public: “Four decades of Chicana Art & Culture in Tejas and Be-yond” features artwork by Santa Barraza at the Pecan Campus in McAllen until De-cember 10th. Visit: lag.southtexascollege.edu for a complete listing of exhibits.

The International Research Journal of Library, Information and Archival Studies, a multidisciplinary journal pub-lished monthly by International Research Journals welcomes submissions: irjlias@intersjournals.org. See http://interesjour-nals.org/IRJLIAS for details.

Richard Araujo, born, raised and residing in the Westside has published Moments remem-bered: Stories of life, verses of

the heart, a book of memories & moments with short stories and poems. Richard, 73, is a father of 3 & grandfather of 6. A retired plumber, he’s been married for 40yrs to the love of his life. Buy his book at: lulu.com

St. Mary’s Univ. Dept. of Theology & M.E.T. present international spokesperson & critically acclaimed author:

Attorney RITA MARKERExecutive Director, Patients Rights Council

on:

“WORDS THAT HARM?OR HEAL?”

Thursday, Oct. 13th @ 7:30 pmSt. Mary’s U. Student Union Bldg

Rm A, 2nd floor, One Camino Santa Maria Free, Open to the Public

Living Will • Advance Directives • End-of-Life Options • Aid-in-Dying

• Death with Dignity • Doctor Prescribed Suicide • Futile Care

“Words and phrases in today’s medical climate can mean the difference between LIFE AND DEATH. You have the right to

know how to protect yourself and your loved ones.”www.patientsrightscouncil.org

as they make a new home in Sonoma County, California. Both Jeff and Dianne were valuable members of the San Antonio peace and justice community. Dianne, a gifted artist

on multiple levels graced us with plays, poems and writings while Jeff, her supportive partner healed many with his quiet demeanor and healing hands. They will be missed.

A fortunate new community will reap the benefits.

Buena suerte to Jeff Rooney and Dianne Monroe

The Indigenous Dignity Day Human Rights March

of San Antonio, Texas

Saturday, October 15thAssembly 1pm-3:30pm

@ W. Martin and Columbus St. March 3:30-5pmRally from 5-7pm

@ 100 Dolorosa on the old courthouse steps

Contact the Texas Indigenous Council @ 210.542.9271

Non-Profit Org.US Postage

PAIDSan Antonio, TX

Permit #332

La Voz de Esperanza922 San Pedro San Antonio TX 78212210.228.0201 • fax: 210.228.0000www.esperanzacenter.org

$5 más o menosEsperanza

Noche azulde Esperanza

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2011 Vol. 24 Issue 8•

8pm • SaturdayOctober 15, 2011

22nd Annual

Mercado de PazPeace MarketNovember 25-26, 2011

DEADLINE:Oct 10, 2011

Haven’t opened La Voz in awhile? Prefer to read it online? LET US KNOW.

TO cANcEL A subscrIpTIONemail: lavoz@esperanzacenter.org

call: 210.228.0201La Voz is online @esperanzacenter.org

Suggested subscription: $35 ¡Gracias!

Está por llegar la mera meraLa que se lleva a la prietas y a las güeras por igual

Preparen sus calveritas , porque al rato Les doy una vueltecita

- Enrique Sanchez

Time to target those politicos, amigos, events and personalities that dominated

the 2011 scene. Time for CALAVERAS, poems written to poke fun and lead our

prey to a tortuously comical death.

DEAD-Line: Oct 8, 2011lavoz@esperanzacenter.org

or call Esperanza Center 210. 228.0201

Es temporada de CALAVERAS, poemas satiricas que le hacen burla a los

personajes, eventos, politicos y amigos de 2011 que merecen una visita de la

mismita muerte. Haganlos caer tiezos con sus palabritas.

Buena gente de Esperanza

CALL for CALAVERAS!

Applications @ www.esperanzacenter.org or at Esperanza, 210.228.0201

with Maylei Blackwell, author & assistant professor, César E. Chávez Dept of Chicana & Chicano Studies & Women’s Studies at UCLA

and Anna Nieto Gómez, pioneering Chicana activist and theorist with the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc,

an early Latina feminist organization

Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in collaboration with the Women’s Studies Institue, UTSA and MALCS present:

¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism

in the Chicano Movement

Friday October 7, 2011 @ 7 pmEsperanza Peace and Justice Center

www.esperanzacenter.org • 210.228.0201

monthly concert series with singer/

songwriter Azul