Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in huaxteco's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
5:25 pm	I know the next six weeks means a lot for the future of the internet access, more importantly internet access for the people using it for survival and needing it to stay up to date on their situations whether of immigration status or public assistance. What I've seen here in Albuquerque is intense, it's like my students back in Immokalee, they're struggling to get the basic things, and the delicate pieces holding there families together is always dangling from the precipice of a system that through no fault of their own exists. It's bleak what h.s. students back home are going through, it's as bleak as the 17 mile stretch of road the kid from pajarito mesa takes to the library computer lab just to get some homework done for junior college. For working mother's to tell me the hell they go through to get their kids to computers after they get back to work and find libraries closed, and less and less spaces and more and more fees. Yeah $5 for two hours may not be bad at one sitting but how can we allow for parents to pay so that their kids can finish their homework. If that is what's expected these days, how can telecoms show their face, as my mother says "no tienen cara", if they're making 80% profit on something as needed as phones and water. A margin of profit like that when we're paying some 64 dollars a month for basic service. It takes $8 / a year for them to maintain the network. There's something wrong with that picture. It's a painful infrastructure that's not benefiting our communities and is only widening a digital gap keeping an already historically marginalized community further in the deep end of lack of access. When people are not given those opportunities everyone has, it leaves folks in desperate situations, builds further mistrust and fears and loses people's engagement in a democratic society. We have to do this ridiculous frantic search for connection even in urban locations let alone when i lived in swamp country immokalee. Even albuquerque city limits there exists places that are rural and unserved not even underserved. In an entire pueblo rezervation about 15 minutes away no one has televisions after the digital transition. If congress is due to author a broadband bill without taking into consideration cultural/socio-economic/ geographic situations then then our society is facing the same separate but equal mentality, the same civil rights and human right violations that have never stopped being perpetuated on our communities. Communication is a basic human right. We have the equal right to apply to college the same way they do in neighborhoods where whole foods supermarkets exists 15 minutes from each other. Broadband access is essential for college, jobs, education in general. It is a link native youth have to retention of language and maintain cultural self-determaination. When we define Broadband as a Universal Service we are making opportunities to better their quality of life. Broadband access is essential for health and public safety. I wouldn't have made it to college if it wasn't for community centers like the CIW offices, the library and how it use to be open till 7pm 6 days a week instead of 5pm open 4 days of the week. I wouldn't have understood how marginalized my community was without getting out of it. If it wasn't for working here where i'm working now, I wouldn't have the chance to add to the work that is pushing for folks in my shoes toward access through attempting to shape our own infrastructure and flexing our collective political power while doing that shaping! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
12:48 am	dog days Last night I played with a dog at a backyard party fundraiser. It had been a while since i played with a dog so I kept poking at it to play with me. I want to be your friend, i thought. It wasn't exactly a party I was invited to by the host or the actual person they were fundraising for. I was happy and welcomed in by the host, and through a couple of awkward questions actually met the girl who was being deported and needed some lawyer fees fundraised that night. She introduced me to other folks, and was told to dance with them. I did and made more acquaintances that night than i thought I would. The music was so right, and was slowly realizing I was in a predominantly Latino and POC party. I let down my guard danced to reggae and cumbia-ed with some ladies, many over 40 with there kids and partners sitting around. At one point I had let a lady borrow my huaraches, and took her high heels. I was at peace, and only slightly innappropriate in my head. I dined on watermelon and wine, and broke a sweat in strangers backyard. I did moves that I felt I would never unleash again unless I was with my multigrains (MElo, Lupe) or Oscar, or family and friends in soflo. I almost cried at one point because of nostalgia. I let loose and was reminded how refreshing it is to just let it happen. I am in love. I don't know how to express it, sometimes i wish i could just dance it. That same night i met Jaraneros in a Pupuseria, and played danced and sang with them. I thought for an instance that Albuquerque was actually letting me in a little more, that i was an okay presence, and that it was gonna be o.k. I played with a dog about 5 years ago, at a backyard party in Tallahassee where an old couch went up in flames. I knew no one there either, but made sure the one brown boy there would know me. Even if he isn't around me anymore, last night i was with him while with the dog. The dog bit me tho, maybe he wanted me to snap out of it. Don't relive shit with me, was what he was tryin to say. I think i know why. I think i understand. I guess i need a haircut. Current Mood: awake (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
9:41 am	it's time to clean my room. cuz my sister got mad. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 30th, 2009
5:55 pm	rolling The sky is clear now, though all day it's been grey. Between now and eight hours ago, my eyes have been holding back tears. It's all flushed back down, but my face has a hot feeling to it, like when you've tired yourself out with crying. It might just be coincidence that the sky is grey; the day was heavy with emotions, and I guess I was physically and emotionally drained. And I fully understand my friends these days, when we carry these heavy thoughts, good or bad, it's gotta be released. I don't think it's a coincidence that the days can get heavy like this, if this is the wave swelling, i look forward to the release. If that release is music, meditation,writing, cooking, dancing, loving, than I hope to give myself up to this swell fully, completely. Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
9:01 pm	y vuelvo a decir adios I catch myself getting sucked into old pictures. Usually after eating something around 8pm when I get out of work. It's nothing heavy or nostalgic. I've just been doing it the last few days. There's a few that stick out mostly the ones where i'm in aztlan, california, arizona or mexico. When I look at those from the ol' days, la familia vazquez fotos, those are the ones that can suck me in. There's not many of those and I wish there was. When I think of my family especially the ones on the other side... i notice that's the side of my life that has always felt a little empty. It's my dad's face, his hands, his knowledge, it's my razon sabida. It's there on the face of my tio, and in the caniaveral by the side of the serrania. In the roadrunner, the clouded road bordered with deep green slopes painted with plants and palmthatched houses, and the occasional unsaddled horse. It is there in the winding entrance to the huasteca at the foot of the devil's spine mountains. On the road where you can see two completely different landscapes, the limbo between one world and another, a desert/lush forest, the location of picture shot where lupita places one foot on a rock, my dad happy to the point of tears, both embraced, framed under a rainbow stretching into the desert below. I could go into each foto writing and obsessing over the details in each. So many more dimensions in those fotos; almost seem to weigh more on that flat photo paper. Here in this house in Immokalee city town, there are memories on every wall, piece of cement, every tree, window, room, bed. It Overflows with memories spilling out on to the street and across many backyards, kitchens and living rooms, bedrooms, even along the roads where the crosses line the main highway, grandma's cross, and Candelario Sr's grave. Those memories good or bad, dancing at cielito lindo, climbed roofs, backyard accidents, pesticide reactions, cancer,farmworker uprise and burning bins, carnival riots, and fighting back cops, backseat of cuzin's car with boy's hand in mine. They sit here, these memories, and I sit here soaking them in. Once again I don't feel nostalgic, I think I passed nostalgia, it's like the past days of perusin the pictures, put something back in me. Processing those memories reconfirmed the wisdom in the question "how will you know where you're going if you don't know where you're coming from." Except I know where I'm coming from. I know i purge the shit shoved in my mind day after day. I sense the deception and the pain of it from every part of me, and I play so much with it I end deceiving myself sometime. It feels like everything I do from every angle of this continuously raped community, all there is la pinche mentira. The people I love, fucked over and over by the same hand fueling the gas chamber that is my cage. More painstakingly real, every day, when it's loved ones close to me, when it's pachanga, desmadre, desesperanza, desesperacion. When (a) loved one(s) close to me debates whether to sell themselves or not, when it's less about just making money and more about life or death sex work, la pinche mierda of being the people who border the rich ol' men of naples, who from their lavish homes in gated communities attend philanthropy banquets for immokalee's children, but buy children online. Maybe not all of them, but we cater to them, and that world of dinner banquets and ceo retirement lifestyles, allows their construction company owners the redneck reign over hired undocumented men, queer, straight, indigenous, latin american, their hand on the flusher. Every church, office, condo building, ours, with our bodies. But I don't get why, everyday we flush our own lives and cultures away, all institutionalized, compressed into a ticket to see Montez de Durango, Intocable, anything to numb the poison of each day in the fields, or on a cement truck.. so bitter. Perhaps, confused about why we digging our hole deeper, losing ourselves in oblivion and only having ourselves to see what this looks like. I work with youth now, a non profit housing community where I teach jarana, chaperone them to stupid golf trips where viejitos teach them golf swings and take pics of them for the next philantropy ball. I know I'm there for them, they are nasty to each other, and loving... Disillusioned but hopeful. I hope i have been that balance for them, the more I get them closer to our grassroots community struggle, the more i feel they laugh at me, or don't give a damn. I know they are like me, they call each other guato, but each of them has divorced or jailed, or undocumented parent. I know one of them really crisscrosses the lines like me, i don't know how well I do it anymore. If I could I would send myself back into that picture, paint it all that way for them. I wish I could be there, I wish for this place i love that as oppressed, exploited and squeezed as this place is, i wish it would blowup , I wish ours was here and we were there, that are cultures would tear out from under this consume us. and that those who were here before us, returned from where they've been, that we weren't hidden, that no one could institutionalize and market us. I know it is not what I want to do because for them, these kids i work with, there's a lot they go through, and it's just more flighty people that will stand in front of them save them with christian rap. And I know for my chances of being with someone, it will cave in on itself here. Here and maybe everywhere is f*ck*d pero, ya estuvo. soy vazquez y estoy aguantando un gran limbo. That limbo ain't shit, it is that chicano ni aqui ni aya, robado feeling, like always. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 12th, 2008
1:24 am	Tommorow could change the course of my life significantly. I'm nervous, two interviews, one with the Immokalee non-profit, and the other with the Miami Workers Center. For one, I feel miami would be the best place for me right now. It's not that far, but far enough. Far enough, as in enough so that i can think more about what steps i want to take for my self. Only that way can i be of any use to the people and places i love. But on the other side, i'm fighting with the idea that i have to leave because i'm running away from being queer and rural, and with my mom's hostility with that... if anything that makes me want to stay here even more. If i get the non profit housing after school program job, i'd be more established here in immokalee. I love it here, Id love the opportunity to work with youth, and get them more involved with the ciw and son jarocho and the radio. so many more ideas come to mind. damn. but i'm gonna be old soon and not be able to get out. i don't know. Apart from that dillema, i'm separated from whatever relationship i had with my partner. he can probably figure things out better with not having to worry about me and living two lives. miss tally days, and sitting on the roofs. hijole. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
8:39 pm	itchy I am really itchy. Some of my friends know I get it from stress. It wasn't until somebody told me once that they notice me scratching when I'm stressed. I want to call my friend who sent me all of her itch medication last year to me, cause i've resisted their use, I feel like my own mind can calm it down, and usually talking to her helps. I know I haven't used this medium in a while besides two days ago. I used to feel worried somebody would read it. But then realized it's Live... journal. It's good for venting. Besides the scratching that's been persistent, i've been working on the resume and cover letter. I'm broke as a joke, and need just about any job. I could do whatever here, but it wouldn't be enough to move. I feel anguished at the thought of living at home and in my current jobless state makes me feel kind of powerless and vulnerable. Even though i know i've been helping my mom out a little, and that the money i made in water melons went to good causes, I get the feeling this state is going to last a while. Besides having debt with the student loans, this situation with my partner is really shitty. All I keep hearing around me is how the shit always hits the fan 3 times. I ain't counting, but it feels like the fan's gonna break into pieces. For the moment, I have to look at the good things that have happened that continue to put a smile on my face everyday. My family's good, there's always the fatalistic mentalities, but we got good people and a baby on the way. I have tremendous faith that things happen to people, but like my mom says "god may grab you tight, but won't suffocate you." Te aprieta, pero no te ahorca. And also, that there's amazing fruit being rained down on our yard from all the good rain we've been receiving. Cutting the grass feels like macheteing through the jungle. It makes me feel good to run all the way to the village every now and then. It still makes me smile to wake up to Reyna calling me for Mate in the morning. There's tons of wild pumpkins and maracuya in her back yard, and my star fruit, papaya, and oranges are getting riper. At least there's that. I am not getting a job around here. My mom insists that it's my strong affiliation with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. I've felt honest when I talk about the skills and experiences I've gained with them. It disappoints and frustrates me that there's still such backward mentalities. We may be podunk but we shouldn't think like that. But of course what would I expect from "Federal Migrant Aid" programs who spend money on award conference instead of their communities; when i left their interview, i was asked not to be starting up no unions, w...t...f. I'm looking now at a group based out of alburquerque, nm. They document and distribute, teach and immerse themselves across borders to share and connect people to functioning projects and struggles, including the landless people's movement of brasil, the CIW, and many others. I'm trying to finish my cover letter but feel like i've gone too far with all the experience stories. I know I can't really help people in this current state of mine. I don't wanna get itchy spells. I'm gonna send it out tommorow, hopefully with some really badass references from Gerardo, Melody and somebody. today he went through electrical defibrillation not for cardiac arrest but for abnormal heart rhythm but he's out of the hospital. tommorow i may get him out of the house. tonight, gonna chill. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 11th, 2008
11:06 pm	Caving in "This is the way it is for a person that's poor, that lives with his family, to be like this: gay, an immigrant and poor is the worst way to live." --I don't know what to say right now; it just gets worse and worse here, like I-town don't give a shit no more. The more I am with the more I hate this place. I hate the perversions of my elders, the perversions caused by the rape been given to us for centuries. How I'm in love with my culture and how the same culture can bitch slap the shit out of your ganas to live. I hate what it's done to me, the bitterness fomenting daily in my life here, like if I was on another planet and how it manifest through my skin, like worms that want to take over me, crawling over every part of me. Reminding me how dirty I am, and how I can only be a failure if I live here. And it's not so bad for me, because I know right now, that a person who circles my thoughts and my heart is suffering on a hospital bed, lost in sea of whiteness, by a family he loves but that can't see him as an equal, as a human even. Where rosaries hang by necks, imprisoning his hopes to live like he wants to with whomever he wants to. I've been told time and time again, what i am doing dating someone that's hard to date, that has too much drama. They're well intentioned cause they know it's not easy for me to live in Immokalee, and want companionship, while keeping family and community in harmony with the absurdity of a same sex relationship. It just gets worse, today he was in a bad accident riding as a passenger to work on a work van; I have no way to get to him, I can't go in that hospital because his family would abandon him and take his baby, and on top of that, I'm broke. I don't know why writing in Live Journal always seems to be my last resort. This can seem like such a lame ass little nitch, but even when it can seem so empty, reading what you wrote can bring you back to making sense again. Which I think is what I've needed. I'm getting old and tired of dealing with the nervous twitches that have to do with my mom and her age. It feels like nothing is good enough anymore, and it's impossible for anything around her to be left untouched and disorganized/ or organized. I don't blame her for her nerves and for calling us ungrateful and unsuccessful. My cuz's pregnancy shocked my mom, because she was living with us and her mom had just been released from jail after 11 years. And me, well, I'm not giving her grandchildren. I'm kind of a rogue loose cannon to her, the, bad egg. Even though I'm out she still mentions women friends of mine and how they would be good nueras. Everything that has to do with gayness is automatically from a branch of evil. What the fuck do we do with our families when they don't understand how fucked up their shit issues are messing us up! And how do I as a person who doesn't just say fuck you to family, but who truly dissects how wrong they are with what they are saying; how perverted traditions in colonialism and catholicism have fucked with their minds. How do I take that shit and swallow it. How do I not fear for my life sometimes when my own mom would agree that perversions like that have no place in the world. How do i tell her own line of thought is exactly that... A line of enslaved thinking perpetually woven into the fabric of an oppressed community of mestizos. Mestizos by force not by choice. We're not a beautifully constructed race, we were forced into a submission, a submission of a whole civilization inside of us, guilty and deserving of what we get. Incapable of thinking for our selves because of what others might say. Other's being our masters, our priests, the richer people, the whiteness that pervades our thoughts, and bitchslaps us to a level where we can't even see our child as a full human being. I don't want to pigeon hole my mom into just another stereotype... everything about this life is multilayered. So why shouldn't her thoughts be too. We are people of contradicting feelings. We had to be in order to have what we have now, the knowledges that survive, that make me happy to be who I am. That make me happy to hold a jarana, and sing like a thousands years were flowing out of me, and I'm free again when I can play it sing it and dance it. God, it feels like God. Whatever that is, its what I think it is. Shit, gospel and soul, r and b, bluegrass and the blues, wouldn't exist without the flow of energy involved in a spiritual connection with our physical world. I know my mother and sister are artists continuing to weave the fabric that shields us from global McMurder of culture. When I pile on this shit at night, I get the worms that itch the shit out of me. A desperate gasp for air and night terror, a feeling like I'm trapped because I don't feel right. Not in this situation. Not behind the walls that keep me from my family. Or the walls that keep me from loving someone. Ultimately, I tend to just reject everything. Accept it all or reject it all, I don't know how I calm myself down. I just know it is what it is, and I'm not alone. They say part of looking toward the west for answers is that it's soo lonely you have to look at your self, and remember that you are fine, and that prayer is good, and that being alone is okay. Maybe that's where I'm at right now. I'm sad because I don't do more to be away from this cave, to force myself into a deeper involvement with the world. And perhaps, that frustration stems from not having gotten out of Immokalee more. Being stuck with this passive agressive behavior at home can be suffocating, and now that it feels like a cycle it only makes sense to leave, whether it be through a different mentality or a move to other opportunities to grow. There's people here in town i care about dearly, who would kill me if they knew about me. What makes me stay. What does my presence do? What space do I take up, and what do i do for that space? Does that space benefit from me, and vice versa? How can this place be good for me, when everything seems to leave me paralyzed, and hopeless. Not like a prozac needing hopelessness, more like trying to swim with no arms or legs. Or maybe a puzzle with missing pieces. How do I improvize on these misfit parts of my puzzle? Aren't we just trying to look for those tools to fix the world. Whether your focus be science, social justice, environment, human rights, fulfilling motherhood, fatherhood, brother and sisterhood, storytelling, sustainable agriculture, queer anti-capitalist decolonization. Ultimately, tools get sharpened or they lose purpose. That's what I really want. My tools to get out of this mess. Hack out my path with my own machete, pick the fruits of my own labor. Carry my turtle shell out to the places I have dreamed for myself, and for those I love. I want so desperately to pack this shell with all the fucking stories and versos of knowledge that have not been corrupted, take it away with me run away. Sometimes even if it means being alone. And yes, he is someone i think about a lot. That came into my life out of nowhere. That drives me insane, because it is so distant and so fucking hostile. There's less time to love only to dodge all the shit hitting our fans each day, just to talk to each other, the circus of seeing each other. The nerves and penas of knowing this is so incomplete. He's got a kid, and we're not sure what that means. I know for one, it means having a child is more important than anything, even a relationship. But its something I am fighting in my head. Because that means for years he could be hiding this part of him from his son, and that in the end, i may not ever have a relationship here. But a son will have his father. That's cool right?... Not really, not cool for anybody. For tonight, its 1 AM and i hate my house, i hate that i can't be there in the hospital. I'm scared. I miss a lot of people in my life. Current Mood: indescribable (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
4:27 pm	(thanks rachel) "slavery plain and simple" petition to end slavery Late Fall last year, my friend posted on live journal the news article regarding the slavery case that occurred during the town carnival. I was in the CIW office when the men arrived at the office their wrists still sore from being chained and shackeled in a UHaul. I know the U.S. sees the term "slavery" as something archaic. long gone. I know there's not much being said about this year being the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery from the U.S. even though Britain even came out with a movie "Amazing Grace" last year, and in london last year the oldest abolitionist organization recognized the organizing efforts in Immokalee against slavery. Sooo, yeah, just like it started in 200 years ago with a petition. Immokalee has pergamino, and is pushing this pergamino, an international petition against basically the same shit they fought against 200 years ago. visit this site, http://www.ciw-online.org/2008_Petitions/index.html what my friend posted: "November 20th was a momentous day in Immokalee. On November 20th, according to court documents filed last week, three tomato pickers made their way to the Collier County Sheriff's office after having escaped two days earlier through the ventilation hatch of a box truck where they had been held against their will by their employer. The three men told police of an Immokalee-based tomato harvesting slavery ring in which workers "were beaten and forced to work exclusively for the Navarrete family," according to an article entitled, "Family accused of enslaving workers at Immokalee camp" in the Naples Daily News (12/7/07). On that same day, November 20th, Andre Raghu, global managing director with the supply chain monitoring group "Intertek," told the readers of the Miami Herald that his company's audits of Florida tomato operations "have found no slave labor." Mr. Raghu was quoted in the Herald as part of a high-profile press junket organized by Burger King and their new partners in public relations, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), to counter CIW claims of a human rights crisis in Florida's tomato fields. And so, on November 20th, while well-paid executives assured the world that all is well in the Florida's fields, workers in Immokalee were recounting to Sheriff's deputies how they had to break out of a locked U-Haul truck to escape from their employers..." Read more here: http://www.ciw-online.org/no_slave_labor.html At the same time, I've been debating when to go to tallahassee. No one is very reachable. But I planned to go up there during my spring break, organize something. I'm trying to get 8000 signatures as my own florida goal. veremos. Current Mood: devious (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
3:17 pm	Centric in the Cage I don't even remember how to write a livejournal. There's no formula, but it used to be easier to grasp life and stick it into this little medium. I catch myself only reading my friend's pages when I get on this. And it's kind of weird cause I don't even write comments to them. Just look at them. Oh, but the Jarana is a medium I can't get over. It's like a heavy dose of tranquilizers just hit my body. I'm transfixed on the simplest chords and rhythms... breaking them down every once in a while, singin some versos when I'm inspired... Hmm. Substituting this week. I don't know why, but it's got me all shakey. I've heard something negative about me teaching. It bother's me, but i'm not trying to lay blame on anybody for my own shakes. I'm not the best at academics, I usually got through courses in college by connecting the lessons with my own life and community. I'm more I-town centric than I thought I was. I know Miami centric people, kind of remind me of myself; because it's the messedupness about these places that just make want to love the good stuff going on even more.  Just can't let it go no matter how bad it gets. That's one of the strongest reasons for me wanting to teach High School, Middle or elementary school...  The dillemma in my head is combining this with son jarocho. I'm in a position with the CIW where I'm almost here everyday, on the board with Student Farmworker Alliance steering committee and CIW, as well as the Comité central  de la radio as a weekend dj, and comité central de la Coalicion, I'm a little overwhelmed. Because I want to combine it with my job. I want to do a good job with students as well as actively facilitating a CIW - Immokalee Student Connection.  Right now, I'm excited to get to Mexico this March, and participate in the Seminario Luna Negra, in Southern Veracruz. An amazing group of youth and elders attend this camp, that combines culture, movement, and struggle together. I'm excited, look forward to it. But How DO I GET THERE?   I want to make it out there. and the idea of fundraising for it, seems so unlikely, not here in Immokalee.   I know I want at least one student to come with me from Immokalee. i know lupe wants to go too.  OH, and my sister and her baby. I know she wants me to go see her. But I know I can't afford two trips like that. ... Damn, the other thing is I am really wanting to leave for a hot minute. Like really leave Immokalee for a while. But it seems so unlikely, I'm not sure it gonna work right now. I know it's lame, but when I think about it, I ain't looking for love troubles, but it's getting to me. I walk on eggshells alot, since i've come out. Actually not really, but I need to give my mom space. It gets ridiculous sometimes. It can be a lonely place. I've been reading Manuel Muñoz (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
9:53 pm	vamonos porque ando mal de amores, y no tengo palabras, y no se porque... Como diria Chavela: Que no somos iguales dice la gente que tu vida y mi vida se van a perder que yo soy un canalla y que tu eres decente que dos seres distintos no se pueden querer Pero yo ya te quise y no te olvido y morir en tus brazos es mi ilusión yo no entiendo esas cosas de las clases sociales sólo se que me quieres y te quiero yo Vamonos, donde nadie nos juzgue donde nadie nos diga que hacemos mal Vamonos alejados del mundo donde no haya justicia ni leyes ni nada nomás nuestro amor (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 20th, 2007
12:18 am	next to at midnight O.K. It just hit me... I do care who I am next to at midnight on christmas. midnight is the explosion of all the memories of everything. damn. Current Mood: sad (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
1:49 am	Get on the bus. November 30th, March on burger king When we think of our circumstances, the place where we are right now, the places we visit day after day... When we can be away from our families because you can always go and come back... When you can take time off to make it down to your friends graduation, a bike ride, a thanksgiving dinner... These things that are important to us, and make an effort to get it together to go to by getting on a bus, carpool, caravan, hitch hike, train hop. We can do shit but take it for granted, or just choose not to do. Like the fact that right now, there are people in this town who are not eating, who could be in a situation, none of us could ever imagine ourselves in. That ignorance says, "no, not in the U.S. this is 2007". That here in the CIW office its 2 in the morning and there's people emailing in that "no, we can't come." That just this past week less and less people decided to come to the Burger King action across the country and in our own state. The backyard of burger king, with hundreds of thousands of students and youth, and only a small percentage making an effort to march through the streets of Miami, to the headquarters of Burger King. That you can't make it, because you can't get miss one day of class, when right here in this community there are workers who can barely walk to the grocery store without fear for their lives. I'm glad there are folks coming, and students organizing some form of transportation to get people down here. They can actually be a part of this in a time when there's so much against immigrant families; you cannot begin to imagine just how important it is to have people in solidarity, marching side by side with farmworkers this friday........ If I could show you all what just how much weight it will carry against Burger King this Friday--Burger King is telling us, there is nothing wrong with Immokalee, we are getting paid 12-18 dollars an hour. Please come--bring everyone and your mom. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 15th, 2007
8:29 pm	carajio y chilaquiles Ahorita no siento nada en mi cabeza mas que el puro cansancio y el asco que me da cuando me pongo a pensar en el pendejismo que a surgido desde que me dieron el trabajo con el Centro. Recien acabo de dicirle a la segundo persona en la oficina sobre lo que es ser queer en comparacion a gay, y pues, no creo que lo entendio porque seguia diciendo que ser "gay" es ser feliz, estar siempre contento... Que tiene muchos amigos gay, muchos gringos de naples, que conoce, dice. De esa platica, me comenso a preguntar pues que si era o no era? Dijo que supo porque muchachos que viven solos con su mama, son hombres bien concentidos con su mama, o son gay. En veces quisiera dar le en la mera garganta a cualquier persona que saca un pinche estereotipo sobre lo que es ser una minoridad. Sacar le el aire de mierda, que es solo eso, mierda fermentada que se reparte con otros para ser mas mierda. En esta torre de mierda se levanta todo lo comercial, todo lo que se supone que es lo normal, que comemos como los fruti loopis, la ostia, todo lo lindo, en todas formas, se nos imprime en todas nuestras acciones. En el mero acto de sexo, tambien, la idea que uno es como lo ideal que nos ofrece la torre de mierda. Como cojemos uno al otro, como cantamos, las imagines que vemos en todas partes. El miedo y el odio, lo fuerte que es la torre de mierda para controlarnos, decirnos quien es debil y quien es lo normal. Yo no soy nadie mas que un chavo que crecio en un pueblito migrante en el sur de Florida, en los Estados Unidos de Amerikkka. El "Ito-eyto" el "tomaton" que acompaniaba a su padre al campo, que atascaba camionetas en los surcos, piscaba, y tomaba yoo-hoos en el medio dia, zapateaba en las fiestas del 12 de diciembre, que jugaba beisbol, se quedaba afuera de las peleas escolares, que escribia para sus maestros, y que luego comenzo a escribir por el mismo, que luego escribio sobre su papa, y escribio y corria, y escribia porque le molestaba la epidemia de los pesticidas, que el "espray" de la labor consumia el cuerpo de muchos, y que solo llorabamos, que entre la muerte sucediera que tambien que no podia escapar su propia enfermedad del amor, y que buscaba la manera para escaparlo, esperar que se fuera todo lo que construyo la torre de mierda. Esperar como cuando un nin~o se escondia de la violencia de sus padres. Esconderse en el santuario que es la iglesia, pero que fue lo que construyo esa misma mierda. Pero eso no se fue. Y ningun cruzero gay aseguraria el final de esa torre, ningun desfile pride, o un show de puros blanquitos me ayudaria enfrentarme a mi mismo, a mi madre viuda, y con un fuerte deseo de no tener un hijo joto. de los llanos a la sierra hay una razon sabida hay una razon sabida de los llanos a la sierra que la vida no se acaba hasta el final de la vida de los llanos a la sierra hay una razon sabida (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007
8:30 pm	f*ck cops Cops....Sh*****t, they've always been the reason people around here find it so hard to leave their house, to walk these streets at night, to come through town late at night while driving alone. Even right now, while I think about leaving this computer to go to my house I'm sweating a little bit because of my bike missing one of it's required lights. I know nothing would happen  to me (sort of), but its so incredibly tense considering where i am, what i look like, what i've seen. I hate cops. I know I've talked with folks in Student farmworker alliance about it all the time, especially P. Simon, and other austin indymedia peeps,  to Melody, to the CIW, to students, to co-workers, everyone who has EVER spent a night in Immokalee they know what i'm talking about. It's so f*cking tense... Idea: bring all immokalee youth together to have them get it out in any way they can, translations, writing, anything, and from this form the first cop watch action group.  People are so angry even my mom gave me an  hour long testimony on police violence, and the risks women have in this community. Bottom line, she said, get the f*cking cop watch rolling... On that note, looks like lupita, my new fellow step queen, melo, and I, three mechista alumni are going to f.s.u. (f@ck sh#t up). oh, and my mom's not mad. it's just been a very draining week. to put it lightly.  i just need to remember that my circumstances require that i work a little harder to have my shi*t together... i think folks that have really known me and my mom, for a while, can sorta get it... either way,  it's been important for me to say it, i don't care how bad the drama is gonna be, it is what is. Current Mood: mellow (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
5:00 pm	It's raining outside and a hawk just flew up to the window here where i work, looked at us, and flew away. The day's been really chillaxed, and only once did my head hit the computer. It's been a thick weekend, and it seemed to flow, so i don't think the encuentro was better or worse, but i think it was not like the others, there was something about it that refreshed things for me. It was a good encuentro. I hit a little ruf patch. I think i go a little over the top sometimes, as far as ideas and plans go. This year though, i just felt a little clearer in my head. At least my role here feels a little clearer. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
2:46 pm	Miami Burger King Corporate Headquarters Protest For Immediate Release: Thursday, August 30, 2007 12:00 PM EST Contact: Marc Rodrigues, 239-292-3431 Guadalupe Gomez, 219-617-0966 STUDENTS, FARMWORKERS JOIN FORCES IN PROTEST AT BURGER KING HEADQUARTERS Major November mobilization to be announced as Burger King continues to drag feet Miami, FL – More than 100 students from across the U.S., dozens of farmworkers from Immokalee, and local Miami-area allies will join together to protest Burger King's continued refusal to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and to expose the reality of sweatshop conditions in the fields where Burger King’s tomatoes are picked. On Friday, August 31, 2007, from 11:30am to 1:30pm outside Burger King headquarters (5505 Blue Lagoon Drive), farmworkers and their student allies will also be announcing plans for a massive action against Burger King in November. The students will be making the trip to Miami from Immokalee, where they are gathering this weekend for the third-annual Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA) Encuentro, or gathering, which seeks to unite the broad SFA network and formulate strategy for the Campaign for Fair Food amongst Burger King's target youth demographic. SFA member Guadalupe Gomez stated, “Burger King has flatly refused to join Yum and McDonald's in taking a stand against the exploitation of farmworkers. Instead, they actually offered to retrain farmworkers to work in Burger King’s restaurants – eliminating farmworker poverty by eliminating farmworkers – adding insult to injury with such an obviously unworkable, and frankly pretty ridiculous, idea.” “More and more young people are taking a stand alongside farmworkers for human rights and fairness in the fields,” added SFA member Marc Rodrigues, “and no amount of slick advertising or empty excuses from Burger King is going to change that fact. Burger King must come to the table and work with the CIW, or they will continue to hear from us.” Presently, Florida tomato pickers earn 40-45 cents for every 32-lb bucket of tomatoes they pick. At this rate, a farmworker must pick two tons of tomatoes to make just $50 in a day. Farmworkers regularly work 10-12 hour days with no overtime pay, no health insurance, no right to organize, no sick days and no benefits whatsoever. In the most extreme cases, farmworkers are subjected to conditions of modern-day slavery. The CIW has asked Burger King to pay a premium for their tomatoes to be passed on to tomato pickers to increase their wages and to work with the CIW to improve conditions for farmworkers in the fields. Background: SFA is a national network of youth and students organizing in alliance with farmworkers to eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields. The CIW is a community organization based in southwest Florida that has been nationally and internationally recognized for its leadership in human rights, including uncovering and assisting in the successful prosecution of five farmworker slavery rings since 1997. The CIW has reached agreements to improve wages and working conditions for Florida farmworkers with Yum Brands in 2005 (after a four-year boycott of Taco Bell); and with McDonald's earlier this year. More background information can be found at www://sfalliance.org or www://ciw-online.org __________ Marc Rodrigues Student/Farmworker Alliance (239) 292-3431 http://sfalliance.org/ http://ciw-online.org/ http://allianceforfairfood.org/ (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
7:17 pm	backyard Today I was thinking how cool it would be if my town had no fences. At first I thought about it in my backyard how, if there was no fence there i'd probably talk with a bunch of people, some prostitutes and folks who are smoking. We could talk and agree that it was nice to chill in the backyard. All i think about right now, is how much i don't like walls. How much i don't like the staleness of objects to communicate through. How it's difficult to know what's up when it's all trying to be kept clean, like a kitchen floor or a friendship, an ex-romance. What i mean by what's up, is, well, what does the other person think. Can they still love me if i show them this side of me, is one less of a human for revealing their flaws, their past, those heavy things that people mostly hide away to not scare folks away. I just won't bury myself in that. It's a lonely enough place to be to then start with your own shit. I have here what i realize is maybe a roomful of people i love tremendously, as well as folks i admire but don't talk enough with. I just started a new job, it's a good place with a shitty mentality but it's challenging. The first big lesson i've learned with this job is that it's just my mom and i, and the CIW really does come after that, as if it really were my family. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 10th, 2007
1:51 pm	hot times i am writing from downtown immokalee, it's really hot. I guess even a little hotter than i expected after being in southwest arizona. the weather in SW aztlan is crazy, it felt more like seattle than the desert cactus images that come to mind. But that's where lupita lives, a couple thousand feet up i think, in Sierra Vista aside from the Huachuca mountains. being with my sister and the family was nice, and it felt way short, because i'm so used to being with my sister i guess it just feels weird leaving her. ------>fast-forward Now i'm in the public library, in the teddy bear room/quiet room. I guess its nicer to be in the cool grey than in the toastiness of SoWest Florida, for lupita at least it's ideal, but for me, i prefer the uncomfort of things clinging to a hot sweaty body. Somehow it has to do with how i've been thinking these days, you know sometimes when you wish the weather around you would accompany your feelings, make you happier when you want to be happy, but when your frustrated and want to let everything out like the sky when an afternoon thundershower washes all the happy sunshine away, and then it subsides, leaving a fresh evening like you were back in a place where you're neither born nor dead. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 2nd, 2007
6:25 pm	Enigma Is the name of the town where the watermelon crop we've been harvesting is located. Actually, the watermelon fields stretch far into 2 or 3 towns. Alapaha, and Brooksfield, places south of Tifton; it's a huge ass piece of land owned by a rich ass grower. These past 2 or 3 weeks (i feel like i lost track of time) have been good for our crew, being that we were placed in a field were you couldn't step in any direction without tripping over 2 or 3 16-20 pound watermelon, an avalanche of watermelon, the most the cooperative watermelon crew has ever faced in the history of this collective. Amidst the work, the 99 degree afternoons, gallons of gatorade and water hydrating our bodies every 15 minutes, and of course delicious juicy watermelon, its been one very intense month and a half or 2 months i don't remember when exactly we left immokalee. There have been moments here where i have felt like there is nothing i would rather do than this; i don't know what it is exactly i like though. It might be the feeling you get after the day is over and you realized you accomplished many small challenges, like whether the watermelons would reach the top of the truck when i throw them, whether i can catch em right, throw them right, whether i can reach the end. The larger ongoing challenge of waking up and having the attitude that we all need to see in each other to function. Sometimes its a pleasant attitude, a jokester, an imaginary kung fu showdown, these things that weave what was 15 of us to function strong, like one solid force... It might also be the country, trees, big sky and blessing of a cloud floating over us, bringing a breeze in. There's also...waffle house. Waffle house is there for you when you need it. In our case, we landed next to the gay hangout of the 6 or 7 waffle houses in tifton. Its a place i've been able to just sit down and have a scrambled egg and even if the servers really don't like me, i feel comfortable in hearing their tone, in seeing a smile, and asking if i want some more Sweet Tea. I don't know if that's weird or not, its just something i find fun, funny, a different rhythm to the day. I decided to flirt one day and it kind of worked, at least i got him to laugh especially when i brought a watermelon over. I call it the gay WH because there's queer servers and every other day there seems to be a few booths with really really cute girls and guys all of them flirting with the staff. Even though i don't have tight fancy clothes and highlights, and even if i have green finger nails from the watermelon, it makes me happy to see that southern georgia has queer waffle houses. I've picked the shit out of watermelon this summer, if it really is winding down, then i need to start thinking of what's next. I don't think there's much more after the next couple of days, and then we're on our way to immokalee. If all i've been thinking about doing is getting out west or to the north then i should do it. I think the southeast is nice and all with it's humidity, three thunderstorms a day alligator life, but it's kind of sad when everyone's out, when there's people i really love and miss out there all scattered way the fuck out there. I would like to focus on jarana all summer, practice, play, fandango, chill, swim. Even here every day after work all i want to do is touch the jarana, if there's even strength and time for one verse and one jam i'll do it. It truly is therapeutic. If Melody's back from brasil by the time i get down there, maybe that's what i'll focus my freetime on for the remainder of the summer, constant jarana sessions in the back yard. If not, then i think it's time to see Lupita Omar and Luna, LOL, its possible, because then i would be able to go see Sara, Robert and maybe Steve in Albuquerque. Shit, and whatabout the jaraneros in Austin and Santa Ana, the Rasquachos, shit! the poc solitude writers workshop in Michigan! I think i'm feeling like this because i'm scared to be home for the summer, it's really depressing to be in immokalee in the summer. I've also really not been in contact since the start of watermelons, i don't have a phone and i feel like few friends out there are not around anymore, or something, i just feel a little absent, absent minded. On another note, i've been super pensive about things tend to say or not say sometimes. I tend to bring up communication a lot when i write. More than ever it's been important for me to communicate and communicate well while working out here this summer. It hasn't been perfect, just made me wonder a whole lot, and i don't even have the words to explain it. Ever since my time with Rosaura and the roadtrip to see my family while i was in mexico 2 months ago, i feel like i overwhelm myself with assumptions, feel cornered by certain things people do, that in retrospect are really just things that happen without intentions to hurt or even if it was to hurt, really don't matter. I don't know what i'm saying, only that when it comes down for me to say something i really do need to say something and not hold, not carry thoughts that aren't meant to stay with me. What i'm getting at might kind of go with soccer. The ball needs to move be kicked, never stay stagnant juggled by one, but pushed forward, strategically, with the right moves, and for me, i guess: with the right words. Current Mood: mellow (2 Comments |Comment on this)