CULTURE POST-Hip Hop and Country Music in Mexico; Clogging and Peace Vigiling in NC: Wired and Waiting in West Texas; Remembering Stetson Kennedy, Troy Davis, and Hans Scholl

Sparta, NC     Alleghany County Fiddlers Convention,  July 2011  

I'm trying to fly and travel less as it becomes more apparent that the planet might be trying to purge itself of human life. I'm writing this from Texas which had record breaking heat for three months this summer combined with a terrible drought. I got out of Arizona earlier in the summer during the largest forest fire in the state's history, but then Texas had major fires as well (A wildfire was burning a few miles from where I was staying last week!).  


A friend of mine doesn't fly at all and only makes long trips by train. I'll never call myself an "environmentalist" until I sell my truck, but I have made some progress-- used Amtrak once this past year and did cut out my annual trip to Panama (full disclosure--the school in Panama where I worked closed).


For now let's enjoy the benefits of the global warming trotting lifestyle and look back at summer 2011--first stop on the cultural express is Magdalena de Kino in the Mexican state of Sonora, (just south of Nogales, AZ) for the annual Kino Cultural Festival held last May.

 ACT 1--The HIP HOP Group Danza Urbana, who are studying Hip Hop at their university in Hermosillo, Sonora, are shown here in their first ever public performance! Here's  a short video I took of Roger showing his moves.

Ever seen a priest doing HIP HOP (okay not a real priest), well be sure and check out this video clip and watch out for the guy falling from the sky. When Danza Urbana finishes, the CIRCO MUNDI folks take over.

                                     AND OF COURSE THE JUGGLERS!

Some of the spectators at the festival

A father and son selling fake beards, mustaches, and eyelashes.

ACT 2--I'd never seen this before in Mexico, a band performing country music from the U.S., (many Charlie Daniels songs). They were excellent!

Onward to North Carolina and the Blue Ridge

I grew up in the small town of Elkin, NC (pop. 4000). Here's the first train to roll into town in 1911.
The only train I ever rode here was the one I hopped as a teenager. Me and a buddy got caught
and the train workers were so nice they let us ride in the engine!

A view of Elkin from across the Yadkin River.

For several years a group of local residents have been holding a peace vigil in Elkin every Thursday at noon. Though small in number,  I consider their turnout equivalent to 100,000 protesters in New York City. They said they get quite a few thumbs up and very few one finger salutes.

Here's shot I took of downtown Elkin hanging on in hard economic times.
Elkin used to have a textile plant employing nearly two thousand, and a furniture
plant, where I briefly worked (both plants now only have skeleton crews).  

ACT 3--Check out these video clips I took last July in Sparta, NC,  

of some great clogging and music at the Alleghany County Fiddler's Convention.

Then the crowd joined in the fun! I'm the one in the video doing the fanciest footwork (just kidding).

In 1917 the Yadkin River in Elkin froze over with 8 inches of ice, I've never seen any ice on it.

The old Reeves Theater in Elkin. Aw the memories--throwing popcorn from the balcony with Mr. Reeves stopping the movie and coming out on stage to calm down us down. The last movie I saw here was "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".  The store to the left, Diana's Bookstore, and other community members are trying to save and restore the theater to be used a community performing arts center.

             ACT 4--WIRED AND WAITING IN WEST TEXAS

The Salt Flats of West Texas

One of the benefits of working in West Texas is stopping in for some chow at the historical Salt Flats Cafe (opened since 1929). It's located in Salt Flats, TX out in the middle of nowhere, west of Guadalupe Pass. If you've seen the movie "Glory Road" there's a scene filmed at the cafe.  The friendly woman who runs the place grew up right there on the grounds. Well I was enjoying my lunch but for some reason she didn't come to refill my ice tea. I grew up in NC where an ice tea addiction is common and you get spoiled having your cup topped off every few minutes. She never reappeared so as I got up to pay my check and request a tea refill for the road I spotted her behind the grill and quickly realized the reason for my predicament--she was surfing the world wide web on her computer!

Remembering Stetson Kennedy. 

On Aug. 27 a great American passed away, Stetson Kennedy, just shy of his 95th birthday. I was fortunate to get to know and spend time with him as he was a close friend of my wife.  His bio on Wikipedia states "William Stetson Kennedy (October 5, 1916 – August 27, 2011) was an American author and human rights activist. One of the pioneerfolklore collectors during the first half of the twentieth century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world. His actions lead to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan's national corporate charter.^[1] Kennedy was the author of eight books and the co-author of a ninth.

I often quote something Stetson once said to me, "The American people are the only oppressed people in the world who think they are free".  Interviewed in the Folio Weekly (folioweekly.com, Dec. 29, 2009, by Anne Schindler) Stetson reflected on activism as a perpetual fight, "Struggle is all, it's what keeps us going. Win or lose, struggle is the way to go out". 

The article quoted  Carol Alexander on Stetson's legacy, "What is most remarkable to me is his idealism...As people get older they burn out and soften up. But Stetson is a warrior. He's a a front liner, and true warriors never soften up". The article continued, "Activism has a definite life cycle. For some it's born of youthful passion or campus activism. For others it's driven by midlife political interests or parental concerns. And for a few, it's kindled by the free time and perspective that retirement affords. But most activists eventually wear down. Some are burned out by defeat, others stop when they've won an important battle. But win or lose, most eventually weary. Kennedy by comparison, has remained vigorously, even defiantly active. His politics absolutely current--and surprisingly radical".

Remembering Troy Davis

Yesterday Sept. 21, 2011 the system put to death Troy Davis, a man widely believed to be innocent of murder charges, just shy of his 43rd birthday. The state of Georgia ignored a massive campaign by Davis supporters, the NAACP, Amnesty International, and others and carried out the execution. The US supreme court refused to halt the execution despite a four hour delay (there was no dissent).

Wikepedia has this to say about Davis's early life " Davis was the eldest child of Korean War veteran Joseph Davis and hospital worker Virginia Davis.^[9][10] The couple divorced when Davis was very young,^[10] and Davis grew up with four siblings in the predominantly black, middle-class neighborhood of Cloverdale, Savannah.^[10] He attended Windsor Forest High School, where one teacher described him as a poor student.^[10] He dropped out in his junior year so he could drive his disabled younger sister to her rehabilitation.^[9] Davis obtained his high-school equivalency diploma from Richard Arnold Education Center in 1987. A teacher noted that he attended school regularly but seemed to lack discipline.^[9] Davis's nickname at the time was "Rah," or "Rough as Hell" , but some neighbors reported that it did not reflect his behavior; they described him as a "straight up fellow" who acted as a big brother to local children.^[10] 

Remembering Hans Scholl

Today, Sept. 22, marks the 93rd birthday of Hans Scholl, who along with his sister Sophie and others founded the White Rose group in Germany which carried out an underground campaign of resistance against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis until they were caught and executed. An earlier blog post focused on the White Rose:

http://hobodispatch.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-treasure-in-mexicos-sierra.html?spref=fb

In their third leaflet, Hans Scholl and the White Rose had this to say to the German people:

“...why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?”

If Hans Scholl were alive today and living in the U.S., what might he have to say?

After Fighting Nuclear Waste, A Mexican Family's Fight For Survival: The Reyes Salazar Plight

Oct. 1998--Professor Manuel Robles, coordinator of the Binational Coalition Against Toxic Dumps, recognizing Sara Salazar for her family's work in defeating a nuclear waste dump in Texas near the Mexican border.   

On October 22, 1998 a binational coalition of citizens, activists, and political representatives won a major environmental battle over Gov. George W. Bush and the state of Texas when a proposed nuclear waste dump near the Rio Grande and the town of Sierra Blanca, TX was canceled. Thousands of Mexicans took part in the struggle, but one family particularly stood out: the Reyes Salazar family from the town of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos in the rural area downriver from Ciudad Juárez known as the Juárez Valley.  I got to know these friendly and hospitable folks well as I was a field organizer for an El Paso-based environmental organization, and enjoyed visiting them in Guadalupe where I was treated to delicious sweet bread from their family bakery.

Feb. 2011--Sara Salazar at the funeral of her daughter and son, Malena and Elías Reyes Salazar. They had been kidnapped and found murdered two weeks later. Her son Saúl stands behind her to the right.

The Juárez Valley has seen some of the most intense violence in all of Mexico since President Felipe Calderón escalated the drug war in 2006.  The murder rate in Juárez has increased tenfold. After losing four children and other relatives to the violence, Sara Salazar and remaining family fled their beloved home, first to the city of Juárez and then Mexico City. They are hoping to be granted asylum in another country. 

On Aug. 19, 2011 the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada  published an article entitled "The Reyes Family: history of extermination", which stated "the climate of harassment, persecution, and death that has devastated the Reyes Salazar family, who have a history of several decades of social activism which includes opposition to a toxic dump in south Texas, labor struggles against the maquiladora factories in the region, the struggle to shed light on the murder of women in Juárez, and protests against the abuses committed by the military within the context of the militarization of the border." (link to full article at end)


The global war on drugs was launched forty years ago by President Richard Nixon. In a recent editorial in the New York Times, "Call Off The Global Drug War", former president Jimmy Carter endorsed the recommendations by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former presidents  Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia, and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. The commission's  report opens with the statement, "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." Recommendations include substituting treatment for imprisonment and for governments to experiment "with models of legal regulation of drugs...that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens." The report cited countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland which have already implemented broad drug policy reform with great success. (link to full report at end)

First a look back at a recent event in Ciudad Juárez where the plight of the Reyes Salazar family was often mentioned:

Mothers holding posters of their disappeared daughters for the arrival of the caravan for peace and justice in Juárez on June 10, 2011.

June has arrived and spring flowers are wilting under the heat.

The University of Juárez looks pretty much 

the same as it did when we organized environmental 

conferences on the campus fifteen years ago. 

A Memorial Wall of Victims 
was placed on the campus mall 

But a new topic dominates the landscape: the violence, the mounting death toll, and the toll it all takes on the living--you can

see it in many faces.

But this was not a day to cry, but a day of outcry. 

"Estamos hasta la madre!" (We've Had It Up To Here) was their theme. The Caravan of Peace and Justice had come to town.

The caravan was led by a poet named Sicilia, a poet who gave up writing poetry after his son was murdered. Not a charismatic leader but it didn't matter; he shared their same pain, the personal loss.

Javier Sicilia speaking at the university of Juárez

The images of two brothers stood out (above): 
Marcos and Jose Luis 

Two of sixteen students were who 

were gunned down at a party last year.
Innocent victims of the nightmare. 

Salvarcar, where they lived and died, was the caravan's first stop.

The tragedy of Salvarcar, the battle cry of Salvarcar.

                                                                     

Mexican journalists at the press conference

The brave journalists of Juárez were present as always.

Reporting about the drug war is risky business. According to Reporters Without Borders, Mexico is now the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Thirty reporters have been killed since 2006 (7 this year).  

A contingent of folks from the U.S. marched across the bridge from El Paso to join the caravan.

A friend who marched with them took this photo along Juárez's tourist strip--collateral damage from the violence and widespread extortion. Tourists aren't the targets, but they're gone regardless.

Juárez residents marching to the plaza to join the caravan rally  

(photo by Todd Miller/Witness For Peace)

In the late afternoon thousands gathered in the Plaza del Monumento, which has a statute of Mexico's lone indigenous president, Benito Juárez. 

                                                     For Whom the Bell Tolls

left to right: Susana Chavez, Josefina Reyes,
 Marisela Escobedo

Many were remembered:

Susana Chavez, an activist and poet who protested the killings of women and coined the phrase "Ni una muerta mas". Josefina Reyes, who helped defeat the nuclear dump and fought injustice her entire adult life. 

Marisela Escobedo,

murdered while protesting the murder of her daughter.

A peace sign at the rally with the ubiquitous symbol
 for "No More Blood"    (Miller/WFP)

Olga Reyes Salazar speaking at the rally
 (Miller/WFP)
Speaker after speaker told heartbreaking stories of family members disappeared or murdered. At times it almost seemed like a ritual of healing, but anger was also present: at the army, the police, President Calderón, the impunity, Plan Mérida (U.S.
military funding for Mexico). The message from participants was loud and clear--the drug war is a disastrous failure, and "A National Pact For Peace" was drafted to offer a way out of the abyss.

It was a day of intense emotions. There were tears, but smiles and hugs were also plentiful.

The day's events showed that the spirit of struggle in Juárez  is alive and well and that life goes on. That peace and justice are possible, and people are risking their lives to make it happen.

REMEMBERING THE FIGHT AGAINST THE SIERRA BLANCA NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP, AND THE REYES SALAZAR FAMILY WHO PLAYED A MAJOR PART IN THAT STRUGGLE

Ruben Reyes (left) at the trench dug for nuclear waste
in Sierra Blanca, TX

1,200 people marching through Juárez in March 1998 

to protest the proposed nuclear dump in Sierra Blanca

The march through the then peaceful Juárez Valley  Aug. 1998

In August 1998 hundreds of people from the Juárez Valley, Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, and other areas took part in a four day 90 mile march to Sierra Blanca. The first two days the Mexican and U.S. contingents marched separately on opposite sides of the border, but on the third day the two groups merged together for the final two days to Sierra Blanca.

The Mexican contingent crossing the Rio Grande from the Juárez Valley to join marchers on the U.S. side

Meeting U.S. Customs and raising hands to say "We come in peace!" The end of the march for those without papers.

 The arrival of the march in Sierra Blanca, Texas  Aug. 1998

Oct. 12, 1998--Over a thousand Mexican students block five international bridges in Juarez and the Juarez Valley to protest the Sierra Blanca dump.      

 Marching together in Austin, Texas   Oct. 21 1998 

Saúl Reyes speaking at the final rally in Austin

Mexican congressional representatives protesting the dump in Austin, Oct. 1998, where they held a three day fast. Holding the sign is Juarez city council representative Jose Luis Rodriguez who fasted on an international bridge for over 20 days.  At far right is Juarez congressman Carlos Camacho, who was murdered in Juarez in 2008.

All night vigil in Ciudad Juarez Oct. 21, 1998--the day 
before the final decision.

 Guadalupe held its own candlelight vigil on Oct. 21.  Five Reyes Salazar siblings are shown, three of whom were victims of the violence: Malena and Josefina, first and second from left; and Rubén, second from right. Third from left is Eleazar who died from natural causes. Fourth from right is Claudia.

A sing-along around the campfire during the Guadalupe vigil.

Josefina Reyes Salazar
and two sons (far right)

Murdered in Jan. 2010
She founded a human rights
organization in the Juárez Valley
after her son's murder.

Rubén Reyes Salazar--Murdered in Aug. 2010
In addition to his environmental and
     human rights activism,
he and his brothers 
operated a bakery in Guadalupe.

Oct. 22, 1998--The Day of Triumph. Matachines dancers from Guadalupe perform outside the offices of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission in Austin TX.

U.S. and Mexican dump opponents celebrate in Austin on Oct. 22, 1998. Sara Salazar (dressed in white with right arm raised) is standing in the back row, third from left, next to Texas State Rep. Norma Chavez in the red dress. 

Oct. 23, 1998--the headline of the El Paso Times. Photo shows several of the Matachines dancers from Guadalupe.

Here's a video from the Hobo Dispatch about the Reyes Salazar family's participation in the Sierra Blanca struggle and the disastrous violence that struck their beloved town of Guadalupe, with footage from a visit to Guadalupe in Sept. 2015 which has become a virtual ghost town.

Click on the above video to watch the Story of the Reyes Salazar family.

Oct. 22, 1999--The Diario de Juarez newspaper does an anniversary report on the Sierra Blanca nuclear dump struggle focusing on the valiant efforts of the Reyes Salazar family. Shown here is Sara Salazar at her home in Guadalupe.

In early 2011 the house was set on fire and now sits empty.

click on the link to read:

Famila Reyes: historia de exterminio (La Jornada 8-19-11):

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/08/19/index.php?section=opinion&article=002a1edi&partner=rss

Other Links:
Killings Jolt A Family In Mexico (New York Times 2-25-11):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/world/americas/26mexico.html


Call Off The Global Drug War by Jimmy Carter (N.Y. Times 6-13-11) 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/opinion/17carter.html

To read the Global Commission on Drugs report:
http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report