Missouri Flash Trip, Part 3: Hellfire Revisited

On my way back to El Paso from my Missouri Flash Trip, I passed through Alamogordo (my old home!) and stopped for dinner at the Subway on the north side.

This was in the ladies' room:

Hellfire in Alamogordo. July 2017.

I had just seen a family leave Subway after eating. What looked like a youngish dad with his youngish wife and two daughters. The woman and girls were dressed in the long skirts with the long hair that bespeak one of the ultra-conservative Christian sects that put women and girls into a box of submission. No different from the ultra-conservative Jewish sects or the ultra-conservative Muslim sects.

I have no patience for that kind of thing anymore, "that kind of thing" being the denial of an individual's rights to self-determination. In this case, a girl's or woman's rights to self-determination. Some people want to call this kind of thing "culture" or "religious freedom" as a way to deflect criticism. But it's nothing more than garden-variety oppression. It's on the same continuum of oppression as female circumcision, child marriage, and so-called honor killings.

So when I saw the pamphlet sitting on the white sink of the ladies' room, I picked it up, crumpled it, and put it in the trash. Then I walked across the way to the men's room and looked inside to see if there was a pamphlet in there that I could destroy. No.

On my way, then.

The flyer looked like the one I saw in Arkansas back in 2012, driving back home from a road trip to Louisiana:

Hellfire in Arkansas. January 2012.

El Paso: Standing Up: Men for Choice?!

Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

I was dumbfounded.


An upcoming event in November had popped up on my social radar screen. An event called Men for Choice.

Maria y Yahvi at Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

Holy pissaroni! Back in Missouri and Louisiana, one barely whispered the word abortion, looking from side to side in the process to see who was in earshot, said states having been hijacked by ultra-conservatives trapped in the Three Bs paradigm (babies, bullets, and the Bible) drawn by the political grandparents of our current power structure. (This was NOT the case in Missouri in the 80s and early 90s, when there were multitudes of Republican and Democratic women who publicly espoused reproductive rights.)

In El Paso, not only are there women talking LOUDLY and OFTEN about reproductive rights, there's even enough traction for there to be an event called Men for Choice!

El Paso! Who'd have thought!?

Maria y Yahvi at Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

Folk musicians, Maria y Yahvi, shared new, old, traditional, and regional songs in English and Spanish, using a range of instruments.

Below, they sing a bilingual version of Woody Guthrie's This is Your Land:

This land was made for you and me. 

It felt good to be here.

And I got this:

West Fund was the organization behind the event. I had no idea there was an organization that helped people so directly with their reproductive needs.

Louisiana: About a Girl

Image: “Plaque from a Casket with a Dancing Woman” by Coptic via The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC0 1.0

A phone was stolen from a child by a child. A couple of videos created by the young thief. Unbeknownst to this child-director-actor, they were automatically uploaded. Seen by the owner of the phone, someone I know. Reported, same day as the discovery, to four child-protection or law enforcement agencies in two states. Persevered over several days to push an investigation. Not about the theft - who cared about that? - no, about the obviousness of child abuse, both current and, inferentially, the recent past.

The videos: Graphic, disturbing, alarming, no ambiguity at what occurred.

Responses by the agencies: Indecisive, vague, incomplete. Dismissive, even.

I think about this young girl, age unclear. Ten? Twelve? Fourteen? She is a girl of color. There is zero doubt that she has been exposed to things that no child should be exposed to, and the same holds true for at least one young child in her circle. When I say zero doubt, I mean that. The videos make that clear.

The sheriff's office referred the caller to the city police although the video was filmed in the parish. The city police tried to refer the caller to the sheriff. The child protection agency in Louisiana determined insufficient cause - without even looking at the videos - for investigation. The child protection agency in the reporter's state referred the reporter to Louisiana. The city police assented to look into things, but there was a delay until the appropriate detective could talk to the caller about it. There was a further delay while the city detective decided how to accept or view the videos.

It all ended up so ambiguously. The child would get counseling, apparently. Or maybe the family. Or both. For what, one wonders. Unknown.

Everybody seemed to have missed the point.

This girl, albeit the actor on a superficial level, was clearly in an environment of abuse, present or past.

One person, among the numerous consulted during the reporting chronology, made a throw-away comment about the sexual precociousness of girls these days. Like them being the aggressor with the boys, etc. This, despite the fact that I had described graphically what was on the video. That this girl is a child.

Here are some perspectives about the vulnerability of young girls of color: 

Sex Crimes Against Black Girls Exhibit Uses Art to Confront Incest

Why Are Black Women Less Likely to Report Rape?

Sent Home From Middle School for Reporting a Rape

Sexual Abuse and the Code of Silence in the Black Community

Why Does Our Culture Sexualize Young Black Girls?

Marvel Pulls Sexualized Riri Williams Cover After Backlash

The Onion Tweets That [a Nine-Year Old Girl of Color] is the C-Word


Updated information

The Truth About How People View Young Black Girls is Disturbing

How Black Women's Bodies Are Violated as Soon as They Enter School

Texas: Video of Invasive Search Shows "Rape by Cop" ....

"This same officer body slammed Ms Corley, stuck her head underneath the vehicle and completely pulled her pants off, leaving her naked and exposed in that Texaco parking lot," he added, saying that her treatment amounted to "rape by cop".

"They then took Ms Corley and placed both ankles behind her ears spread eagle position and started to search for something in Ms Corley's cavity in her vaginal area."

This young girl in South Louisiana, whose life intersected with mine, briefly. What is she doing today?


A song from one of my favorite artists, Rhiannon Giddens, At the Purchaser's Option:

Antigua, Guatemala: The Apron

An apron from Guatemala. Credit: Ixchel Textiles

Before I left Antigua, I shopped for gifts. For Kate, I found a second-hand apron. The apron had a deep pocket on one side, where I imagined Kate would place the tissue she always has on hand. I believed Kate would like to touch the beauty in the worn and mended places of the apron, perhaps feeling a connection to the woman who wore the apron when it was new.

When I brought the apron home to my airbnb home, my hostess told me about the importance of aprons to traditional Guatemalan girls and women. Aprons represented growing up and responsibility. The number of pockets in an apron signified the level of responsibility a woman had to her family.

From the autobiography, I, Rigoberta Menchu, an Indian Woman in Guatemala:

.... my mother told me she is only respected if she's wearing her full costume. If she forgets her shawl, her community starts losing respect for her and a woman needs their respect. 'Never forget to wear your apron, my child,' my mother used to say. 

Our tenth year actually marks the stage when we enter womanhood. It's when parents buy their daughters everything they need: two aprons, two cortes, two perrajes .... My mother used to scold us when we ran off without our aprons: 'You must dress as you're always going to dress. You mustn't change the way you dress because you're the same person and you're not going to change from now on.'  .... Our aprons are .. something very important: women use them all the time, in the market, in the street, in all her work. It's something sacred for a woman and she must always have it with her.

Rigoberta Menchú is a Guatemalan Mayan woman who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her human rights work on behalf of Mayans. 

Antigua, Guatemala: Girls: PDAs and Promises

 

School kids in uniforms abound in Antigua. White blouses and plaid pleated skirts for girls. White shirts and dark trousers for boys.

In the mornings on the way to school, on the way home during the lunch hour, or in the afternoon after school had let out, a common scene on the sidewalk: An adolescent boy and an adolescent girl together, up close. Sometimes kisses exchanged. Sometimes just long, meaningful looks. Sometimes caresses. Quite a lot of PDA, in fact.

I could just imagine what the boys were whispering into the girls' ears - the same thing boys have whispered into their desired targets for millennia, right?  Promises of love eternal, assurances of beauty, and all that.

All this PDA on the Antiguan streets surprised me because of two assumptions I held:

• Guatemala's social culture is very traditional; i.e. very conservative in regards to dating between boys and girls, especially the public comportment of girls and women; and
• Antigua is a small town, so observations-judgment-gossip spreads quickly. 

I asked both my Spanish teacher and my airbnb hostess about the prevalence of these public mating rituals.

In a nutshell, said both women, it's the same old story that spans current and past cultural mores. It's the boys' job to hunt and conquest. It's the girls' job to keep their legs closed. If a girl succumbs to a boy's advances, all judgment falls on her. After all, the boy was just doing what a boy is supposed to do.

Well, I asked, are condoms at least readily available?

Sure, but again, same old story. Boys don't want to wear them. Boys won't go to the pharmacy to buy them. Girls won't either because ... what "good girl" would buy condoms?

Although the adolescent romantic theater playing on Antigua's charming cobblestone streets might appear sweet - ahhh, young love! - it is a fanciful mist that masks the reality of disturbing cultural realities in Guatemala:

• Fathers Rape With Impunity, Fueling Guatemala's Teen Pregnancy
• Why is Guatemala's Teen Pregnancy Rate So High? 
• Being a Teenage Mother in Guatemala ("... Guatemala is the only country in Central America where teenage pregnancy is actually on the rise.") 
• Children Having Children in Guatemala
• Child, Bride, Mother: Guatemala
• 2016 Trafficking ... Guatemala (US State Dept)
• Guatemala Closes Its Eyes to Rampant Child Sex Trafficking
• Nearly 20 Years After Peace Pact, Guatemalan Women Relive Violence

The dysfunctions are tied to these and other variables: 

• Machismo culture that discounts girls and women, and where violence against girls and women is acceptable
• Egregious gender inequality, where girls don't have the access boys do to education, health care, reproductive rights, or self-determination
• Decades-long civil war that employed rape and other violence as a method of control 
• Corrupt or ineffective government systems that ignore or don't have the capacity to effect positive changes or protect girls and women
• Faith leaders who are complicit in maintaining the status quo for girls and women in Guatemala by failing to stand up for the physical and emotional safety and health of girls and women

Here are a couple of stories from two Peace Corps volunteers in Guatemala, and their experiences with sexual harassment in-country:

• I Don't Want You to Make Me Feel Like I'm the Only Girl in the World (Kelley)
• The Language of Empowerment (Jessica)

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala: A Candelight Dinner

Just up a little bit on the steep road from La Iguana Perdido is a second-floor café of the mom and pop variety. I drew an arrow to point it out in the photo below:

Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

A Santa Cruz travel buddy - Jane -  and I entered to have dinner there. It was getting dark and we weren't sure the restaurant would be open, but it was.

The señora we'd spoken to earlier in the day wasn't at the café, but a young girl, maybe between 10 and 12, was present. Another little girl appeared. They took Jane's and my order, then hustled into the tiny kitchen on the other side of the ordering counter, which was behind our table.

Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

There was no electricity in the cafe, and one of the girls lit the candles on our table. I don't remember what either of us ordered, but it did require cooking. We could hear the young girls talking and moving around in the petite kitchen, and working with a gas oven.

I expected the café matron to appear, but no, these little girls were both our servers and cooks. Well, some of the food had been prepared previously, so some of the work involved heating it up.

Nevertheless, the level of responsibility at play here --> Greeting us, seating us, setting the table, lighting the candles, taking our orders, preparing our dinners, serving them, accepting payment. The quiet discussions and occasional giggling behind the counter.

The señora arrived as we were preparing to leave the restaurant. She explained that one of the girls was her granddaughter. If I remember correctly, the other little girl was the señora's hired helper.

The food was tasty - neither superior nor inferior to the food I ate at La Iguana Perdida.

When encountering children who work - and who maybe go to school and maybe not - it sets up debates in my mind.

My Spanish teacher and I had a conversation about the young kids who worked at the market in Antigua. I wondered if they weren't required to attend school? Theoretically, education is mandatory between ages 7 and 14. But setting aside the theoretical requirement, my Spanish teacher countered my indirect judgmentalism with this argument: By working every day in the market, don't the children gain an education? Such as learning about real-world math in their money-handling transactions? Communication skills via salesmanship, networking, and negotiations?

On one level, sure. And there are centuries of history in many cultures, in which children have matured into educated, skilled adult artisans and merchants who live very well by dint of apprenticeship.

And it is not intrinsically bad or harmful for children to work, assuming the work is safe and does not compromise other quality of life issues.

On another level - well, my Spanish teacher's daughter is going to school. Private school. With an expectation, I believe, of going on to university after she completes high school.

And speaking of girls: Research shows a strong correlation between girls' number of years in school and girls' age at first pregnancy. In other words, the longer a girl stays in school, the older she is before she becomes pregnant the first time. Education also has ramifications for the girls' lifetime health, the health of their children, and by extension the overall economic welfare of the girls'-to-women's families.

When it comes to questions in which it is difficult for me to see the line that divides mere cultural differences and cultural dysfunctions, I ask myself if the tradition supports or denies an individual's right to self-determination. Some definitions of self-determination below: 

• The free choice of one's acts without compulsion. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
• The individual’s right to live his life as he chooses, as long as he does not violate any other person’s right to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. (Foundation for Economic Education)
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  (Declaration of Independence)

So. These two young girls in the mom-and-pop restaurant in Santa Cruz. And for that matter, the señora.

What are their stories?

Antigua, Guatemala: Tortilla Servitude

 

Blue tortillas, San Felipe de Jesus, near Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

The sight of girls and women making and selling tortillas all day, every day, in Antigua, is ubiquitous.

My airbnb hostess explained that some - many? - of the girls are lured from the countryside to the cities, such as Antigua, with promises of a better life than can be had in their impoverished rural villages. Often, the girls' parents willingly send their daughters off with the tortilla head hunters, so to speak, believing the promises.

Too often, the girls end up working for miserable earnings, living in miserable, crowded quarters, making and selling tortillas. All day, every day.

The making of tortillas all day, every day results in:

• The girls' and womens' skin permanently damaged from chronic exposure to the lime in the masa, the corn dough that is the basis for the tortilla. 
• Tendon injuries due to the repetitive hand and wrist movement involved in shaping and flattening the tortilla. 

It looks picturesque, it looks quaint, it looks "cultural." 

Is that girl on that corner, selling tortillas, a girl trapped in servitude? Or is she an entrepreneur, or the daughter of an entrepreneur, with a promising future?

I barely glance at her when I walk by; she barely glances at me while she sits by her cloth-covered basket of tortillas. She's an extra in my movie as I am in hers.

What's her story?

Antigua, Guatemala: Earth Day

Earth Day Parade, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

I was on my way to Spanish class as usual one morning, when I noticed a little sidewalk parade on the street I'd chosen to take on this day.  Four men. Each with a musical instrument. Who were these men? Where were they going so early on a Friday morning?

Obviously, I had to follow them.

I followed them to Central Park. They sat down on a bench.

I asked one of them, "What is happening?"

Earth Day. Ahhhhh, of course, it is April 22.

"There will be a parade."

A parade! God knows I love parades!

In the priority of things, a parade comes before school. I would be late for Spanish class.

I had no cell service, no wifi. Wait, I could go into the congenial Cafe Barista on the plaza and use its wifi to send an email to my Spanish school to let them know I'd be there, but I'd be late.

Cafe Barista, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Then I set about to wait. Troupes of school kids arrived. A TV person interviewed someone for the camera. More kids arrived. Parade participants and viewers alike did what we all do when we're waiting for something to start: Stand around, chat, stand around some more. Wonder when things will start.

Earth Day Parade, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Eventually, the standing-about continued to the point that I really needed to push on to class, so I did.

Earth Day Parade, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

But lo, during said class, did I not hear the sounds of a marching band?! Yes! So my teacher, the school administrator, and I scurried out to the street to discover the parade going right by in front of us! How lucky!

Earth Day Parade, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

A video below. Toward the end, you can see my teacher and the administrator waving at me:

The Earth Day parade seemed to be tied to honoring school athletics in general and, based on something my teacher said, girls' athletics specifically. I like this.

Earth Day Parade, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Those girls in the photo above look rather glum, don't they?  A story there.

Earth Day Parade, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

For Earth Day 2015, I partook of the celebration at Vermilionville, in Lafayette, Louisiana. The video is below:

Antigua, Guatemala: Girls: Quinceañeras

Quinceañera, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

In Salt Lake City, you can hang out on Temple Square and watch brides and grooms go in and come out of the temple for their "sealing."

Quinceañera, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

In Caucasus Georgia, you frequently come across couples just before, in the midst of, or immediately following their wedding ceremonies.

Ditto for Istanbul and Playa del Carmen.

In Antigua, Guatemala, I see quinceañeras, 15-year old girls being debuted to the world as making the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Antigua parks are good photographic backdrops for creating memories of a sweet rite of passage.

Below is a picture from my year in Alamogordo, New Mexico, of a store that carries the accoutrement for quinceañeras.

Quinceañeras and bridal store, New York Avenue, Alamogordo, New Mexico. October 2012.

Quinceañeras are big business in the Americas and the Caribbean. There are Quinceañeras Expos and all of the ancillary business folk who thrive on the tradition.

Quinceañera, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Notice the girl's pink tennis shoes? My understanding is that she would wear these before the party, but at a certain point, change into heels to signify her passage from childhood into womanhood.

Discussions of quinceañeras:

• Mexico
• United States in 2013 and in 1996
• Guatemala

On this same day, I encountered a future quinceañera, celebrating her First Communion:

First Communion, La Merced, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

I'm guessing that's her kid brother next to her. I bet he gets annoying sometimes. If no one were looking, I wonder if she'd pop him over the head with the holy candle. Maybe when they got home.