El Paso: Zapatista Woman

Zapatista Libertad. El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

While on a visit to a community garden in El Paso, I saw this poster laying on a couch in a building that adjoined the garden.

As I've noted before, there are many striking images of strong women in El Paso. Like here and here. These images depict women as full actors in movements for human rights.

The poster above relates to modern-day Zapatistas, a movement that is global in its championship of indigenous group rights, but which has its epicenter in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.

I don't know the original artist of this and similar posters, but Just Seeds is at least one producer of same for purchase.

Although when I think of Chiapas, I think of traditional societies with traditional (read: limiting) roles for women, there is a women's rights platform in the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation). It is called the Women's Revolutionary Law, with this bill of rights:

1. Women, regardless of their race, creed, color or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in any way that their desire and capacity determine.
2. Women have the right to work and receive a fair salary.
3. Women have the right to decide the number of children they have and care for.
4. Women have the right to participate in the matters of the community and hold office if they are free and democratically elected.
5. Women and their children have the right to Primary Attention in their health and nutrition.
6. Women have the right to an education.
7. Women have the right to choose their partner and are not obliged to enter into marriage.
8. Women have the right to be free of violence from both relatives and strangers. 
9. Women will be able to occupy positions of leadership in the organization and hold military ranks in the revolutionary armed forces.
10. Women will have all the rights and obligations elaborated in the Revolutionary Laws and regulations.

 The poster references the EZLN flag, which looks like this:

EZLN flag. Source: wikicommons

On a superficial level, I love the artistic imagery of the poster and the flag.

On a deeper, philosophical level, the Chiapas-centered bill of rights for women seems more progressive than what we've got going on in the USA.

Assuming there's substance behind the words.

El Paso: The Life Force of Mare Advertencia Lirika

Mare Advertencia Lirika, Cafe Mayapan, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

South Louisiana introduced me to spoken word in a splashy way, via poets with a gift for visceral writing and performance talents.

Being an introverted sort, it knocked me out to see and hear how these artists put their naked selves out there with their creativity.

Mare Advertencia Lirika, Cafe Mayapan, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

When I saw an upcoming event for a free poetry workshop in El Paso, it was a must-go for me. The workshop title: Poetry and Resistance.

The workshop introduced to me Mare Advertencia Lirika, the workshop leader.

Because the workshop was mostly in Spanish, I didn't follow all of Mare's words - maybe most, even - but I followed enough to know I was in a room with a woman whose life force is galvanic.

Mare Advertencia Lirika, Cafe Mayapan, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

Mare lives in the city of Oaxaca in Oaxaca state, Mexico. Her family is Zapotec, an indigenous Mexican ethnic group. 

Below is a half-hour documentary about Mare, "When a Woman Comes Forward" (with English subtitles). Mare shares her philosophy about how hip hop gives a voice, not just to individuals, but to the community.

Mare is for speaking out. Her 2013 video (with English subtitles), "What Are You Waiting For (To Tell Your Truth)?"  is a call to action to all women:

"We are the majority only when it comes to statistics."

"Our voice has been taken by other mouths."


Mare is a hip hop artist, a poet, a singer, a human rights activist. In her work, she flashes an unblinking, brilliant light on inconsistencies between the so-called "respect" for women and oppressing them. One graphic illustration is how she notes the societal furtiveness with which girls and women experience menstruation and menstrual blood, but the cavalier display of the blood of murdered women.

Below is a video in which Mare shares the evolution of her creative and social activist evolution in Oaxaca:

Mare is a woman of power. I feel so lucky to have been able to attend her workshop.

With thanks to the folks who contributed to her presence, which included Fronterizas en Resistencia (Border Women in Resistence) and Café Mayapan.

Mississippi: The Baptists Not There

Mississippi Baptist Beginnings, Highway 61, Mississippi. February 2016.

Right before I left South Louisiana, I read the memoir by Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi. This woman was bold. Bold in life and bold in her writing. 

She's the 23 year-old woman in this iconic photo from the soda fountain counter here:

From right to left at counter: Anne Moody, Joan Trumpauer, and John Salter. 1963 at Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi. Credit: Fred Blackwell.

Ms. Moody grew up in Centreville and Woodville, Mississippi. I routed my departure from Louisiana through Mississippi's Highway 61 so I could pass close by these towns of her youth.

What I really would have liked to have done was find her and meet her. But Anne Moody died in February 2015. She was afflicted with dementia in her last years. Her younger sister, Ms. Adline, oversaw her care. When I read this, about her sister caring for her, I thought, holy damn, after what Ms. Moody was wont to write about her younger siblings back in the day, well, I wonder if the sisters had to walk on some prickly paths to get to a good place. In an excerpt from one of Ms. Moody's obituaries:

Adline Moody said Saturday that she admired the courage of her sister, who was two years her senior.

"We came from a very poor family, and when she joined the movement, she did it because it was something that needed to be done. She wasn't out there just to be there," Adline Moody said. "I'm very proud of her for what she did. She made it better for me."

So.

On this day, I was driving on Highway 61, having left my Louisiana nest behind, and I saw signage indicating a historical site on my right as I flashed by. Oh. Did I want to stop? I'd have to turn around and go back, if yes. ... Probably something boring, but you never know, maybe it had something tangential to what I read in Ms. Moody's book. So I turned around and went back.

Right away I was impressed. The very first sign told me that the Baptist church has been in Mississippi since 1791. Wow, that long? 

Being raised a Roman Catholic, I don't know that much about Baptists except they generally feel confident that my kind of people are on the fast track to Hell, not being born again and all. I had thought Baptists came relatively late to the Christian buffet.

The Mississippi Baptist Beginnings historic site is a series of large signs arranged along a semi-circle turnabout, so it's very easy to take in the info while in your car.  When I entered the circle drive, I noticed a car parked up toward one end of the far bend. A woman inside, maybe having a picnic meal or just contemplating life. It's a pretty place.

I moseyed by each sign with my car, taking in about as much history as my brain allows in one sitting. When I got to the end, I thought, wait, something's missing. Did I overlook it? Let me go through it again. So I swung around for another turn through the exhibits.

I glanced over to the woman in the car. Opened my passenger seat window.

"Excuse me. Ma'am?" I asked.

"Yes?" she said, an African-American woman in her 30s or so.

"Is it my imagination or is there an important part of the Baptist history missing here?"

The woman looked at me without expression and without hesitation, and in a matter-of-fact voice, replied: "Yes, ma'am, there is."

In a location so close to where a woman of courage grew up, in the year 2016, was a monument to a history in which it would appear that only white people were Baptists, and only they who effected change in the society.

This is unfortunate. Not just because it fails to acknowledge the African-American contributions to Baptist history in Mississippi, but because it reinforces the stereotype of Mississippi as a backward stanchion of white rule. The historic memorial's blindness to the fuller history would seem to reflect the despair of Ms. Moody's closing passage in her 1960s Civil Rights memoir:

"I sat there listening to 'We Shall Overcome,' looking out of the window at the passing Mississippi landscape. Images of all that had happened kept crossing my mind: the Taplin burning, the Birmingham church bombing, Medgar Evers' murder, the blood gushing out of McKinley's head, and all the other murders. ...I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

"'Moody...'" it was little Gene again interrupting his singing.

"'Moody, we're gonna git things straight in Washington, huh?'" 

I didn't answer him. I knew I didn't have to. He looked as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. 

"'I wonder. I wonder.'" ...

An Era Ends in Ethiopia

The hard and soft that is Ethiopia. Nazret, Ethiopia.

On August 21, Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's prime minister, died. He'd been the guy in charge for more than 20 years.

When I visited Ethiopia for two months in 2011, I heard many comparisons between Meles Zenawi and the Derg (which was the oppressive regime preceding Meles Zenawi's 1995-2012 tenure):

From my March 7, 2011, post: My experience thus far in Ethiopia is that men of a certain age (e.g. those who were at least late teens at that time...) tend to believe that living conditions were better under the Derg than under Meles Zenawi. Men who are in their 20s and 30s tend to like Meles Zenawi. 

Even a man whose brother was killed during the Red Terror believed living conditions to be better under the Derg than under Meles Zenawi. (This sentiment is similar to what older Georgians say about things being better under Soviet rule than under the current administration of Mikheil Saakhashvili.) On the other hand, the younger men admire Zenawi, seeing hope with new roads (built by the Chinese), government works projects (such as cobblestone road building in the cities, financially supported by other countries), and the promise (though without the reality) of jobs after graduation from university.
 
Some of what I know about the Meles Zenawi era is what I've personally observed. So while our world leaders sing posthumous praises of Zenawi (and he has done some good things), I remember these facts: 

• Too many girls standing on the streets of Addis Ababa after dark, waiting for customers. 
• A former academic colleague, Taye Woldesmiate, imprisoned in Ethiopia for six years, convicted of treason.
• Another gentleman of my acquaintance, a husband and father of four children, imprisoned in Ethiopia for more than 10 years, similar charges. 
• Farm fields that used to grow food, now given over to grow tchat (qat), the narcotic cash crop

Meles Zenawi. Photo credit: The Telegraph

Ethiopia is rich in its illustrious and unique history, natural beauty, enduring traditions, Ethiopians' tolerance of each other's religions, languages, regional traditions; its humor, music ... so many attributes. I hope the transition between the Zenawi regime and the future is a fruitful one.