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A Remembrance for the Murdered and for Days Past
Casa Anunciación — El Chuco, Texas, April 15-21, May 3, 2012
Lord Jesus, You who said that wherever two or more were gathered in Your name to pray or to ask of the Father who is
in heaven, You would be in their midst. Be it, then,Y our word that unites us in praying and asking for those who are no
longer here, for those whom You have gathered and we expect to be with You in Your kingdom, now and forever.
Breadth and space elude me.
All I know is what my eyes can see,
A time worn building lacking of symmetry,
But still. What welcome grace infused its bricks,
Defining its awkward stance here, on Sunday last
In this new season of spring, and again last night,
And so will continue to define its stance tonight, and on
2
Until Friday evening that will witness the last prayer,
The last lamentation as they rise up to the heavens,
echoing —
Here is the lament of the twice dead, here the sighs
Of ten thousand left without face, without memory.
Two small trees in front of the building have metamorphosed into
Creatures of green leaves, light and names that mold the bricks
Into a living Tree of Life, ancient symbol beloved of the Mexican
Peasantry now become the common memory of so many dead.
These names, ten thousand fleeting lights of Casa Anunciación
that having briefly lived on brick and tree now must vanish,
Like the living who once bore them into the mists of time,
Of memory, melting into the unremitting depths of night.
Géminis Ochoa — ¡presente! I never met you, tocayo,
But I knew about you. There was no way that they could let
You live, tatuado mitotero de corazón forjado por tus ancestros
En Euskal Herria, fighting to obtain a small justice for the vendors
On the bridges, easy prey for the social cleansers who so hated you.
You honored your name, you won the prize. The paramilitary murdered you.
Governor Duarte, you mount a horse in splendid emulation
Of Francisco Villa; doubtless you can also waltz to La Valenciana,
And perhaps even lightly trip through a Chotisse from the old world.
Let no one say you care not for the dead: see how you shamelessly
Posture for the Army, the Federal Police, the local guardians of order
Blithely blinking reality, breathlessly touting a bright new day for Chihuahua state.
Josefina Reyes Salazar — ¡presente! Your family, faithful Stewards
Of the valley from Sierra Blanca to Juárez. You were marked, as were
All of yours, early on. Whiskey-fueled Calderón sent the Army to the
Juárez valley for the extermination to begin apace. Four army bullets
3
To your head as you bought groceries in El Sauzal. México afortunado -
"Piensa, oh Patria querida que el cielo, ¡un soldado en cada hijo te dió!"
Municipal President Hector Murgía, graduate of the fabled Tec de Monterrey,
You rail and glower at the lucky ones with means to flee the city, calling them
"Traitors" and otherwise defaming them, all the while touting the merits that your
Toy, Lieutenant Colonel Julián Leyazola has brought to the Municipal Police.
Teaching them to live by killing, he has now restored "your" City's wounded pride.
And El Paso Chamber of Commerce types thrill to the arrival of displaced Juárez wealth.
So many names they blur one into one, among them the many not-named,
"Femenina - No Identificada", and her partners, "Masculino - No Identificado,"
"Restos Óseos - Sexo Masculino"
¡presente!
The assassins have not only taken your country, your life, they have without human mercy
Left you beyond recognition, faceless, without your name, without a body that someone
Somewhere would surely bother to claim and remember — how to dare, to begin to know
What to say to you? What brought you to the border, what meager provenance did you
Leave behind, what defiled Gossamer Informed your dreams? Who judged you to merit
This worst of all punishments, this worst of all possible fates, in solitude, so terribly, terribly
Far from those who knew and loved you, who even now lack certain knowledge of your death?
How to bring this man Calderón before the Bar of Justice?
We are become the horror. Your cry rises to pierce the heavens.
Faith and Hope tremble.
In the whirlwind.
They threaten to abandon us.
A desert.
Lord God in Heaven, look Thou to Thy children
Help save us from ourselves
4
I stand on the sidewalk facing Casa Anunciación's
Southern elevation, somewhere between twenty and forty Yards across,
transfixed by three columns of light bearing names making their way up the
side of the building, Held close by the moment that makes time stand still.
Two small trees in front of the building have metamorphosed into
Creatures of green leaves, light and names that mold the bricks
Into a living Tree of Life, ancient symbol beloved of the Mexican Peasantry
now become the common memory of so many dead.
These names, ten thousand fleeting lights of Casa Anunciación
That having briefly lived on brick and tree and now must vanish
Like the living who once bore them, into the mists of time,
Of memory, melting into the unremitting depths of night.
Géminis Ochoa — ¡presente! I never met you, tocayo,
But I knew about you. There was no way that they could let
You live, tatuado mitotero de corazón forjado por tus ancestros En Euskal Herria,
fighting to obtain a small justice for the vendors
On the bridges, easy prey for the social cleansers who so hated you.
You honored your name, you won the prize. The paramilitary murdered you.
Josefina Reyes Salazar — ¡presente! Your family, faithful Stewards
Of the valley from Sierra Blanca to Juárez. You were marked, as were
All of yours, early on. Whisky-fueled Calderón sent the Army to the
Juárez valley for the extermination to begin apace. Four army bullets
To your head as you bought groceries in El Sauzal. México afortunado -
"Piensa, oh Patria querida que el cielo, ¡un soldado en cada hijo te dió!"
So many names they blur one into one, among them the many not-named,
"Femenina - No Identificada", and her partners, "Masculino - No Identificado,"
"Restos Óseos - Sexo Masculino"
¡Presente!
5
The assassins have not only taken your country, your life, they have without human mercy, left you
beyond recognition, faceless, without your name, without a body that someone somewhere would surely
bother to claim and remember — how to dare, to begin to know What to say to you? What brought you
to the border, what meager provenance did you Leave behind, what defiled Gossamer informed your
dreams? Who judged you to merit This worst of all punishments, this worst of all possible fates, in
solitude, so terribly, terribly Far from those who knew and loved you, who even now lack certain
knowledge of your death?
And the living go on living.
César Horacio Duarte Jáquez - Governor of Chihuahua, unconditional
Admirer of Francisco Villa; doubtless you can also waltz to La Valenciana,
And perhaps even lightly trip through a Chotisse from the old world.
Let no one say you care not for the dead: see how you shamelessly
Posture for the Army, the Federal Police, the local guardians of order
Blithely blinking reality, breathlessly touting a bright new day for Chihuahua state.
Municipal President Hector Murgía, graduate of the fabled Tec de Monterrey,
You rail and glower at the lucky ones with means to flee the city, calling them
"Traitors" and otherwise defaming them, all the while touting the merits that your Toy,
Lieutenant Colonel Julián Leyazola has brought to the Municipal Police.
Teaching them to live by killing, he has now restored "your" City's wounded pride.
And El Paso Chamber of Commerce types thrill to the arrival of displaced Juárez wealth.
How to bring Mexican President Felipe Calderón before the Bar of Justice?
We are become the horror. Your cry rises to pierce the heavens.
Faith and Hope tremble.
In the whirlwind.
They threaten to abandon us.
A desert.
6
Lord God in Heaven, look Thou to Thy children Help save us from
ourselves
Jesús B. Otxoa — for the dead, for the living who survive and mourn them, for those who came every evening to
pray and to bear witness, for those who could not attend but were there in spirit — in gratitude to Rubén Garcia of
Annunciation House, staff and volunteers, Grupo Nazaret, St. Pius X, the Matlachines de Nuestra Señora de
Guadalupe, nuns, priests and all who worked to make the events of the past week a felt reality on the border. Photo of
the names on Casa Anunciación by Katy, a volunteer from Connecticut at Casa Vides, all via Kat, a volunteer from
Kansas at Annunciation House.
These lights on Casa Anunciación have so impacted me, wondering whether Lupita had been asked for
any succor by the dying, and how I could have done so much more than the little I did as a trial lawyer: I
don't mean immigration law, which held little interest for me due to the limited court room lawyering it
afforded.
But the hate back then was nowhere as bad as it is today. I faced off with the Border Patrol a fair amount
of times, in and out of court, but it was different. Today there is a huge problem, as there was during the
Viet Nam years, with veterans who find work with ICE/Border Patrol. I am convinced that there are too
many vets with mental/emotional problems who have found work in those two agencies; the mob
mentality of Border Patrol agents in beatings and killings is also something relatively new, and
somehow these problems need to be addressed and solved.
When I was in Mexico City last to act as a juror in the International Tribunal of Conscience and had
made it to the Basílica, I swear I started walking backward on the moving walkway before a guard
7
noticed and told me that I could go around again. I just couldn't take my eyes off her image on Juan
Diego’s tilma on the wall.
I had first posted the Lupita poems online about near a year ago, when an incident I had been told about
took me back to 1987, to a day of pounding late fall rain, when I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in
Chiapas. My wife and I had gone to the church to meet the Bishop, Don Samuel Ruiz. Unfortunately, he
had gone to an Indian village to attend to some emergency.
But we met a young priest, who a year or so later sent me an e-mail when I happened to sign the guest
book on the parish web page. We corresponded back and forth, and one day he sent me Bishop
Peñalosa's lovely poem to Lupita.
It moved me to attempt to translate it to English, and I have since shared both with many people. The
priest and I lost contact when Don Samuel resigned, and I have no idea where he may now be.
It all seems so long ago.
The rain, enjoying sitting next to a window on the second floor of a walk-up small eatery, savoring a
dish of? pasta! Glancing out to see a pair of cops hectoring a Tzotzil elder wearing the distinctive
ribboned hat — running down the stairs and taking on the cops, nearly getting arrested — what saved
me was my wife on the small terrace outside the window getting thoroughly soaked as she calmly used
the camcorder — the cops looking up, then hopping in their car and taking off — my getting chewed out
by the proprietor — the elder paying me a small reverence
— I hadn't thought about this in years.
Hope you enjoy the poem in Spanish as I have, with Juan Diego reciting, with eloquence, how he just
can't do what she wants in a totally believable version of this Mexica Saint setting out his perceived
unworthiness, so different a presentation than that of the stylized image adopted by the Vatican as the
official image of Saint Juan Diego, and the lovely reply by the Virgin with her wonderment at her lack
of letters of recommendation.
10
I share the Lupita poems and what follows because, sitting in front of Annunciation House on the last
Friday evening of the vigil, I was thinking of so many things I could hardly sort out all that was going
through my mind. I have been here every night since Sunday, April 15, when the press conference set
the theme for the remembrances. So on this last night of the vigil because I am grateful that it is the last
night, so many names, so many deaths have been terribly difficult to grasp, I just try to sort out my
thoughts because I am with mine among the living.
First, of course, is my Micaela who will graduate from St. Joe's in Philly in a couple of weeks, then she'll
go off to Ecuador for a ten day immersion program working with the poor, then to El Paso for a couple
of months before she goes off probably to San Francisco for a year's service with the Jesuits to serve in a
program for the elderly. It was her mother who was taking a video while I was taking on the cops in San
Cristobal de las Casas, and it was our visit that ultimately led me to Bishop Peñalosa's poem.
Then my second daughter small Boo who just turned twenty-one and thinks she's already an old lady and
the fact that I keep telling Lupita that it's her I'm asking instead of her Kid to give Boo a hand in getting
her act together and I was thinking too how late in my life as the disease progresses apace how lucky
indeed I have been these past few years since the heart surgery having friends I can count on a given day
having met new nuns and priests who have gladdened my heart with their strong faith and sense of
purpose and have helped in strengthening mine thinking on how curious life can be now that my long
dead parents uncles and aunts begin to people my dreams along with my brother who drowned at the old
Donkey Peak* I was five and how long it took me to trust angels again and my beloved Alexandra too
who has these many years lived somewhere in a corner of my mind - my beautiful fiancée back when I
was in the Navy and she beginning her doctoral studies in Romance Languages at Chicago University all
of 22 years old who would correct my border Spanish and me a paltry 23 with but a bachelors Lord how
we shared a love of ancient Mozarabic Spanish poetry football smelt and beer and garlic bread round a
fire on Rainbow Beach off Lake Michigan and then my fair Alexandra left me one day just a few months
after having been diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and how my world crashed again r.i.p. Cristina and I
could barely hold up my corner end at the head of the casket with her da on the other corner and in
dreams she visits me now and again and talks to me and tells me that it's going to be all right that I'm on
the money in believing that all things happen for a reason and she reminds me of our devotion to Lupita
whom she also loved and sometimes I wake up and am instantly angry that it was a dream and my hand
feels warm where she was holding it and I can't find her in the moment because I'm sitting up in bed
feeling about me and I want my new nun friends and priests too to enjoy this lovely poem which
Alexandra would have loved because it says it all — ¿Quién le quita la idea de encontrar personal sin
cartas de recomendación? Yeah why would one need letters of recommendation when all you have to
do when and if you heed the call is to try to live by the two great commandments, practice the beatitudes
and you sure as there are
11
flying monkeys don't need a degree in theology to do that which is what my priest and nun friends do
even though the Vatican can't understand the divine simplicity of the Church He founded before the
mens' (add an o and you have menso=dummy) only club got to messing with it much they can’t see the
forest for the trees and along these lines I am so moved by the young people I have met recently if only
briefly Stephanie who used to be at Annunciation House and Sacred Heart Church so proud of being a
Notre Dame grad is about to finish law school at Norteaster University and is already involved with the
National Lawyers Guild and Becca at Casa Vides and her lovely written reflections on her service a real
treasure for Creighton and lately Kat, Katy and Liz who sports a discrete tattoo at the base of her neck
who let the Administration at Notre Dame know that she was there and that they better listen and I think
of Géminis Ochoa and his tattoos who was murdered by right wing paramilitary thugs for speaking up
for the vendors on the bridges and other young people whose names I don't know who live in their youth
a life of service for a year or more and I get a sense that things are going to be better for they really but
really have to get better and I think I sense a small beginning of a turnaround in my Church and I am
beginning to get a sense that the Vatican may be backing itself slowly into a corner with the latest
foolish and out of time attack on the nuns and something will have to give and I don't think it going to be
the people of God who are beginning to stand up on their hind legs and that in my case maybe I've done
something right in exposing my girls early on to the work at Annunciation House and Casa Vides where
Micaela and Boo remember how one Ash Wednesday ashes from burnt models of casitas de carton**
were used and I thank Don Rubén for that for here's my dingbat about to go off for her year and it is
crystal clear that the work Don Rubén is doing has already borne fruit and not just the young but older
folk like Patricia Delgado and the impressive list of people who came together and put last week into
motion and Sweet Susan off in Fort Worth who comes to town now and again to help and others like
Laura Carlsen in Mexico City who graces us with her presence from time to time and surely with people
like these and more young UTEP grads like Christy Garcia over at Las Americas and her pal Ana
Morales both of whom organized that great gathering for peace over at Anapra New Mexico and Anapra
in Juárez separated by the fence with Border Patrol men glowering at the large gathering and people I
met in Mexico like Camilo, Dorinda, the lady who championed Cuba and counted Fidel among her
friends whose name I have shamefully forgotten (Berta?) and beautiful Adriana who has been to Tibet
who is interested in Buddhism and works with an ecumenical center in Mexico City things surely are
going to get better and Adriana walked up with me to the original Basílica playing an ancient Mexica
clay flute that has been in her family for generations as we made our way up the many steps and the
drum she had brought back from Tibet a small prayer drum with a handle and sprung drumsticks on
either side so when she rotated it as we walked up it went boom-BOOM but softly with the flute pitched
high and how we attracted a crowd including some nuns and when we stopped several times to rest my
knees and to say Ave Marías how more people latched on to us to when we got to the top there were a
gaggle of people with Adriana and me at the head with her holding on to my elbow and me with the
stick in the other hand like a marshal leading with the baton and I was blown away and when we went to
Mass at the new modern church and saw doddering old men wearing sashes acting as altar servers I was
12
outraged for how much more appropriate would it have been for the servers to have been children boys
and girls as I remembered her words am I not here who am you mother and I think of the migrants and
their devotion to the dark Virgin either as Guadalupe or Tonantzin and some of the Original Peoples I
have met in the Sierra and in Central Mexico with a death grip on their faith and reliance on her and how
it must be when some of them are lost in the Arizona desert or going under for the last time in the Rio
Grande down river near the coast how they more likely than not they go to their deaths with a prayer to
her on their lips and surely they don't have the formal learning to understand that unbelief or to question
why am I dying here in this place at this time with years of life left to live when all I wanted was to help
me and mine to live a little better not knowing that a moment of questioning of unbelief can
paradoxically strengthen faith and that's its o.k. to say along with Matthew I think it was Lord I believe
help Thou my unbelief and maybe they're lucky they don't suffer their version of John of the Cross's
dark night of the soul and don't go beyond the ancient "séa por Dios" and I think of Boo and her dark
nights of the soul as she struggles with living her beliefs and then last Friday at the dinner how a nun
whose name I don't know noticed I was having a bit of trouble standing up for the various recognitions
because of my bad knees and had in fact teetered on one occasion and she moved from her table to sit
next to me and supported me on the back a couple of times as another nun behind her introduced herself
as Sr. Bea (I think) and they were Franciscans causing me to mention that my girls had gone to school at
Our Lady of the Valley where Sr. Caroline also a Franciscan nun was the principal and she broke the
news that Caroline had died also from cancer as had her sister Cecilia and that this had been only three
weeks ago and how ten priests had concelebrated the funeral Mass and I gave her my address so she
could send me some info regarding Sr. Caroline's death and Bea is also recently dead because a nun
friend wrote and asked me to remove Bea's name from my favorite peoples' list and the little
remembrance card for Caroline's death just came in the mail and I had told Bea about the time Caroline
had called me I think the girls were in the fourth and fifth grades she told me it was important and she
wanted to see me so I showed up the next day and she wanted the complete lyrics I had taught my girls
about what she called the "chicken song" and I told her I didn't know what she was talking about so she
said something about the chicks saying "pio pio" and I got red in the face and said that one? and she said
the complete lyrics and I told her that I didn't think that there were that many and that I only knew of one
version, so I wrote it down for her, "los pollitos cantan pío pío pío cuando tienen hambre cuando tienen
frío - la gallina dice cállense cabrónes bola de guevones" “sing the little chicks “pio pio pio, when they
are hungry when they are cold - the chicken answers shut up, you #x&$ lazy bunch of layabouts” and I
told Bea how Caroline had nearly fallen off the chair laughing and had then told me to stop teaching the
girls stuff like that, she had heard other kids singing it, and my girls had been fingered and Sr. Caroline
told me she could get in trouble with Fr. Rini, except I didn't remember Fr. Rini's name on Friday night
but I told Sr. Bea how he finally gave in after about three years of trying to let us have a Mass on
December 12 for Lupita and at the time there was a Mexican priest who was at Our Lady of the Valley
so he could learn English and whose name I have forgotten and shouldn't have because he was the priest
who blessed the almost life size fibre glass statue of Lupita that I had bought at the old Cuauhtémoc
13
market in Juárez for $25 and who had been scanned at the bridge three times before the border thugs
were satisfied that the girls and I weren't smuggling drugs and the priest had to lean in through the
window so he could sprinkle her with holy water because she was in the passenger seat of the old pick-
up after our first Lupita Mass at 5 a.m. and to Fr. Rini's surprise because with only word of mouth
publicity since he wouldn't announce the upcoming Lupita Mass from the pulpit the place was packed at
five in the morning and a teacher had brought a beautifully hand embroidered Standard of Guadalupe
with gold fringe all around and tassels at the bottom made by her sister who was a nun in Puebla and we
stood it to the side of the altar and how just as Mass began Fr. Rini walked in with a large painting of the
Immaculate Conception which he stood on a chair in front of the Guadalupe Standard and I walked up
from my pew and moved the chair over to the side of the Standard so we had an undeclared war between
the two Virgins and I wouldn't budge and so we had a Mexican standoff and later Caroline and I had a
good laugh over the incident and I don't recall if I told Bea that at about that time Caroline showed me
her scrap book filled with historical memorabilia including news clippings about how Our Lady of the
Valley was founded having formerly been the Ysleta Country Club which had moved off to grander
quarters and some of the super rich farming families down river convinced Bishop Metzger to purchase
the property and it became an all white parish for the rich farmers except that in a few years there were
increasingly more Mexicans than gueros until when Fr. Rini the new pastor from Chicago arrived and it
was almost totally Mexican he was not pleased and shortly after our Mass with only the congregation
singing the Mañanitas off key he wouldn't allow Mariachis and we settled for that because he adamantly
refused to let a large and accomplished group of Matlachines from the Cathedral in Juárez dance outside
the church because they were "pagan" refusing to understand that in our culture to dance is to pray and
shortly after that he retired to Minneapolis and I said good riddance to him and Sr. Bea opined that he
should never have been sent to El Paso and I told her how she had hit that one on the head and how there
came a day when I told Caroline that I would have to pull the kids out of school as I had hit a hard
financial spot and she wouldn't hear of it and she somehow got the girls a scholarship from somewhere
in St. Louis I believe through her order and later when I tried to pay she wouldn't take the money and the
thought crossed my mind that too many of my friends and my compadre Joe Chacón Fr. Luis
Verplanken S.J. the founder of Clínica Santa Teresita for Rarámuri kids in the Serra Madre of
Chihuahua where Micaela was born and Boo couldn’t wait and she was born as I was making a left turn
in the Dodge pickup in El Paso on the way to the hospital so I caught her with one hand while turning
the wheel with the other and George McAlmon Justo Sierra Ramón González Sr. Caroline Fr. Anthony
Concha S.J and people who have impacted my life are dying and here I sit waiting reading one more
time Patrick Dunne's wonderful “Letter to a Dying Friend”*** and dealing with my greatest fear which
is to have a semi-active mind in a body that clearly is rather rapidly shutting down all while
understanding that it ain't my call so I am posting these poems and thoughts because sitting in front of
Annunciation House on that last Friday as if I were smack in the middle of a virtual cemetery overcome
with the smell and trappings of death hearing the soul piercing cries of those many thousands murdered
so many young people the screams of terror of young women being killed that I just had to be there
14
every night trying to pray and think for a while what maybe we could do and when the load got a bit
heavy chatting with people because I could not stay til midnight and it was a blessing that the last bus
was at 10:15 and but a ten minutes walk away and then at the dinner last Friday at Santa Lucia hall
remembering how way back in the day when we lived near Carolina Drive we used to go to Sunday
Mass at Santa Lucia on Gallagher Street given that the nice Spanish priests over at San Antonio which
was nearer were also terribly right wing and one of the glories of the Santa Lucia parish was its vibrant
EPISO chapter until something happened and all of a sudden a relationship between the Diocese of El
Paso and the Diocese of Atlanta Georgia evolved and "Legionaires of Christ" priests were assigned to
Santa Lucia apparently so they could learn Spanish in our border setting so there went EPISO and after a
couple of radical right wing sermons we stopped going to church there and I hadn't been to Santa Lucia
until this “Voice of the Voiceless awards” dinner and given the size and appearance of the hall along
with the hosting of this signature event the parish surely has rebounded with the Legionnaires long gone
and I was there because my pal Sonya had invited me to attend the Awards Dinner which was just a bit
out of my financial reach and then unfortunately she was unable to attend and I had missed the
Immigration Forum earlier in the day as I was fighting vertigo and went to the dinner toting my pills so I
gave the extra ticket to Pat Delgado who managed to put it to good use and walking the walkway into
the hall had been an uplifting experience as bordering the walkway on each side were several beautiful
thematic altars staffed by the people who had designed and put them up and I was particularly taken by
the Indigenous Altar dedicated to my cousins the Rarámuris of the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua and
sponsored by St. Mark's Parish but my short term memory fools me and I don't remember if the Nuestra
Señora de Guadalupe Matlachines (Pagans!!!) danced their way through the hall making an obeisance at
the main altar and then dancing out a side door after three women bearing copaleras with smoking sweet
copal incense had smudged the dais or the St. Pius X singers came first but in any event and with a
mixture of liturgy and camptown character of the meeting — featuring the familiar "el pueblo unido
jamás será vencido" “the people united will never be defeated” and which initially made me grumble
inwardly, having felt the need for a new chant after fifty some odd years of chanting this one) — seemed
set but Grupo Nazaret the youth group from St. Pius X sang a rousing song built around the slogan that
had the hall rocking and clearly united in enthusiasm so with that the program was underway with
dramatic readings by Fr. Bill Morton and Kathy Revtyak a young woman whom I do not know with
both superbly filling their roles as masters of ceremony and I was especially moved by Ms. Revtyak's
ability to connect with the audience - one expects this ability from a priest like Padre Arturo a nun or a
person like Rubén García as people who speak from a moral point of view which lends gravitas to a
given presentation but a lay person generally operates at a lower level of connectivity and Ms. Revtyak
is hardly a lay person being a licensed clinical social worker but based on long experience in cross-
examining social workers licensed and psychologists and psychiatrists when the late District Judge
Enrique Peña used to appoint me with rather distressing regularity attorney ad litem for kids caught in
the system which usually meant Child Protective Services and I had found that most social workers
rarely transcended their role as police agents for the state as opposed to really speaking for the children
15
who were not at their best during cross-examination and since I don't take Ms. Ravtyak to be one of
these and I was lucky and am grateful for having had the opportunity to hear her speak and then Dr.
Zulma Méndez a faculty member at UTEP was eloquent in accepting the "Witness on the Border" award
for Sra. Luz María Dávila of Juárez who gained international notice when she famously told President
Calderón that 1) the kids murdered at the Villas de Salvacar massacre were not gang members as he had
asserted, and 2) that he was not welcomed to grandstand in Juárez and because she was not able to get a
pernit to cross to El Paso and was unable to honor us with her presence to attend once again made me
wonder at the stupidity of the law and the border guardians who close the door to people even for a brief
visit for surely they're worse than even the angel of the Lord sent to guard the gates of Eden after the
expulsion and young Juan Manuel Escobedo the brother of his murdered sister Rubí Marisol Escobedo
and son of murdered Marisela Escobedo Ortiz accepted his award as a “Witness on the Border” and he
did so on the behalf of his late mother and sister whom he designated as the real persons who merited
the award and setting the stage for Javier Sicilia the night's honoree as the recipient of the 2012 "Voice
of the Voiceless" Award and the Mexican poet spoke eloquently on the role of the poet in society also
stating that the real recipients of the award were the voiceless themselves, those who had been murdered
and judging from the consensus of the several people I spoke with at the close of the dinner it was Don
Rubén who made the most memorable speech of the night being interrupted several times with
prolonged clapping and the high point of his talk his depiction of how we all begin life thinking that we
own our history and that life exists for us and only as I understood it when an Epiphany or event of epic
proportions happens to occur is it that our lives are turned around by our response to the event and that it
is at precisely that moment that we realize that we in effect owe something to life and how our history
will be the record of how we live our life as in living it fully with direction or what we will do with it
and I thought of John F. Kennedy's remark "ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can
do for your country” just substitute "life" for country and twist it a bit to say ask what you can make of
your life and that about sums it up for it is a serious challenge that Don Rubén offered to the attendees
and it was right on target surely the killings unleashed by a man poorly prepared to understand what he
has done as Calderón more and more proves to be and to do should motivate us to be more than
proactive in our defense of the voiceless and I would add in our efforts to redirect out foreign policies
and to reestablish our Constitutional guarantees that President Obama has so readily thrown overboard
as a Chief Executive who wins a Nobel Peace prize for engaging in seemingly endless war and who
then proclaims his right to assassinate American citizens he and he alone deems to have aided albeit
indirectly terrorist organizations without charges brought and without trial and I remembered John le
Carré’s novel “A Most Wanted Man” that closes with an ugly rendition by the CIA woman agent and
how the real terror is the wave of criminality that our foreign policy has enabled in Mexico through the
Mérida Initiative and the slow degeneration of the country into a police state for surely as we have a
moral obligation to take a hard and realistic look at our use at our usage of drugs and the legalization of
most drugs with the exception of the deadly hard drug meth just as surely do we have I believe a moral
obligation to work to reform the political structure of this country which has now degenerated into two
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political parties so out of touch with reality that the Supreme Court's decision making corporations the
equal of natural persons has not particularly moved our elected officials to seek to right this wrong and
quickly and the closing ritual was as impressive as the opening for first one woman and then others who
first read testimonies circled the hall in measured steps with copaleras burning the sacred copal incense
of the ancient gods and then stood in front of the main altar to perform a close replica of Native Peoples'
smudging ceremonies which are a cleansing ritual and after more testimonies and closing statements
prayer and songs the people were invited to light a large candle which was present on all the tables and
then to light from that candle an individual votive candle with a ribbon on which was the name of a dead
person and to take that candle home as a remembrance there were eight people to a table and the lit
votive candles were impressive and leaving I was glad to see people I had not seen for some time
including my pal Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson the raporteur for civil rights for Chihuahua state and
Willivaldo Delgadillo who gave me an unexpected bear hug and Christy García who was kind enough to
give me a ride home and I thought that I really need to cheat one day and enjoy one more time a couple
of really really cold Bombay gin martinis so dry the vermouth bottle has just lightly been passed over
the glass with a small sweet cocktail onion and then a rare New York strip or maybe a rare prime rib
with a glass of good red wine maybe I'll really do this late this month when the social security hits the
credit union and meantime I'll listen one or more times to the great Mercedes Sosa and Joan Baez
singing Chilena Violeta Parra's lovely hymn to life****and I need to remember once again that there are
so many things left to be done and that one needs to get cracking.
Fragment
In a season of winter dare I bring a blood red rose?
Viewed through a shard of glass, Life reflects the improbable,
the lost, the yearned for that remains not found, the heart that
fled reality, the moss hung ancient tree leaning slow to pause
and then to fall all silently with no one by to hear
the harsh cry of the soul.
Jesús B. Otxoa, © 2013 el chuco, texas
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* Notes From the Diary of Urbici Soler
For my little friends Richard and Eduardo.
The 22 nd day of August of 1939.
It is five o'clock in the afternoon and the wind begins to refresh today's somewhat stuffy atmosphere,
and we climbed the mountain of Cristo Rey, Pedro with the water bags and some of the appliances for
work, and I, with our supper and clothes to defend ourselves from the cold.
At seven o'clock some huge thunderclouds approached in a violent fashion from the north, coming down
across the river valley, and joining with others peeking out from the opposite side of the Franklin
Mountains; together they attacked our position on the mountain peak with a torrential rain of diluvial
proportions. We managed to safeguard, so far as we were able to so do, the electric plant, tools, and
other implements needed for our work.
The lightning rod atop the cross hummed constantly as electric sparks arced out into space at brief
intervals, the sparks emitting a crackling whine from the apex, as heard from the base of our shelter.
Going around the base of the cross in an effort to find protection from the unerring torrents of water
which drenched our bodies, we finally curled up and covered ourselves with empty cement sacks, only
to emerge thoroughly soaked at the end of the storm. It must have been about eight when we were able
to see, from the platform that surrounds the cross of Cristo Rey, how the collector dike at the foot of the
mountain was filling with foaming water, which, in its swift, roaring race down the dry, rocky side of
the mountain, was coming to rest in a backwater, with the foam perhaps signifying a sense of fatigue
after the whirlpool had been abruptly stilled by the dike.
With the fall of night, when work-induced tiredness led us to abandon the peak, we descended the
mountain and finally reached the bank of the lagoon which had been so quickly formed. We were
surprised by the random, out-of-tempo croaking of an infinity of toads holding forth on its banks, and we
were gladdened that the sonorous noise of those little animals had given another aspect to the rugged
mountain quite apart from its austerity, and I thought that tomorrow, my little friends Richard and
Eduardo will frolic all day long in the water, as they had done with the waters of the week just past.
The 23 rd day of August of 1939.
My friend Richard was a blond, blue eyed american, who would be eleven years old today. He always
greeted me warmly, and in our conversations he was open to the point of being childishly tender. He had
mentioned with deep feeling that his brother had drowned in the Rio Grande some years back.
His companion in their mountain adventures was a dark skinned mexican, my other little friend,
Eduardo, no less compassionate than Richard, although more reserved. Both care for each other, they
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care because of the innate condition of being children, they care because they go to school, because they
fight, and because both are brave. I saw them last week from the apex of the mountain, how they swam
in that small ocean that the rain had unexpectedly given to them, incessantly and all day long, with that
juvenile, without-a-care, pleasure.
Today, the two friends saddled two donkeys and went off to ride about the mountain. Richard was
celebrating his eleventh birthday, and his friend Eduardo was accompanying him in his happiness.
About an hour after they had left, the two donkeys returned alone to the stable, still saddled as when they
had parted, but without their riders. Then Don Ismael, Eduardo's grandfather, supposing that something
was amiss, climbed up to the height of the dike to check up on the two boys, and he, the zealous
watchman over Mount Cristo Rey and my respected friend, Don Ismael, then was presented, before his
very eyes, with the most frightful spectacle of his life; the bodies of the two young friends, partying
without life, floating in the tranquil waters of the dike, lifeless, and he ran, and ran, desperately in search
of help
Richard's father was the first to run to the site of the tragedy and he pulled the two bodies from the
water, laying them by the side thereof, to try to revive them.
It was fruitless. The poor man could not give vent to his grief other than to caress the boys with
trembling hand, asking an infinity of questions, as, "tell me, Dick, it's your father - why do you go so
soon, leaving your parents and brothers so disconsolate?"
They did not drown simultaneously but rather one was drowning and his friend threw himself into the
water to rescue him.
The 24th day of August of 1939.
In the afternoon, Flores, the mechanic, Pedro, my assistant, and I started to climb Mount Cristo Rey. My
companions went on ahead to repair the electric plant and the compressor, two machines so worn that
they need constant attention in order to work. They went on ahead at my request because I wanted to go
by the small lagoon, yesterday's tomb of my two little friends, Richard and Eduardo, and I wanted to
salve, in my solitude, the depth of the emotions which that tragedy had left imprinted on my spirit.
A gentle breeze was blowing down through the canyon of the mountain, and when it hit the mirrored
water, it raised a ripple which in turn raised other ripples and then more, all of which raced toward the
banks upon which they died in the form of wavelets. Surrounding the lagoon, rocks there fallen through
immemorial epochs, worn smooth across the ancient ages by small waves which had failed to dislodge
them, were mute witnesses to the sweet act which Richard and Eduardo had there celebrated, an act
which elevated a monument to friendship as an attempt to rescue the life of a companion, drowning,
from the clutches of death with both dying in the attempt to save oneself and the other also.
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We do not know, nor will it ever be known with certitude, which of the two was the one destined to
rescue the one who was drowning. Nor does it pique our curiosity to investigate the matter, as we know
that both were capable of making the sublime sacrifice, which is not written law, but which young souls
know how to honor in its most original form.
I climbed the mountain to meet with my companions, and from the peak saw the dark stain of the water
accented by the setting of the sun, and we entered into nightfall thinking of the tragic end of our
innocent young friends while we began, armed with chisels, the task of uncovering the image of Our
Lord which for thousands of years had lain within the Texas stone and which tranquilly awaited a
superior summons to emerge into the light.
We abandoned our labor at midnight, descending from the mount which is forming itself, passing, for
the last time on that day, by the lagoon which so filled out spirit with such towering sorrow.
The mountain stood, with maximum formal eloquence, and, at its summit, the redemptive cross rose
up with the visage of Our Lord at its front, being freed, as it were, from the stone which imprisoned it,
and silently, within our deepest self, we heard the distant echo of the divine words - "suffer the little
children to come unto me." Personal history:
I have translated the above from the Spanish, from typewritten, carbon copies of pages from his diary
given to my parents by the sculptor which I have recently found among some old papers. My brother,
Eduardo, was one month older than his friend, Richard Keating, when both drowned. The sculptor is in
error when he writes that Richard was celebrating his eleventh birthday. It was in fact his thirteenth. My
father's birthday was on August 26, three days after his son drowned.
I have been told that there was no celebration.
My uncle and my mother's brother, the late Cleofas Calleros, enjoyed a close friendship with the late
Msgr. Lourdes F. Costa, pastor of San Jose del Rio church in Smeltertown. Both were interested in
placing a permanent monument atop what was then called "la sierra del burro" - loosely translated as
"donkey peak" - to replace a 12 foot wooden cross that was placed on the peak in February, 1934, by
parishioners. The bulk of the parish men worked at the smelter, and one month later, on March 24, the
wooden cross was replaced by an iron cross crafted by smelter employees.
At the time of my brother's death, my father operated a small print shop. He was a master printer, and he
had recently started printing a weekly tabloid newspaper of limited circulation, styled the "El Paso
Social Justice
I have to hand the lead slugs, set by my father on his linotype machine, which were used to print the
death notices sent to relatives and friends. Translated from the Spanish, they read:
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Yesterday, at 3:30 in the afternoon, wrapped in the bosom of the Holy,
Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church,
EDUARDO RUBEN OCHOA
died, at the age of thirteen years and one month.
His parents, brother and other relatives, communicating the above to you
with profound sorrow, ask you to elevate to the Supreme Being such
prayers
as you may deem proper for the eternal rest of the deceased.
Rosary today at 8:00 p.m., Kaster & Maxon Mortuary Home.
Mass with the body present at 8:00 a.m., Friday, Saint Ignatius Church.
Burial at Evergreen Cemetery.
El Paso, Texas, August 24, 1939.
The September l, 1939 issue of the El Paso Social Justice led with the following headline, set in 84 point
type:
NAZIS INVADE; BLOCK POLAND The sub-heads read: German Militarists
Start Push to East Polish Capital and Part of Gydria Bombed by Fuehrers Planes;
NonCombatants Killed
In the center of the page was a picture of Eduardo, and his father's eulogy, part of which reads:
Last Friday El Paso Social Justice failed to roll off the press.
The American Printing Co., which publishes it was closed and silent. There was no rattling of
linotypes, no drumming of presses . . . But later that evening . . . (T)he mortuary chapel echoed
softly with the rosary service being offered for the soul of a brave little boy . . .
Last Wednesday Eduardo went to attend the birthday party of his friend, Richard Keating.
Richard was 13 that day; Eduardo was a month older. Richard's father is signal maintainer for the
Southern Pacific railroad and lives just west of the tunnel near the Rio Grande.
They were great friends, Rich and Eduardo. That afternoon they went to visit Eduardo's
grandfather who is a watchman at the Mt. Cristo Rey statue project. They then set forth to
explore the mountain, as they had often done before.
By mid-afternoon when the youngsters failed to return, the grandfather was frantic. After
searching frenziedly he discovered the drowned bodies of Richard and Eduardo in a reservoir
which held water for use on the project. Richard's body was clad in his undergarments. Eduardo's
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body was partially clothed. A New Mexico coroner's jury held at the spot of the tragedy gave the
verdict of "death by accidental drowning." It also added, due to the fact that Eduardo was partly
clothed, he had probably died in attempting to save Richard from drowning.
My grandfather did not go to the funeral mass nor to the burial. He stayed home to take care of
me. He told me that the angels had taken my brother up to heaven.
For a long time, I hated angels.
September 21, 1939, marked my fifth birthday. I remember asking why I did not have a party. **
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd_AVfaOPYc
*** http://magazine.nd.edu/news/18882-into-the-deep/
**** https://youtu.be/rMuTXcf3-6A