La Voz - October 2015

a publication of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

October 2015, Vol. 28 Issue 8

Latino LGBT activists come out in a new book, Queer BRown Voices

San Antonio, Tejas

La Voz de Esperanza September 2015 vol. 28 Issue 7

Editor Gloria A. Ramírez Design Elizandro Carrington

Contributors Greg Harman, Josie Méndez-Negrete

La Voz Mail Collective

Rebecca G. Aguirre,Carlos Anchando,Dudley Brooks,Janie Castillo,Elisabeth Delgado,Juan Díaz,Charlie Esperiqueta,Mary Esperiqueta,Mildred Hilbrich ,Debi JiggittsHall,Gina Lee,Ray McDonald,Maria J. Medellin,Angie Merla,Josie M. Merla,Lucy & Ray Pérez,Pete Porter,María Reed,Blanca Rivera,Mary A. Rodriguez,Rachel Navarro Sandoval,Eugenia Silva,Roger Singler ,Michele Sleighel,Lillian Stevens,Rebeca Velas,Helen Villarreal,Tomas Ybarra-Frausto

Esperanza Director

A tsunami of walls and fences are crashing and crushing immigrants as they try to reach any country in Europe that will accept them. Many are fleeing the war in Syria—but not all.

Some are from Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations. And, no one is talking about the refugees from the Congo and other parts of Africa. Nor are they talking about the millions of people already in refugee camps throughout the world, waiting.

How much money to throw at “the problem”—how many refugees to accept (quotas), if any? Where to place the refugees in the meantime and whose responsibility is that? All of these are questions being bandied about. And accusations are being flung from one leader to another, one country to another about “moral imperialism.” In other words, the attitude of “You are oppressing me by making me feel guilty that I don’t want to help out these human beings” is the plaintive cry of countries that are putting up barriers and holding on tightly to themselves afraid to share their wealth, their resources, their compassion.

Why not help? If the money, the land, the resources are there-why not help? Most of the refugees come with intelligence and skills that could prove to be an asset to any country. The answer is: Fear. Fear of the other—the other race, the other religion, another way of being.

Fear of losing what we have, fear of losing control. Fear drives the tsunami of fences, barbed wire and razor sharp walls that go up. When will all this stop? Who will step forward to embrace and welcome a brother, a sister, a child. Who?

Graciela I. Sánchez

This issue of La Voz de Esperanza continues to delve into some of the illnesses of the Western hemisphere, most notably our treatment of youth of color and why this continues to occur at the hands of police and state-sanctioned forces. On August 9, 2014, an 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a white policeman with the Ferguson Police Department which set off days of protests and rioting giving impetus to the Black Lives Matter Conjunto de Nepantleras movement. On September 26, 2014 forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in -Esperanza Board of DirectorsMexico went missing, kidnapped by state authorities after they traveled to the city of Iguala to Brenda Davis, Rachel Jennings, Amy Kastely, Jan Olsen, Kamala Platt, Ana Lucía protest educational reforms. To date, these types of injustices continue to happen both in Mexico Ramírez, Gloria A. Ramírez, Rudy Rosales, and the U.S. Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina happened? Did the poor and the black community Tiffany Ross, Lilliana Saldaña, Nadine receive just treatment then? No. The list goes on. All we can do here in La Voz is to provide Saliba, Graciela I. Sánchez, Lillian Stevens information and analysis on some of these injustices. And we can ask questions. Please continue • We advocate for a wide variety of social, to send in articles to lavoz@esperanzacenter.org Esperanza Staff

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

Imelda Arismendez, Elizandro Carrington, Elisa Pérez, Gianna Rendón, René Saenz, Susana Segura, Amelia Valdez

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economic & environmental justice issues.

• Opinions expressed in La Voz are not necessarily those of the Esperanza Center.

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The subscription rate is $35 per year ($100 for institutions). The cost of producing and mailing La Voz has substantially increased and we need your help to keep it afloat. To help, send in your subscriptions, sign up as a monthly donor, or send in a donation to the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. Thank you. -GAR VOZ VISION STATEMENT: La Voz de Esperanza speaks for many individual, progressive voices who are gente-based, multi-visioned and milagro-bound. We are diverse survivors of materialism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, violence, earth-damage, speciesism and cultural and political oppression. We are recapturing the powers of alliance, activism and healthy conflict in order to achieve interdependent economic/ spiritual healing and fuerza. La Voz is a resource for peace, justice, and human rights, providing a forum for criticism, information, education, humor and other creative works. La Voz provokes bold actions in response to local and global problems, with the knowledge that the many risks we take for the earth, our body, and the dignity of all people will result in profound change for the seven generations to come.

New Book “Queer Brown Voices” Writes a More Inclusive History of LGBT Activism

by Xatherin Gonzalez Reprinted with permission.

In new collection Queer Brown Voices, artist and activist Luz Guerra describes what it means to “call someone out their name.” In the Lower East Side during the 1960s and 1970s, calling someone out their name was an insult and erasure of their experience encountering colonization. For example, calling someone who was Puerto Rican “Spanish,” overlooked that the Spanish invaded indigenous people on la isla, or that many Latina/os in La Loisada, New York City, came from Caribbean African diasporas. In her essay, Luz talks about the limitations of “Latina/o” and “LGBT,” two categories that filter identity through monolithic narratives.

Queer Brown Voices is filled with insights like these.

Edited by activist Letitita Gomez and scholars Salvador

Just this summer, the trailer for the new film Stonewall prompted thousands of people to sign a petition calling for a boycott of the film because its story of the Stonewall uprising in New York seems to portray one white man leading the protests, when in fact it was actually initiated by transgender women of color.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

Original published in bitchmedia.com.

Vidal-Ortiz and Uriel Quesada, the collection out this month from University of Texas Press ruptures the dominant views of LGBT activism in the United States and Puerto Rico. As each contributor notes, few historical accounts recognize the contributions of Latina/os in the struggle for LGBT equality. All too often, the histories of queer and trans people of color are whitewashed for mass appeal. Just this summer, the trailer for the new film Stonewall prompted thousands of people to sign a petition calling for a boycott of the film because its story of the Stonewall uprising in New York seems to portray one white man leading the protests, when in fact it was actually initiated by transgender women of color. Whitewashing erases the contributions and struggles of people of color, and it carries over into the focuses of mainstream activist groups. The largest LGBT-rights organizations in the country—like the Human Rights Coalition—have been criticized for focusing

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LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

more on white, middle-class issues such as adoption rights and focuses on the establishment of local, regional, and national organizations which tie all of these activists within the same marriage equality, instead of issues like the disproportionate national network. However, Uriel Quesada addresses these number of queer and trans people of color encountering state issues in his conclusion: “We are in debt to the pioneers of the violence. In our pop culture and in our politics, people of previous three decades, but also to the activists of the twentycolor are placed at the fringes of grand narratives; their needs first century.” either absent or singular.

In the tradition of oral history and firstperson narratives, such as the feminist Adela Vásquez (the only trans classic This Bridge Called My Back, the Latina writer in the collection) editors of Queer Brown Voices sought to chronicles going from Cuba to San avoid Eurocentric methods of documenting Francisco, arriving in the United history. Instead, they opt for a fragmented States after the 1980 Mariel archive, rooted in the decolonization Boatlift. and feminist movements of the 1960s.

Through this approach, Queer Brown Many of these pioneers are women of Voices queers the way we view history: color, such as Luz Guerra, who helped the stories of change are through nonlinear establish major organizations such as the and subjective perspectives, rather than Austin Latina/o Lesbian and Gay through a canonical retelling that aims Organization (ALLGO) and the National to be “objective.” Best of all, the text Latina/o Lesbian and Gay organization is accessible to everyday readers—the (LLEGÓ). Layers of oppression, within the collection doesn’t ascribe to scholarly zagria.blogspot.com “queer” and “brown” umbrellas, inspired jargon or overly complicated queer theory. Instead, it relies them to work within local networks—and across international on autobiographical stories, each one exploring history from borders. Adela Vásquez (the only trans Latina writer in the childhood, “coming out,” cultural reconnection, and finally, collection) chronicles going from Cuba to San Francisco, adulthood. The collection includes essays from several arriving in the United States after the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. luminaries who have devoted their lives to working for the Seeing the lack of trans Latina representation in California’s rights of people who are often overlooked or purposely shut HIV/AIDS movements, she decided to become an activist. In out even within queer communities. her essay, Laura Esquivel, considered La Madre of the LGBT Gomez, Vidal-Ortiz, and Quesada are transparent movement, discusses growing up in Southern California’s about their juvenile justice methodology, system. She says, explaining their “I was highly approach to gifted, which, in its select, translate, own way, transcribe, and contributed to my organize the feeling of not book’s sixteen belonging voices. In the anywhere. Not preface and from South introduction, Pasadena, not from they address East L.A. Not the problematic Mexican, not white. language Ni de aquí, ni de throughout allá.” the essays.

In Queer For example, Brown Voices, there are words many of these translated women discuss from Spanish existing within into English this borderland of that come www.latinovations.com identity, through across as misogynistic or transphobic. Personally, I found it various cultures and races—an experience Gloria Anzaldúa tricky to accept these editorial decisions, since the majority describes as the “Mestiza Consciousness.” For many women, of the narratives are told by cisgender Latina/os. There are activism occurred beyond state borders. For example, Chicana many voices left out—I would have liked to hear more activist Gloria A. Ramírez describes this in her essay “The from indigenous people, undocumented queer activists, and 4 transgender Latinas. This absence is partially because the book Queer Roots of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.”

Queer Brown Voices,

a reading and plática on Saturday, October 10 at 7 pm at the Esperanza Center will feature queer latina/o activists who contributed testimonios to Queer Brown Voices: Letitia Gomez, editor & contributor, No te rajes-Don’t Back Down! Daring to Be Out and Visible In 2009 I was inspired to collaborate with Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and Uriel Quesada on this book, primarily as a way to satisfy my personal need to document the period of LGBT Latina/o ativism that I experienced in the 1980s and 1990s, la época de oro...

Jesús Cháirez From the Closet to LGBT Radio Host in Dallas

Luz Guerra Dancing at the Crossroads: Mulata, Mestiza, Macha, Mujer

Dennis Medina We Are a Part of the History of Texas That You Must Not Exclude!

Gloria A. Ramírez The Queer Roots of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center

Brad Veloz A South Texas Activist in Washington, D.C., Houston, and San Antonio

Dulce Benavides, facilitator formerly of San Antonio was co-chair of SALGA currently in Washington, D.C.

Mike Rodríguez, facilitator a former activist in San Antonio with SALGA and the Esperanza.

Motivated by the U.S. occupation of Central and South America, San Antonio’s Esperanza Center functioned as a hub to bring together Latina lesbians, many who were single mothers, and organized resistance to U.S. imperialism in Operation Desert Storm and the invasion of Panama. Their teach-ins, art exhibitions, and cultural programs received disapproval from many white gay men and conservative right-wing groups alike. This account provides a glimpse of an intentional space for women of color and illuminates ways that white gay men have systematically worked to defund and shutdown queer women of color activists—stories of racism within queer communities that don’t often get told.

“Even though, in some moments in time, we were not organized, it did not mean that we did not exist.”

José Gutiérrez, founder of the Latina/o GLBT History Project, stresses the importance of Latina/o LGBT

preservation, drawing inspiration from his encounter with Sylvia Rivera during the Stonewall riots. “Our Latina/o LGBT communities have been in the United States for years,” he concludes. “Even though, in some moments in time, we were not organized, it did not mean that we did not exist.” He thanks many of the “anonymous heroes” who were faded-out through history. Many of these heroes are documented today through the work of young people of color and people presently active in the movement.

As editor Quesada points out, Queer Brown Voices is a “pioneering step toward a more comprehensive and inclusive history of activism, organizations… we the editors cannot claim that the entire job is done.” And it’s true—I want this book to be just one on a bookshelf of works documenting queer Latina/o histories. The book gazes back against heteronormative Eurocentrism, but more voices should be brought to the center and supersede gay/lesbian and Latina/o binaries. It is a major leap to disrupt and decolonize a history that is still being written.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

Our goal is to provide the reader—and especially the young LGBT Latina/o—with knowledge about the history of Latina/o LGBT activitsm in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Our expectation of students, scholars, and historians is that they see an opportunity to build upon our work and to contribute further to the body of evidence of LGBT latina/o activism and its positive impact on the larger LGBT latina/o community.

—Excerpt from her preface to Queer Brown Voices

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Resolution for Recognition of. . .

October 12th as Indigenous Peoples Day Whereas: October 12, 1492 is the most devastating and impactful date to all indigenous people of the Americas.

Whereas: Colonization of indigenous people wrecked and destroyed indigenous cultures and achievements.

Whereas: Modern day society is coming to grips with the inhumanities wrought upon indigenous people.

Whereas: Numerous cities and state governments within the United States have recognized Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day in efforts to create a path of healing for all the injuries stemming from that date.

Whereas: We indigenous people of the YanaGuana also recognize the need for education of our people to their heritage as indigenous people and through education begin to instill much needed pride to a community devastated through years of colonization.

Whereas: Indigenous people, by their closeness to Mother Earth, have contributed in creating many of the mainstay agriculture foods principally corn, beans, squash, chocolate, avocado, peanuts, and so many more that we are unable to list all on this page. The contributions of Indigenous people are not solely in agriculture but in all aspects of todays society. Indigenous people maintained the natural resources that fuel the economy of this government and are deserving of an honorable mention such as Indigenous Peoples Day. Therefore: We look to our local government for support in our endeavour for recognition of our contributions and humanity.

We respectfully request a resolution recognizing October 12th as Indigenous Peoples Day in YanaGuana that is now known as San Antonio, Texas.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

Note: We do have our Resolution recognizing October 12 as Indigenous Peoples Day on the County Commissioners Court October 6th Agenda, hopefully it will be voted in. I’m still trying to reason with our City Council, asking them to place it on their October 7 agenda. —Tlazocamati— Contact Antonio Díaz: indigenousway@gmail.com

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The Dirty War Against Youth From Ferguson to Ayotzinapa

by Crystal Vance Guerra, Truthout | News Analysis 9.05.2015

A

police custody also highlight the continued relevancy of these movements. The systematic state-sanctioned violence against particular communities has become evident in the turn of this century.

The Recent History of Contemporary State Violence To better understand today’s state violence, it becomes necessary to analyze both the economic and military policies of the United States since the 1980s. While Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the Chicago Boys’ economic theories celebrated the global reach of neoliberalism, the US was funding and training counterinsurgent armies in Central America, which killed a quarter-million indigenous and mestizo people.

In the US, the war on drugs, crack cocaine sales and the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people peaked.

Nicaragua’s revolution in 1979 toppled one of the bloodiest US-backed dictatorships in the history of Latin America.

Photo: Fernando García/Flickr

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

lmost one year ago, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in Mexico went missing, kidnapped by state authorities after they traveled to the city of Iguala to protest education reforms. And just over a year ago, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of Michael Brown.

From both sides of the border, a parallel demand for justice and freedom is being lifted by the youth in response to these acts of state violence.

In response to the disappearance of the 43 students in Mexico, we are saying “Los queremos vivos” (We want them alive). In response to Mexico’s never-ending femicide, we are saying “Nos queremos vivas” (We want each other [women] alive). And the insistence that Black lives matter has not stopped reverberating from the mouths and marching feet of millions.

From Ferguson to Ayotzinapa, we have reached a tipping point in an accumulated history of indignation: “¡Ya Basta!

We Can’t Breathe!”

Recent killings of a young male photojournalist and three women in Mexico, and the death of Sandra Bland in Texas

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Soon after, both El Salvador and Guatemala were also on the brink of shouting victory. All the while, Honduras, nestled between the three, was becoming increasingly militarized by the US and served as a training base for the Contras, short for counterinsurgents.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

The mass disappearance of Black people, both through incarceration and police brutality, is nothing short of genocide

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Infamous for their execution-style murders and torture tactics, the Contras became known as the “Death Squads” within Central America. These forces were at first openly supported by Reagan and US foreign policy, and were described by him as “freedom fighters.” But in 1983, Congress signed the Boland Amendment prohibiting this support due to concerns over their violation of human rights.

Dismissing Congress and popular anti-Contra movements in the United States, a secret group within the CIA called the Operations Sub-Group—composed primarily of then-Gen. Oliver North, Vice President George H.W. Bush, then-CIA director William Casey and President Reagan—decided to take matters into their own hands.

Through the use of private companies and personal bank accounts, these men expanded US influence in Honduras, training, equipping and housing the death squads (counterinsurgent armies) that destabilized and extinguished the liberation movements of its neighbors almost

Launched in the 1980s, crack and the war on drugs became all too real metaphors for the destruction of Black and Brown neighborhoods across the country.

Mass Incarceration and Mass Disappearances The prison industrial complex (the business of incarceration) came into being along with the militarization of police and an increase in white supremacist legislation, all supporting the expansion of this market.

Under Reagan’s war on drugs, crack became criminalized at a 100-1 ratio to cocaine, and Black, Brown and poor people all became increasingly criminalized. And the prison population linked to drug offenses (largely due to crack) rose from 40,000 to 1 million in this decade. The majority of those incarcerated were (and still are) Black.

The mass disappearance of Black people, both through incarceration and police brutality, is nothing short of genocide, as demonstrated by the Chicago organization We Charge Genocide at the 2014 Geneva Convention last fall.

What better way to ensure that a systematically oppressed people never rise up than to target its youth?

Without minimizing the particularities of each side, the mass disappearances linked to crack cocaine in the United States and Central America had similar consequences. Generalized violence - though rooted in the

simultaneously. In these 10 state - increased state security and years of dirty war in Central the destabilization of families and America, more than a quartercommunity: all the right elements million people lost their lives to limit any voice of liberation from and a million more were rising up again. displaced. And the 1980s, One of the first premises of which began in Central America counterinsurgent warfare is to use with the promise of liberation, “the natives” (as the first US Marine Melanie Cervantes, DignidadRebelde.com became known as the “lost manual on the subject notes) against decade.” each other in order to mask the US government’s role and win In the United States, meanwhile, the 1980s were welcomed “the hearts and minds” of those targeted for submission. In with weariness. The liberation movements of the 1960s and Central America, this meant the formation of the death squads 1970s were disarticulated. The strongest of these that couldn’t and mass disappearances by Central American forces traine d be stifled with reform had been destabilized through CIA and funded by the United States. and Pentagon programs such as Cointelpro, a successful In South Central Los Angeles and other “inner cities” counterinsurgency program launched against the Black Panthers. across the United States, the cocaine-dependent Contra War of

the Operations Sub-Group in Central America provoked the militarization of police, the increased use of firearms and drug trafficking within gangs and the mass incarceration of the young and poor, sparking another dirty war within Brown and Black US neighborhoods.

Whether this kill-two-birds-with-one-stone outcome was intentional or just became highly useful as time passed cannot be confirmed, but with all the current

participated actively in its operation, eliminating competition and securing the entry and distribution of the product.

These documents highlight how the Sinaloa cartel gave US officials information about rival cartels in exchange for privileged trading agreements. Some former cartel members say these exchanges show just how the CIA has been played by El Chapo.

Instead of revealing the whereabouts of their leader, double agents within the cartel fed the CIA information about

knowledge about US direct complicity in the drug trade, the question becomes all the more salient.

its competition, revealing their true role as triple Melanie Cervantes, DignidadRebelde.com agents. Either way, with the CIA coordinating raids against El Chapo’s competition, it is no surprise that this cartel grew to dominate, albeit monopolize, the drug trade in Mexico and the United States.

Whether US intelligence can be so clueless, or whether this cooperation was intentional, the same two-birds-withone-stone question is still relevant, but it needs to be placed into context. In the 1980s, it was clear what the enemy target was: everything and anything communist. Today, the enemy target of US counterinsurgency is much more obscure.

Defense, Drugs and Banks

Our neighborhoods on both sides of the border are witnessing the extreme criminalization of youth.

In 2013, a trial held in Chicago revealed that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the richest men in the world and former head of the Sinaloa cartel - the strongest (read monopoly) cartel in Mexico - has close ties with the CIA. The two men testifying were high-ranking members of the cartel, including a lawyer.

Their testimony affirms that the CIA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did not simply ignore the trafficking, but rather

The Targeting of Youth What does it mean that it’s the youth on both sides of the border that are being targeted? And not just any youth, but the Black, Brown, indigenous and poor.

As seen in repression of Black Lives Matter organizers and protesters in the United States and of the Los Queremos Vivos movement in Mexico, youth of color are always already criminalized as potential threats - thugs, maras (Central American gangs), anarchists. This current and historical reality of preemptive criminalization relates to another premise of counterinsurgency expressed in a recent Joint Chiefs of Staff publication: control through manipulation and disciplination of the target population. According to the publication, “Success in COIN depends on a counterinsurgent’s ability to motivate various people ... toward behavior that supports an outcome of the operation consistent with the [US government’s] desired political end state” (JP 3-24, I-4).

The combination of “lethal and non-lethal” actions that achieve this complacency leads to the preemptive suppression of rebellion.

Laws like stop-and-frisk and SB1070 are based off another premise of counterinsurgency: any and every “native” is a possible insurgent. What better way to ensure that a systematically oppressed people never rise up than to target its youth?

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

Since this century has begun, we have witnessed a series of financial crises, the most shattering beginning in 2008.

Throughout this period of negative to zero growth across the majority of sectors, defense and those corporations related to defense were the only ones who managed to secure significant profits. At the same time, it is in this period that the drug trade became second only to the arms trade in terms of profits.

The last thread to begin to understand what is happening today can be found in the banks. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” said Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2009.

“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities,” Costa added.

“There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”

Within these three sectors, defense, drugs and banks, the United States maintains a tight monopoly and a highly circular trade.

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Cocaine and Counterinsurgency Today

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

As already noted, the “dark alliance” between the US government, drug trafficking and private companies - first revealed by journalist Gary Webb 30 years ago - remains in place. The elimination of the Sinaloa cartel’s competition by the CIA, and the continuous training and arming of Mexican and Central American military, police and paramilitary forces by the US are practices that appear to go hand-in-hand to support a common cause: business interests.

Money laundering, arms and drugs sales and the ever-expanding private prison and security industries on both sides of the Rio Grande are now even more lucrative than in the 1980s. Control over these three top markets in the world is important for the United States, especially in these times of economic crises.

The war on drugs, the longest US counterinsurgent war ever launched,

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thus appears to be more a war for monopoly-control of the drug market than one against the drug trade itself.

The financial, legal and criminal cooperation between the Sinaloa cartel and the US government revealed in 2014, however, has failed to generate the indignation than the same scandal revealed in the 1980s.

The use of development dollars, such as USAID, in security and defense—that once caused uproar—is now celebrated as global policy by the World Bank, which also happens to finance well-known and longtime drug traffickers in Central America.

Although there are no longer nationwide, armed liberation movements in Central America, mass murders are still the outcome of the continued war on drugs.

Since 2000, a quarter-million people have lost their lives in drug-related deaths in Central America while another million were displaced. In this same time period, far beyond the 43 of Ayotzinapa, close to a million people in Mexico have either been killed, disappeared or displaced in relation to this same war.

In the United States, the profits gained from the recent mass detentions of undocumented youth in private prisons and the criminalization of Blackness, Brownness and poverty, along with illegal home foreclosures, school closures and police killings have furthered the destabilization of communities of color initiated in the 1980s.

Although crack addiction, violent crime and incarceration

rates in the United States are at an all-time low since the 1980s, the prison and military industrial complexes have never been stronger, receiving massive investments from banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America (which also are cashing in on the mass foreclosures). These investments keep growing, despite the publicly denounced high levels of racially targeted police violence across the United States.

Since 2013, 2,011 people have been killed by the police, according to one crowdsourced data set. Another ambitious project of developing a national data set has a total of 2,104 people listed, and its creators have not even finished documenting all of 2014. And according to federal data, Black men are four times more likely to experience an “arrest related death.” Sandra Bland’s death on July 13, 2015, is but one sobering reminder of this fact.

Destabilization,

disciplination and dependency are the primary goals of US counterinsurgency, both abroad and at home. dorsetchiapassolidarity.wordpress.com Our neighborhoods on both sides of the border are witnessing the extreme criminalization of youth, and it is an example of counterinsurgency at its finest: preemptive disciplinization.

Youth of color are seen as “thugs” in the United States and mara in Central America, and across the world it is the youth that the state fears will become “anarchists” or “terrorists” and challenge US hegemony.

Meanwhile, the shouts of “Black Lives Matter, “ “Los Queremos Vivos” and “Nos Queremos Vivas” are the shouts of generations of youth unwilling to submit to the dirty war launched against us.

“Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission” http://bit.ly/thedirtywar

by Laura Carlsen

Photo: origenoticias.com

had approached him to ask if he was the photographer who fled Veracruz. When he said yes, the man replied, “You should know that we’re here.”

Once considered a haven, Mexico City has become a hunting ground in a country where, too often, journalists end up reporting on the brutal assassinations of their colleagues — and wondering who will be next.

Targets Ruben Espinosa had photographed social movements in the state of Veracruz for the past eight years, including journalists’ protests over the murder of Regina Martinez in 2012, a journalist and colleague of Espinosa at Proceso magazine. He covered the protests against the disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa by local police in Guerrero and acts of repression by the Veracruz state government.

Espinosa captured a front-page photo of Governor Duarte, big-bellied and wearing a police cap, which appeared on the cover of Proceso alongside the title: “Veracruz, a Lawless State.”

Espinosa noted that the governor was so enraged by the photo he had his agents obtain and destroy as many copies of the magazine as they could get their hands on. He reported that while he was taking pictures of the eviction of protesters, a government agent told him, “You better stop taking pictures or you´ll end up like Regina.”

The Mexican Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes

Neoliberalism, Justice & Human Rights in Mexico* a talk by Laura Carlsen

November18, 2015 Trinity Campus, Northrup Hall, 9:55am *Esperanza platica TBA, check Nov. Voz

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

Once a refuge, Mexico City has become a hunting ground where journalists end up reporting on the assassinations of their colleagues — and wondering who will be next.

Earlier this summer, Ruben Espinosa fled Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz after receiving death threats. His work as a photojournalist there had made him an enemy of the state’s governor, who presides over one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a reporter.

On July 31, Espinosa was found beaten and shot dead in a Mexico City apartment.

Eight months ago, Nadia Vera, a student activist and cultural worker, looked boldly into a camera lens and told an interviewer that if anything happened to her, Veracruz governor Javier Duarte and his cabinet should be held responsible. She also fled Veracruz to the nation’s capital after suffering attacks.

On July 31, Nadia Vera was found sexually tortured and murdered, shot point-blank in the same apartment.

Three more women were assassinated in the normally tranquil, upper-middle class neighborhood that afternoon — an 18 year-old Mexican named Yesenia Quiroz, a Colombian identified only as “Nicole,” and a 40 year-old domestic worker named Alejandra. The press generally refers to the case as “the murder of Ruben Espinosa and four women,” relegating the women victims to anonymity even in death.

At a recent demonstration of journalists and human rights defenders, the sense of dread was palpable. As communicators in Mexico, we’re angry and intensely frustrated at how so many of our ranks have been killed, disappeared, displaced, or censored with no repercussions.

For many, including me, this crime especially hit home. For a long time, whenever I was asked if I was afraid to speak out critically in Mexico, I answered that fortunately Mexico City was relatively safe. Drug cartels and their allies in government only kept close tabs on reporters in more disputed areas.

The quintuple homicide in a quiet corner of the city shattered that myth — and with it what was left of our complacency.

Several days before his murder, Espinosa told friends that a man

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LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

AgainstFreedom of Expression recognizes 102 journalists murdered from 2000 to 2014.

Yet the Mexico City prosecutor didn’t even mention the threats and attacks against Nadia Vera, an activist and a member of the student organization YoSoy132, as a line of investigation in her murder. The UN High Commission on Human Rights in Mexico stated that Vera and the other female victims found with Espinosa showed signs of sexual torture. Mexico City investigators announced that they were applying investigative protocols for possible femicides, but didn’t say why or confirm the reports of rape and sexual torture.

The invisibility of the women victims in the press and the official statements has been partially compensated for by social media. In social networks, millions of posts and tweets have brought to light the lives of the women, and especially Nadia’s more public and activist past, in an impromptu campaign that insists that women’s lives also matter.

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Signs of a Cover-Up? Now, just days into the investigation, with the nation — and especially journalists — reeling from the news, there are already signs of a cover-up.

On August 2, Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Rios gave a press conference reporting on advances in the case.

Although Rios promised to pursue all lines of investigation, he downplayed the possibility that this could be a political crime against freedom of expression, claiming that Espinosa was not currently employed.

Rios also stated that the photojournalist came to Mexico City to look for work — a thinly veiled attempt to pre-empt the dead journalist’s own version of the facts that he was forced to leave Veracruz due to ongoing persecution. The city attorney’s office has put forth robbery as the principal motive of the crime, despite the execution-style torture and killings, and hasn’t called on anyone from the Veracruz government to provide testimony.

These are signs that the city government may be trying to railroad the investigation, and they’ve outraged the public, especially journalists. The attorney general’s absurd claim that Espinosa was unemployed at the time of his murder, seemingly suggesting that his journalistic work wasn’t a motive, caused particular indignation.

On August 5, investigators announced that they’d arrested and were questioning a suspect based on a match with a fingerprint found in the apartment. Despite apparent advances, there’s a growing fear that the government has no intention of really

investigating a crime that could lead straight to a powerful member of the president’s own party.

The U.S. Role The involvement of the Mexican government in the crime itself, or at least in creating the climate that led to the crime and failing to prevent it, raises serious questions for U.S. policymakers as well. The watchdog organization Article 19 reports that nearly half of the aggressions against journalists registered were carried out by state agents.

Since 2008, the U.S. government — through the Merida Initiative and other sources — has provided some $3 billion to the Mexican government for the war on drugs. This is a period when attacks on human rights defenders and journalists have skyrocketed, and more than 100,000 people have been killed by criminals and security forces alike.

Photo: (Original source) Reuters A fraction of that money has gone to mechanisms for protection that have so far proved worthless. Rather than helping, this serves to support the false idea that the Mexican state is the good guy in a war on organized crime. The cases of corruption, complicity, and abuse that pile up week by week have demolished this premise.

Supporting abusive governments and security forces while claiming to support the journalists and human rights defenders being attacked by them is like pretending to help the fox while arming the hunter — it just prolongs the hunt. Mexican citizens who speak up are being hunted, too often by their own government. It’s time the U.S. government came to grips with that and immediately suspended the Merida Initiative.

Until there is accountability and justice — and an end to the murder of those who tell the truth about what’s happening here — sending U.S. taxpayer money to Mexican security forces is a vile betrayal of Mexicans’ friendship and of the highest principles of U.S. foreign policy.

Bio: Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Program for the Center for International Policy in Mexico City. http://www.ciponline.org

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

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* community meetings *

Amnesty International #127 Call Arthur @ 210.213.5919.

Bexar Co. Green Party meets 1st Sun. Call Antonio @ 210.542.9271 or Rachell @ 210.542.9278 or bexarcountygreens@gmail.com Celebration Circle meets Sun., 11am @ Say Si, 1518 S. Alamo. Meditatn Wed. 7:30pm @ Friends Mtg House, 7052 Vandiver. 210.533.6767 |www. celebrationcircle.org DIGNITY SA mass, 5:30 pm, Sun. @ St. Paul’s Episcopal Church,1018 E. Grayson St. Call 210.340.2230 Adult Wellness Support Group of PRIDE Center meets 4th Mon., 7-9 pm @ Lions Field, 2809 Broadway. Call 210.213.5919.

Energía Mía: Call 512.838.3351.

Fuerza Unida, 710 New Laredo Hwy. www.lafuerzaunida.org | 210.927.2294 Habitat for Humanity meets 1st Tues. for volunteer training, 6pm, Habitat Office, 311 Probandt.

LULAC Council #22198, Orgullo de SA, meets 3rd Tues. @ 6:45pm at Papouli’s, 255 E. Basse Rd. To join e-mail: info@lulac22198.org NOW SA Chapter meets 3rd Weds.

Check FB/satx.now | 210.802.9068 | nowsaareachapter@gmail.com

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

Pax Christi, SA meets monthly on Saturdays. Call 210.460.8448

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Proyecto Hospitalidad Liturgy meets Thurs. 7pm, 325 Courtland.

SA Women Will March: www.sa womenwillmarch.org|210 262.0654 Metropolitan Community Church services & Sunday school @10:30am, 611 East Myrtle. Call 210.472.3597

Be Part of a

Overeaters Anonymous meets MWF in Spanish & daily in English: www. oasanantonio.org | 210.492.5400.

Progressive Movement

People’s Power Coalition meets last Thursdays. Call 210.878.6751

in San Antonio

PFLAG, meets 1st Thurs. @ 7pm, University Presbyterian Church, 300 Bushnell Ave. Call 210.848.7407.

Parents of Murdered Children, meets 2nd Mondays at Balcones Hts Community Ctr, 107 Glenarm See www.pomcsanantonio.org.

Rape Crisis Ctr 7500 US Hwy 90W. Hotline: 210.349.7273 | 210.521.7273 Email: sgabriel@ rapecrisis.com The Religious Society of Friends meets Sun. 10am at The Friends Meeting House, 7052 N. Vandiver.

210.945.8456.

S.A. Gender Association meets 1st & 3rd Thursday, 6-9pm @ 611 E. Myrtle, Metropolitan Cmty Church.

The SA AIDS Fdn 818 E. Grayson St. offers free Syphilis & HIV testing, 210.225.4715 | www.txsaaf.org.

SAWomenWillMarch www. sawomenwillmarch.org 830.488.7493 SGI-USA LGBT Buddhists meet 2nd Sat. at 10am @ 7142 San Pedro Ave., Ste 117. Call 210.653.7755.

Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Tues. 7pm & Sun. 9:30am 257 E. Hildebrand Ave. Call 210.222.9303.

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S.N.A.P. (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Contact Barbara at 210.725.8329.

Voice for Animals: 210.737.3138 or www.voiceforanimals.org for info SA’s LGBTQA Youth meets Tues., 6:30pm at Univ. Presby. Church, 300 Bushnell Ave.www.fiesta-youth.org

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Notas Y Más October 2015

San Anto Cultural Arts 18th Annual Huevos Rancheros Gala & Art Auction is on Saturday, October 3rd from 9am to 12pm at Plaza Guadalupe, 1327 Guadalupe. This year’s Queen and King Huevo are Rosie Castro and Juan Solis. Check www.sananto.org/.

Jewish Voice for Peace San Antonio screens the award-winning documentary, 5 Broken Cameras on October 3rd (free) at 2:30pm at the Central Library auditorium. The film documents the attempts of one Palestinian village to resist the expansion of Israeli settlements onto their farmlands. A discussion follows.

Email sanantonio@jvp.org or check facebook.

The Flor de Nopal Literary Festival 2015 at Austin”s Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center offers a free writing workshop on October 10, 2-5pm with Nicole Moore, Sarah Shaney and Ben Olguin in the Raul Salinas Room.

Contact: flordenopal@gmail.com

at the Texas Book Festival’s 20th anni- The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships versary on October 17 & 18th! See tex- for New Americans that support up to 30 New Americans, immigrants or the asbookfestival.org for schedule. children of immigrants, who are pursuing Love In Action: the Life of Dorothy Day/A graduate school in the U.S. Each Fellowforum for Social Workers and others who ship supports up to two years of graduate want to heal our world—with featured study in the U.S. with up to $90,000 in supguest, María Antonietta Berriozábal, takes port. Apply by November 1st at 11:59 pm place Friday, October 23rd at Our Lady EST. See pdsoros.org for more. of the Lake University, Chapel AuditoThe 2015 School of the Americas Watch rium, 1-5 pm. Free.

(SOAW) Vigil is taking place at the gates The 2015 Arts & Letters Awards Ceremony of Fort Benning, Georgia on November and reception will be held at the Cen- 20-22 with grassroots activists from across tral Library on Sunday, October 25, at the Americas converging at the gates of 2pm. This year’s recipients are: visual Fort Benning. For a schedule of activites artist Bernice Appelin-Williams; poet, go to www.soaw.org.

Carol Coffee Reposa; violinist, Craig Sorgi and multimedia artist, poet and playwright Enedina Casarez Vasquez.

Go to www.friendsofsapl.org/ for more Celebrating 40 years of publishing information. announces the release of three new books this fall: Rant. Chant. Chisme.

The Dorothy Day for Today conference by National Slam finalist, Amalia will be held on October 30, 31 and No- Ortiz; Apology to a Whale: Words to vember 1st at the Oblate School of Theol- Mend a World by Cecile Pineda; and ogy. See www.sa-catholicworker.org Transcendental Train Yard with poetry

by Norma Elia Cantú and Art by Marta Applications for 2016 are now open for Sánchez. See www.wingspress.com

October 15, 16, 17, 2015

The Classic Theatre of San Antonio 1924 Fredericksburg Road (Woodlawn Theatre) a play by Karen Brody

$20. Donation To purchase tickets: go to www.brownpapertickets.com, Click on “find an event” and type in BIRTH. Proceeds to benefit San Antonio Birth Doulas www.sabirthdoulas.om Millón de gracias to the buena gente who helped make the MujerArtes 20th anniversary exhibit, Barrio de Barro, a wonderful success!

Christina Alcantar Silvia Álvarez and George Muñoz Mario Carbajal Paz Garcia Carina Hiscock Amy Kastely

Rachel Martinez Angie Merla Ocelotl Mora Maria Plemmons Gloria A. Ramírez Yvonne Rendón Blanca Rivera and Aimeé

Jessica Rocca and Maryangela Sánchez Mary Agnes Rodríguez Bernard Sánchez Adolfo “Fito” Segura Josie Solis Barrio de Barrio is on exhibit ‘til Nov 13th Raul Solis

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8

More than 250 authors will invade the city of Austin surrounding the capitol grounds

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Send items for Notas y Más to: lavoz@esperanzacenter.org or mail to: 922 San Pedro, San Antonio, TX 78212.

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LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • October 2015 Vol. 28 Issue 8•

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