Mi Casa es su Casa

Fragmentos de la novela ‘NO TEMAN A NADIE’

Ch APTER v

Everyone is born to either live the life of a king, a queen, a beggar, a gardener, or a saint. Diego’s mother Rosario, or as she was called, Doña Ro, was chosen to be a saint. she always saw the good in people and was not one to judge when her advice was sought out by the troubled many. Eventually, every farmworker living in the Conejeras ended up at her door, asking for guidance or simply seeking someone to listen to their life’s troubles. Some people find out later in life what role they have to play in the scheme of things, but that was not the case for rosario. it seems that Diego’s grandparents knew her path when they named her rosario. Perhaps being named after a sequence of prayers and a string of prayer beads bound her to prayer. Everyone who visited her house bowed when they entered the room, and the men and women kissed her right hand, the hand that she used to make the sign of the cross. “En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo.” She kissed her thumb knuckle and blessed the visitor: “Vaya con Dios,” prayed rosario. the dreary and the distraught smiled when they saw her. rosario had a presence and radiance that brightened people’s days.

When she said “mi casa es su casa,” she meant it, and the invitation extended well beyond the physical house, to her body and spirit. rosario freely gave of herself to her family and friends, and also to strangers. There was never any expectation on her part that the recipient of her generosity would return the favor. r arely would you see her exhausted and when you did, she’d simply disappear for a brief siesta and within no time at all, reappear fresh, rested enough to take the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Rosario was always in constant motion, doing some kind of work. Sometimes she

CAPíTULO v todo el mundo nace para vivir la vida de un rey, una reina, un mendigo, un jardinero o un santo. La madre de Diego, Rosario, o como la llamaban, Doña Ro, fue elegida para ser santa. Ella siempre vio lo bueno en las personas y no era alguien que juzgara cuando muchos atribulados buscaban su consejo. Eventualmente, todos los campesinos que vivían en las Conejeras terminaban en su puerta, pidiendo orientación o simplemente buscando a alguien que escuchara los problemas de su vida. Algunas personas descubren, could be seen hunched over the stove, momentarily still as if in prayer, then she would continue working. It didn’t matter how tired she was, she was able to work up a smile for you. She had the ability to look deeply into their souls with her penetrating dark brown eyes. One look, and she knew you: she saw every single bit of their pain. no one ever claimed Doña Ro talked with God, but they knew she had a divine connection. Every night, without fail, and when she first arose, Rosario was on her knees, pray- continued on next page tarde en la vida, qué papel tienen que jugar en el esquema de las cosas... pero ese no era el caso de rosario. Parece que los abuelos de Diego conocían el camino que tomaría cuando la llamaron rosario. Quizá llevar el nombre de una secuencia de oraciones y un collar de cuentas la condenaron a rezar. todos los que visitaban su casa se inclinaban al entrar en la habitación, y los hombres y mujeres besaban su mano derecha, la mano que ella usaba para hacer la señal de la cruz. “En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo,” besaba el nudillo de su pulgar y bendecía al visitante: “Vaya con Dios”, rezaba Rosario. Los melancólicos y los angustiados sonreían al verla. rosario tenía una presencia y un resplandor que alegraba los días de la gente. Cuando decía “mi casa es su casa”, lo decía en serio, y la invitación se extendió mucho más allá de la casa física, sino también a su cuerpo y espíritu. rosario se entregó libremente a su familia y amigos, y también a los extraños. nunca hubo ninguna expectativa de su parte de que el destinatario de su generosidad le devolvería el favor. rara vez se le veía exhausta y, cuando era el caso, simplemente desaparecía para una breve siesta y, en poco tiempo, reaparecía fresca, lo suficientemente descansada como para soportar el peso del mundo sobre sus hombros.

Rosario siempre estaba moviéndose, haciendo algún tipo de trabajo. A veces se la podía ver inclinada sobre la estufa, momentáneamente inmóvil como en oración, luego continuaba trabajando. no importaba lo cansada que estuviera, ella siempre lograba sacarte una sonrisa. tenía la capacidad de mirar profundamente en sus almas con sus penetrantes ojos marrones oscuros. Le bastaba una mirada, y ya te conocía: había visto cada pedacito de tu dolor. Nadie afirmó alguna vez que Doña Ro hablara continúa a la vuelta from the previous page ing. She believed in Jesús, our Savior, and entrusted her life to his safekeeping. t he thought of birth control did not enter her mind, so childbearing and raising her children provided the rhythm and foundation in her life. First came Robertito, followed by María and José, two stillbirths and then Carmela, Rosie, Gilberto, Diego, and Socorro. rosario continued to request that he attend church with no results. Don Robo did relent and agree to drive the family to and from the Catholic Church. Although Don robo never implied he was scared to step inside the church, his words and behavior told Diego otherwise: he thought that his father had sinned too much to step inside a church, at least not while he was alive. He often said, “t he only way you’ll see me in church is in a wooden box,” with a laugh. Diego was not convinced that his father thought it was funny. The expression of uncertainty in Don Robo’s eyes didn’t match his words. to be continued in the next issue... con Dios, pero sabían que tenía una conexión divina. Todas las noches, sin falta, y nada más levantarse, Rosario estaba de rodillas, rezando. Creyó en Jesús, nuestro Salvador, y encomendó su vida a su custodia.

Diego saw Rosario as a devoted mother, who loved each and every one of her eight children dearly. She’d make sure that they were fed, had clean clothes to wear, and like the best detective, she always knew the exact whereabouts of her children. Everyone hugged and kissed her on the hands and face. Don Robo didn’t kiss her hand, although he often kissed her on the lips in public. He demonstrated in so many ways that he ruled over his family, just as he did over his workers: not going to church with his family, staying late any day he wanted, and sometimes not coming home for days.

Diego’s house seemed to always have people traveling through it, as his mother considered everyone to be one extended family. His mother was so widely known and respected that even father Gregorio kissed her hand on the steps of the church, in front of the Anglo community and God. On Sundays, rosario beamed with contentment and outright joy, her family and friends flocking around her on the steps of the church.

La idea del control de la natalidad no cabía en su mente, por lo que tener hijos y criarlos fue la base y el ritmo de su vida. Primero llegó Robertito, seguido de María, y José, dos mortinatos (muertos al nacer), y luego Carmela, rosario siguió pidiéndole que fuera a la iglesia sin resultados. Don Robo algo cedía y llevaba a la familia hacia y desde la parroquia. Aunque Don Robo nunca dejó entrever que le daba miedo entrar a la iglesia, sus palabras y comportamiento le sugerían a Diego lo contrario: creía que su padre había pecado demasiado para entrar en una iglesia... al menos no mientras estaba vivo. siempre decía: “La única forma en que me verás en la iglesia es en una cajón”, y reía. A Diego no lo convencía que su padre lo considerara como algo para la risa. La incertidumbre que expresaban los ojos de Don Robo cuando lo decía no coincidía con sus palabras. page 4 supporting tax administration, would violate the first amendment right to free association. Dissenting Justices countered that the ruling was a step toward ending disclosure laws in the campaign finance context, and liberal commentators further showed that the new ruling would be an important additional step in enabling wealthy donors “ far more ability to shape American politics in secret.”5 one of the few areas of judicially inspired change that Biskupic does not cover in depth relates to the relatively recent phenomena known as the shadow docket , but Stephen Vladeck admirably fills the gap in a book published about the same time as Biskupic called The Shadow docket: How the Supreme Court

Rosie, Gilberto, Diego y Socorro.

Diego veía a Rosario como una madre entregada —amaba mucho a todos y cada uno de sus ocho hijos. se aseguraba de que estuvieran bien alimentados, tuvieran ropa limpia y, como el mejor detective, siempre supiera el paradero exacto de sus hijos. todos la abrazaban y la besaban en las manos y las mejillas. Don Robo no le besaba en la mano, aunque a menudo la besaba en los labios en público. Eran muchas las maneras con las que demostraba que gobernaba a su familia —tal como lo hacía con sus trabajadores: no iba a la iglesia con su familia, se quedaba hasta tarde los días que quería y, a veces, no volvía a casa por días.

La casa de Diego siempre parecía tener gente pasando por ella, dado que su madre consideraba a todos como una extensión de su familia. su madre era tan conocida y respetada que hasta el Padre Gregorio le besaba la mano en las gradas de la iglesia... frente a la comunidad anglosajona y ante Dios. Los domingos, rosario resplandecía de satisfacción y alegría absoluta, su familia y amigos la rodeaban en los escalones de la iglesia. continúa en el próximo número...

Uses Stealth to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic (Basic Books, 2023).

Vladeck’s work focuses on the recent but rapidly increasing tendency of the supreme Court to issue orders on an often impromptu basis with no identified author and with little if any explanation or rationale for the decision. For instance, the September 2021 decision supported by five justices simply refused to block the Texas Heartbeat Act, known as SB8, which banned abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy and obviously presaged the majority decision written by Justice Alito in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nine months later.

t he term shadow docket was first used in 2015, and observers report that a trickle started in 2017 and has turned into a steady flow since 2021. For instance, all but one of the twelve supreme Court rulings on trump immigration policy has been via the shadow docket i n another highly important case in April 2022, Justice Barrett provided the decisive vote which abruptly enabled power plants to pollute navigable waterways in a way that left users of the waterways without explanation or recourse for protection or redress or understanding for months. Justice Elena Kagan and many observers of the judicial process believe that this has become just part and parcel of the full blown institutional crisis that the supreme Court is breeding.

university of texas Law school professor Vladeck elaborates in great detail the compelling evidence that the expansion of the shadow docket is just another lamentable aspect of what he calls the 2022 judicial power grab. t he supreme Court has

“...radically expanded the Second Amendment; eviscerated the constitutional right to abortions; constrained Congress’s ability to delegate authority to executive branch agencies in a dispute over climate-change regulations; and expanded the Constitution’s protection for religious practice...The justices were now acting behind doors that were literally and figuratively closed.”6

Vladeck shows that the Court has radically reduced the transparency of its work at the same time that it has become more polarized and overtly partisan, while also responding in partisan fashion to partisan lower court actions, as in the responses to the Texas vigilante anti-abortion law and Louisiana v. American Rivers, and above all in the recent practice of granting certiorari. Vladeck concludes with alarm that the pattern of counter-majoritarian action of the supreme Court may undermine its legitimacy entirely.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) with

Current Issue S

Jennifer Mueller makes the dramatic, lamentable, anti-democratic judicial trend in America understandable, and possibly even actionable, in their brilliant book, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court (New Press, 2022). Whitehouse clearly recognizes that this is a story of already burgeoning plutocracy in America and the drive of the wealthy that extends far beyond the story of Donald Trump’s judicial manipulation to the historic compulsion of the wealthy to exploit society in their interest. Writing like the successful prosecutor that the Senator once was, he organizes the book to make his case the way he would in court.

He starts by showing that climate denial, regulatory capture and covert ops are the interests that America’s corporate tycoons seek to protect today, just as Teddy Roosevelt and the progressives struggled against similar monopolistic drives over a century ago. t he motive behind both the historic and contemporary drive of the plutocrats to make social gains and avoid election losses is rooted in the effort of Civil War secessionists to extend their “liberty” to the right to own slaves and of their modern corporatist heirs to the unrestrained white supremacist privileges of laissez faire capitalism. t he means to accomplish their domination is rooted in the plan provided by the infamous Powell memorandum that laid out the work of the corporate hierarchy and then financed and built the lobbying and fund raising mechanisms that were needed.

t he co-conspirators of the corporate scheme seem to bubble up endlessly from three sources to overwhelm our regulatory agencies and lawmakers. First, there are the mercenaries, lobbyists, and fringe groups from the National Manufacturers Association, the Business Roundtable , business PACs, and institutes and foundations that have grown three to four times faster than all the labor and worker organizations. Then there are the junk science and quasi science archipelago first invented by the tobacco lobby and since nurtured by the fossil fuel industry and big pharma and others to confuse, contort and opaque the reality that they surreptitiously try to dominate. Finally, there are the Super PACs, the 501(C)s, and the corporate shareholders. t he co-conspirators provide the wherewithal for the methodical enterprise of corrupting the judiciary through the cultivation of a quasiideological rationale and brotherhood in the profession rooted in the Federalist Society

Whitehouse and Mueller conclude by flooding us with the evidence from 80 decisions by the Roberts Court between 2005 and 2019 in which the rightwing five (Justices Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Thomas, and Scalia or o ne obviously actionable part of The Scheme would be the adaptation of elements of the cases and arguments in new legal cases to defend citizen, environmental, consumer and worker rights. More importantly, it seems time for a crusade for changing the court. of course many Americans are already crusading for abortion rights, for gun control, to protect voting rights, for climate action – all because of supreme Court actions that have already and abruptly denied their vital interests.

Gorsuch) advance one or more “conservative interests: (1) controlling the political process to benefit conservatives candidates and policies; (2) protecting corporations from liability and letting polluters pollute; (3) restricting civil rights and condoning discrimination; and (4) advancing a far right agenda.” Where appropriate they also generously point out in each of the 80 cases how the Roberts Five disregard the conservative principles of (1) stare decisis, (2) judicial restraint, (3) originalism, (4) textualism, and (5) aversion to fact finding in their decisions7 .

At some point the Court’s continuing trampling of the rights of ordinary Americans as it advances the power of corporate America and the wealthy will arouse some real pushback beyond just the rapid delegitimizing of the last few years. Moreover, the rightwing majority on the Court has also proven to be so ambitious and far reaching in its actions that the changes it is imposing on the u s. may rival the activist Congresses of the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Yet rather than change in service to the needs and demands of an overwhelming majority of the American people as in those eras, the authors and beneficiaries of transformation today are a narrow corporate elite and somewhat opaque wealthy class that is reshaping our democracy into a legalistic plutocracy. An immediate antidote, such as the expansion of the court, seems widely unpopular because of the rejection of FDR’s court packing scheme, but something immediate seems needed to tame the currently unbridled conservative ambitions of the trump-anointed supermajority.

Prosperity vs Bonta (2022).

En este caso, el juez-presidente Roberts anuló una inconveniente ley de divulgación de donantes de California para ciertas organizaciones benéficas exentas de impuestos —muy probablemente políticas— en el estado. La poderosa fundación derechista Americans for Prosperity, afiliada durante mucho tiempo a la archiconservadora familia Koch y al Centro Jurídico Thomas More — grupo de defensa cristiano-evangélico— argumentaron, casi

NOTES / NOTAS

1. Justice on the Brink: the death of ruth Bader Ginsburg and the rise of amy coney Barrett / Justicia al Borde del Precipicio: la Muerte de ruth Bader Ginsburg y el ascenso de amy coney Barrett (random House, 2021).

2. the agenda: How a republican supreme court is reshaping america / la agenda: cómo una corte suprema republicana está transformando estados unidos (columbia Global reports, 2021).

3. Millhiser, pp. 109-110.

4. Biskupic, p. 324.

5. Biskupic, p. 291.

6. Vladeck, p. 263.

7. Whitehouse & Mueller, appendix a takes 12 pages to cover the 80 cases, and Whitehouse then adds amicus briefs in three more appendices/el “apéndice a” ocupa 12 páginas para cubrir los 80 casos, y Whitehouse luego agrega escritos amicus curiae en tres apéndices más.

sin evidencia en su desafío a la ley de California, que la divulgación de los nombres de los donantes, en lugar de ayudar al estado a prevenir el fraude y apoyar la administración tributaria, transgredía la Primera Enmienda a la libre asociación.

Los jueces disidentes respondieron que el fallo era un paso para poner fin a las leyes de divulgación en el contexto de la financiación de campañas, y los comentaristas liberales demostraron además que el nuevo fallo sería un paso adicional importante para permitir a los donantes adinerados “mucha más capacidad para encauzar secretamente a la política estadounidense ”5 una de las pocas áreas de cambio de inspiración judicial que Biskupic no cubre en profundidad se relaciona con el fenómeno relativamente reciente conocido como “shadow docket ” (expediente en las sombras), pero Stephen Vladeck llena admirablemente el vacío en un libro publicado casi al mismo tiempo que Biskupic llamado El Expediente en las Sombras: Cómo la Corte Suprema usa el Sigilo para Acumular Poder y Debilitar la República (Basic Books, 2023).

La obra de Vladeck se centra en esta tendencia y la más reciente —pero en rápido aumento— en la que la Corte suprema emite órdenes —a menudo de manera improvisada, sin un autor identificado, y con poca o ninguna explicación o fundamento para la decisión. Por ejemplo, la decisión de septiembre de 2021 respaldada por cinco jueces simplemente se negó a bloquear la Ley “Latido del Corazón” de Texas, conocida como SB8, que prohibía los abortos después de la sexta semana de embarazo —y obviamente presagiaba la decisión mayoritaria escrita por el juez Alito en Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization nueve meses después.

El término expediente en la sombra se usó por primera vez en 2015, concluye a la vuelta