El Sol XI, 2021 by Southwestern College Sun Newspaper

EL SOL

Issue XI - 2021

Courage in the time of COVID

EL SOL Courage

SUMMER 2021

ISSUE XI

6 FRONTLINE STUDENT A courageous young nurse volunteered for action in a deadly COVID-19 ward. 10 PANDEMIC WARRIOR Dr. Cleavon Gilman crisscrossed the nation to battle the pandemic.

10 COVER STORY

CHICANO LEGEND

He helped to paint Chicano Park’s first mural in 1973. He is painting its newest mural in 2021. Artist-activist Salvador Barajas combined applied sciences learned in the Air Force with his artistic gifts to help rescue the beloved collection of murals when destruction loomed.

16 ACRES OF THE DEAD America’s secret cemetery of the unknown. 18 IF IT BE WORK, I’LL DO IT Day laborers live in canyons, work slavishly and are not always paid. 20 HOMELAND SECURITY REDUX Kumeyaay People protest desecration of sacred lands by the border wall. 26 INDIGENOUS HOLOCAUST Women and girls die in frightening numbers, but few seem to know or care. 28 MEXICO’S WAR ON ITS OWN WOMEN Brutal femicides claim at least 4,000 women and girls each year. 32 HOPE FOR REFUGEES IN TIJUANA’S TENT CITY Cold, stressed, sick and hungry Central Americans struggle to survive harsh encampment on backside of the border. 36 CHINA’S SILENT GENOCIDE Uyghurs battle extermination in Xinjiang. 38 ASIAN-AMERICANS DESERVE RESPECT AND PROTECTION Hate crimes against AAPI citizens must stop. 39 SOUTHWESTERN 1, YANKEES 0 Teenage Joel Levine had a tough choice – NY Yankees or music scholarship. 42 STELLAR EDITOR SHINES AT HBCU Black SC students thrive at universities.

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EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

54 RENAISSANCE HOMEBOY A surfing accident left Humberto Gurmilan a quadriplegic, but did not slow a multi-talented man. 58 AUTISM NO MATCH FOR AWARDWINNING JOURNALIST Andrew Penalosa’s high school struggles presaged a college blossoming.

On the cover: “Courage in the Time of COVID” illustration by Salvador Barajas

Editor’s Message

t is hard to believe almost 15 months have passed since the coronavirus pandemic closed our Southwestern College campus. We were forced to adapt and learn to do almost everything from home without direct contact with our professors and classmates. El Sol Magazine, like our six print issues of the Southwestern College Sun newspaper, was produced entirely remotely. It is crazy to think that most of the staff of our college publications never met each other and were never in the same room as our professor. This academic year was defined by courage. Winston Churchill was right when he said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” Our Year of COVID was illuminated by thousands of individual acts of courage… Courage to work on a college newspaper and magazine during a stressful time. Courage to serve others when we were stressed, exhausted and even scared. Courage to overcome tragedy. Courage for a student nurse to volunteer for a COVID-19 ward in a deeply purple part of America. Courage for an alumnus MD to actively seek out the most dangerous COVID clusters in the nation and go there. Courage for the same doctor to stand up for mistreated minority patients. Courage of Black SC students to transfer and thrive in elite American universities and become role models. Courage of human rights advocates who continued to fight for justice, and against racism, erasure, violence and murder. Courage to address autism head-on and succeed in journalism. Courage of all people who held their chins up and kept marching forward. It is such an honor to have an original illustration by legendary Chicano artist Salvador Barajas adorn the cover of El Sol Magazine. On behalf of the staff, I am so proud to present this magazine to our community. It has stories that need to be told and lessons that inspire.

~ Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo Editor-in-Chief

EL SOL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo

STAFF WRITERS Jennielyn Cato Aranza Gutierrez Cortes Paulina Nuñez Ana Paola Olvera Edgar Ortega Andrew Penalosa Andrew Sanchez Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo Julia Woock

PHOTOGRAPHERS Aranza Gutierrez Cortes Amy Morales Paulina Nuñez Ana Paola Olvera Edgar Ortega Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo Julia Woock

ARTISTS Edward Herrera Ji Ho Kim Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo

ASSISTANT ADVISER Kenneth Pagano

ADVISER Dr. Max Branscomb

Style guide developed by Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo under the guidance of Kenneth Pagano.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Ariana Delucchi, a 23-yearold SC nursing student, ministers to COVID-19 patients at Sharp Memorial Hospital. An SC Student of Distinction Award recipient, Delucchi has seen horror and miracles working with critically-ill patients.

PHOTO BY ANA PAOLA OLVERA

COVID HEROES

Frontline Student A courageous young nurse volunteered for action in a deadly COVID-19 ward By Ana Paola Olvera

n February, 23-year-old SC nursing student Ariana Delucchi applied to Sharp Memorial Hospital. In March all Hell broke loose. Delucchi was informed that the unit she was hired to work in had been frantically converted into a COVID-19 overflow ICU. She was given two options: to join the front lines of the novel coronavirus war or to wait until COVID-19 passed over. Delucchi immediately joined. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she said, a great time to start working in medicine. It was also a rare chance for a young medical professional to make an instant impact during an international crisis. “I was excited for (the opportunity) and to get my foot in the door to start building my foundation so I could become a good nursing assistant and eventually become a really good nurse,” she said. Her colleagues insist that Delucchi is officially “a really good nursing assistant” with a brilliant future. Lexie Volquez, a nurse at Sharp Memorial Hospital, said Delucchi has become a battle-worn front-line warrior

against the plague of the 21st century at a tender age. She has already assumed many of the responsibilities typical nursing students may not be trusted with for years. Delucchi said she was introduced to the world of nursing when she was 10. Her aunt had Stage 4 melanoma and she would visit her at the hospital every day after school. She was deeply moved by the devotion of the nurses, she said. “They were smart, kind, loving, compassionate, empathetic — just all things amazing,” she said. “And I know that the situation was pretty terrible, but they took really really good care of her and took really good care of my family.” Delucchi said she wanted to be like them. Volquez said she is. Chula Vista and the South County have been a COVID-19 hotspot since the spring, but Volquez said the tsunami of patients started slowly. In March, each nurse had one patient under their care. Then two, then three, then four. It was surreal, Volquez said, the first time she walked into a COVID-19 patient’s room. EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

SC STUDENT BATTLES A PANDEMIC IN AN OVERWHELMED COVID WARD ARIANA DELUCCHI HAS LOGGED NEARLY 2,000 HOURS AS A NURSE AT THE SHARP MEMORIAL HOSPITAL COVID WARD IN CHULA VISTA.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

“I was very nervous,” she said. “(It was unnerving) just to think that this virus that originated (across the Pacific) Ocean was right there in front of me.” Delucchi agreed. COVID-19 is on its way to killing 600,000 Americans. In February 2020 few saw it coming. It flipped the United States upside down and flung the nursing profession into chaotic exhaustion. Even student nurses like Delucchi are leaned on heavily by a fraying medical system. In addition to classes and training, she spends three nights a week at the hospital working 7 p.m. - 7:30 a.m. She starts each evening by putting on her hospitalissued scrubs and Personal Protection Equipment (face shields, masks and gloves). Next she receives her patients’ reports before launching out to visit each patient and ask if they need anything. Delucchi helps them bathe, shave, eat and walk around their rooms. She also assists senior nurses with an array of medical procedures. Nights are long, lonely and often scary for COVID-19 patients. They are isolated in their rooms and no one is allowed to visit. They can only talk to their loved ones via FaceTime or Zoom. Nurses are the sole source of direct human contact for a critically-ill COVID patient. Biological science goes only so far. The art of conversation is also an essential skill of a great nurse, Delucchi said, and she tries to find topics that help provide a little happiness. “Having the virus can be pretty miserable,” she said. “It’s nice to see them smile for once by just having a conversation with them.” One of Delucchi’s patients had been hospitalized for several days and thought he would be going home until he got bad news — his oxygen levels slipped and he needed to stay at least one more night. Delucchi eased the disappointed by talking to him about dogs. She told him funny stories about her sister’s boyfriend’s family dog and he told her about how his wife had sent him a bag full of his dog’s hair. They laughed and he thanked her, saying that even though he was disappointed, she had made him feel a little bit better. Sometimes a nurse needs to calm a patient when stress can add fuel to a bad situation. Lack of oxygen is a primal fear for many COVID-19 patients, Delucchi said. Some run out of breath simply trying to speak. Nurses have to help desperate patients avert panic and stay calm while their bodies try to fight off the virus. Delucchi had one shift where they had to transfer three patients to the Progressive Care Unit because they had suddenly stopped responding to their oxygen therapy. She watched as a patient’s oxygen level suddenly

PHOTO COURTESY VALERIE PENNINGTON

“There are a lot of patients who are just convinced that they’re going to die and it’s hard to hear, you know, and it’s hard to see them struggling.” dropped on the monitor. An adequate level is 93 percent, Scrolling though her feed unleashes a depressing stream she said, but even as nurses tried to provide the patient of people partying obliviously, not wearing masks or with more oxygen, the number would hover at 88 and incorrectly wearing masks under their noses. 89. Intubation for a ventilator is generally started when It is frustrating for exhausted health care workers the oxygen level slips below 85 percent. to watch this cavalcade of carelessness and callous, “There are a lot of patients who are just convinced that Delucchi said, when they spend most of their waking they’re going to die and it’s hard to hear, you know, and hours trying to keep people alive or watching them it’s hard to see them struggling,” she said. suffocate to death as the virus fills their lungs with An SC Student of Distinction Award fluids. Young people are not exempt from recipient and 4.0 student, Delucchi used COVID-19 despite fallacious social media to be a power study leader for Professor of messages, she said. Teens and twentyBiology Valerie Pennington’s Anatomy and somethings also die horribly from the Physiology class. Pennington said Delucchi coronavirus, she warned. She has seen it. transcends what one would expect from “I don’t want that for those people and I even an extraordinary student. It is her don’t want people to pass it on to someone unfailingly generous spirit, Pennington said, who maybe won’t fare as well,” she said. and her drive to help others. Pennington said most of her students are “Arianna’s got “Arianna’s got a wisdom about her that working in COVID-19 units. They tell her it a wisdom about doesn’t correlate with her age,” she said. “I is hard to accept that people have politicized her that doesn’t expect great things from her.” a virus and call COVID-19 a hoax, especially So does Volquez, who nominated her for when they are putting their lives on the line. correlate with her Sharp Memorial Hospital’s Employee of the “Our health care workers are out there age. I expect great risking Month. She said Delucchi goes above and their own lives and doing incredible things from her.” beyond for the unit, and her inquisitive mind things every day, yet there are people (who is always ready to absorb new information. say) ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not real. I’m not As the COVID-19 cases started to go down going to wear a mask,’” said Pennington. Valerie in the South County, half of Delucchi’s unit Nights are at their darkest, Delucchi said, Pennington returned to caring for other patients. Many when a patient passes away. SC Biology Professor of those patients, however, have been getting Advanced age and pre-existing conditions sicker than before, she said. Effects of the make patients vulnerable to succumbing novel coronavirus are sometimes dramatic, to COVID-19. When patients infected with but often dangerously subtle and not readily the novel coronavirus arrive at the hospital, detected. she said, everyone on staff roots for them and they do Working at a COVID-19 unit is dangerous. More than everything in their power to help. It is traumatizing 1,000 American doctors and nurses have died from the when they die, she said, and it never gets easier. disease. Data about the number of medical workers Delucchi said she strives to be a kind and empathetic sickened by COVID-19 is incomplete, but the Center for nurse — someone who can take care of patients and ease Disease Control estimated in August that the 120,000 their worries. She got into her dream nursing school cases reported to the agency was likely a fraction of at CSU Long Beach this month and plans to start there the true number. Delucchi said she knows her mission next semester. is perilous and takes meticulous precautions not to Her time in the COVID-19 ward has already shaped accidentally spread the virus. her outlook, she said. If only the rest of society were so conscientious. “This experience makes me want to be a nurse even Social media drains her, she said, because it is rife with more, so that I am able to help people even than I am images of thoughtless Americans behaving recklessly. now.” u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Dr. Cleavon Gilman has traveled to COVID-19 outbreaks across the nation in the fight to save lives. He called the work grueling and exhausting, but he is glad to be part of the team fighting the novel coronavirus.

COVID HEROES

Pandemic Warrior Dr. Cleavon Gilman crisscrossed the nation to battle the coronavirus By Julia Woock PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY CLEAVON GILMAN

r. Cleavon Gilman returned from Iraq to find an even more deadly war raging in America. Coronavirus trumps even Isis. Gilman, a Southwestern College alumnus and emergency medical physician, is in the trenches of a pandemic battle that has killed more Americans than the Revolutionary War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined. Gilman and his colleagues have engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the novel coronavirus and its enablers — denial, misinformation, political cowardice and antimaskers. Gilman said he recently worked a fortnight of 14-hour shifts. Even for a war-hardened former Navy corpsman, battling this pandemic is a nightmare. “I’ve seen more death in this pandemic than (six months in) Iraq,” he said with a sigh. “I’m in a war zone at home.” Former President Trump and his supporters created

and regularly fed the misery, Gilman said, with politicallymotivated coronavirus denial and damaging rhetoric. Gilman said he was saddened and offended by the disregard for the health of Black, Latino and Native Americans by the government. “I’m watching people who do not care about this war (on COVID-19),” he said. “Returning to America was like going back into the war zone, being traumatized again and watching my (Black) community die.” SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SPRINGBOARD

ilman was a U.S. Navy veteran of five years when he enrolled at Southwestern College in 2005. Professor of Chemistry Dr. David Hecht said he recalls Gilman as a young man with laser focus. Not satisfied with 100 percent on his labs and exams, Gilman craved a deep understanding of the EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

subject matter, Hecht said, that made him a generational student. Besides being a talented scientist, Hecht said, Gilman was a gifted public speaker who, as a student, gave one of the best and most professional presentations he has ever seen. “He was on a mission to become a doctor and nothing was going to get in his way,” said Hecht. No one outworked Gilman, whose legendary 14-hour days on campus usually began before dawn and ended with security asking him to leave at 10 p.m. General Chemistry was hard, he said, but fascinating, fueling an intense passion to learn. Hecht was a crucial mentor, Gilman said, who was always there with support, advice or a swift kick to the rear when required. Both men were from New Jersey, which completed the bond. “Like-minded souls, Jersey boys,” said Hecht. Hecht was also there with the right advice at a crucial moment. Gilman had the pleasant problem of choosing between UC Berkeley, UCSD and UCLA. “You got into UC Berkeley?” Gilman recalled Hecht saying. “You gotta go there! That’s where all the Nobel laureates are and they even have (chemical elements) named for them!” An East Coast guy, Gilman said he was unfamiliar with California universities, so he decided to drive to Berkeley. When he saw Cal’s Gilman Hall he figured it was a sign, he said. Hecht also saw Gilman himself as a sign. He was a young teacher and Gilman was one of his first students, Hecht said. Gilman was exceptional and a pleasure to teach. “A great way to get into teaching,” said Hecht. Transferring into an elite institution was very hard for a Black Jersey kid, said Gilman. He said attending UC Berkeley opened his eyes to the privilege other students had, but also proof that someone from humble beginnings can succeed. He attended UCSF for medical school and then did a four-year emergency medicine residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan through Cornell and Columbia universities. POLITICS AND THE PANDEMIC

ilman said the Trump administration inexplicably downplayed the pandemic from the beginning, even though Trump and members of his inner circle told Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward they knew from the beginning exactly how deadly this virus was. Trump’s ill-advised comparisons of COVID-19 to the flu, flippant remarks about masks and disparagement of scientists were damaging, he said. “It doesn’t work when you have a president that 12

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Dr. Gilman is a star attraction at Southwestern College recruiting fairs and a role model for Black students.

is saying this (misinformation) to his followers,” said Gilman. “We were really doomed. I knew at the beginning it was going to be a test of American solidarity like 9/11.” Gilman worked in New York during its grim COVID-19 outbreak last spring when hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed. Refrigerator trucks that usually hauled beef and dairy products to supermarkets were brought in to store bodies as they piled up. Affluent travelers who had returned home from Italy and Spain unknowingly brought the novel coronavirus with them, Gilman said, launching one of America’s worst ever urban contagion episodes. Coronavirus got loose in crowded low-income neighborhoods of color, he said, killing thousands. After months of grueling work in New York, Gilman transferred to Yuma, Arizona. There he saw firsthand the stark differences between Democratic- and Republican-led states and the effect governors had on public health policies during a crisis. New York lost 20,000 people in 10 weeks, he said, but moved assertively to enact stringent measures to curb the spread of the virus. New York’s efforts were painful, but worked, Gilman said. Arizona, on the other hand, politicized the virus and took little meaningful action. Masks were never encouraged, much less required, and everything remained open to such an extent that COVID deniers from California and other states traveled to Arizona to engage in sports events, political rallies and other super

DAVID HECHT PHOTO COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA

“He was on a mission to become a doctor and nothing was going to get in his way.” Dr. David Hecht

SC chemistry Professor

spreader activities. Politicizing the novel coronavirus, blaming it on Asians and downplaying its danger in an inexplicable effort to prevent an economic slowdown were all catastrophic moves by conservative elected officials, he said. Yuma, much like the San Ysidro-National City corridor of the South Bay, is still getting hammered by COVID-19, Gilman said. The U.S. Army has deployed personnel to Yuma due to a severe shortage of doctors and nursing staff, he said. Almost 90 percent of Gilman’s patients are people of color, including Latino and Indigenous people. He said there is an enormous and uncountable population of Mexican farm laborers considered essential workers that have been hit particularly hard. PEOPLE OF COLOR DISTRUST HEALTHCARE

he U.S. has a long and dark history with people of color and health care due to heinous experimentation on African-Americans and Native Americans. Cells harvested from Black cancer patient Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge in 1951 continue to be used in laboratories across the nation without compensation to her family. “HeLa Cells” are used in cancer research, in vitro fertilization, immunology and — most recently — development of COVID-19 vaccines. An even more notorious case, the brutal Tuskegee Syphilis Study, was a 40-year observation of the

effects of untreated syphilis in Black men. It began in 1932 when syphilis had no cure. Even when penicillin became available for treatment, the U.S. Public Health Service made sure study subjects did not receive it so researchers could watch the gruesome disease run its course, blinding victims, infecting their brains and killing them. It was not until 1972, when the gruesome story was leaked to journalists, that the horrific syphilis study ended. By then 128 patients had suffered terrible deaths from syphilis or complications, 40 of their wives were infected and 19 of their children developed congenital syphilis. Countless others suffered from the painful, pernicious disease, including severe brain damage. Fanny Lou Hamer, a mid-century Black Civil Rights activist, was sterilized without her knowledge. She later discovered that six of 10 hospitalized Black women were unknowingly sterilized by a procedure so common it was known as the “Mississippi Appendectomy.” Native American women in the 1960s and 1970s were victims of mass sterilization at the hands of the Indian Health Services, an agency originally created to help them. Data indicates more than 25 percent of Indigenous women of child-bearing age were sterilized. Researchers insist that figure is probably much higher. Between 1970-76 up to 50 percent of all Indigenous American women were sterilized, according to investigator Jane Lawrence. Dwindling Native American populations are the result, Lawrence reported. Gilman said people of color have every reason to be angry about past abuses and to be wary of American health care, but he said change is afoot and doctors of color are leading it. He encouraged Black Americans, Latinos and Native Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible to help stem the COVID-19 crisis in their communities. Gilman praised people of color who are recording themselves getting the vaccine and posting on social media in an attempt to earn the trust of their communities. He also documented his experience with the vaccine on his social media. “I got the second shot on Inauguration Day and had a bit of fatigue the next day, but I documented that,” he said. “I told people about it, ‘here’s what I have.’ I’ve been normal ever since (and) nothing’s happened to me.” Gilman said he thinks people of color need people they trust to show the way out of the pandemic. He is trying to be one of those role models, he said, by being authentic and transparent. Gilman said other physicians are also documenting on platforms like Twitter. He said being kind and truthful is essential in a nation where procedures against people of color are still taking place, such as hysterectomies in ICE detention centers in Irwin County, Georgia. EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

ON THE FRONT LINES

ilman said he has lost track of how many of his patients have died due to the virus. He was finishing his residency in Manhattan when New York City became ground zero for COVID-19. For a stretch he was calling at least three families a day to inform them that loved ones had died. Most of the patients he intubated did not survive, he said, and their deaths were difficult. “The amount of trauma and the amount of patients that I’ve lost, that I’ve had to intubate, the families I’ve had to call, the shrill cries when I tell them that their loved ones (are) dead was extremely difficult,” he said. “It just chips away at your heart, chips away at your soul.” Ghosts inhabit his fitful nights, he said, as he dreams of patients he could not save, he said. “It’s really hard, because I feel like we’re alone in that there is no way out of this and that all this trauma, all this burden, all this emotional stress is being put on those healthcare workers,” he said. “I have to live with the fact that these patients died and I was at their bedside.” Gilman said it is insulting to health care workers when belligerent people are out and about without wearing a mask. Listening to legions of Americans whine about “lost personal freedom” and “individual liberty” is a narcissistic manipulation of American values, he said. Selfishness has replaced altruism, belligerence has replaced patriotism, indulgence has replaced sacrifice, cowardice has replaced heroism. While entitled gym rats and foodies bellyache about missed weight lifting and fancy dining, healthcare workers are battling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, marathon shifts with few days off to rest and their own brushes with COVID-19 illness and death. Each dead, ill or overwrought healthcare professional means the survivors have to work even harder with less help. “Intubating a patient is a very dangerous thing,” he

said. “The process releases aerosols full of the virus. The new hurtful (rhetoric) is that healthcare workers are vaccinated and have nothing to worry about. (It is nonsense) because I can still contract the virus and bring it home to my fiancée, and she can die. I can still bring it home to my mother in law who is in her 60s. There has been a constant narrative to try to downplay the severity of this pandemic at the expense of healthcare workers. (Many people downplay) what we’re going through.” Watching people die never gets easier, Gilman said. He recounted an episode in a COVID ICU where he witnessed sobbing members of a young family say goodbye to their father, who was on the brink of death. The man’s wife and young children lost something that was wonderful and irreplaceable, he said. Gilman said he has endured similar encounters hundreds of times in a dozen settings. “These young children lost their father, who was also young,” he said. “Then I go home and see (on TV) people galavanting, like at the Super Bowl, without masks.” Gilman said it is frustrating and lonely to be a healthcare worker under these conditions. “I’m in a constant war where it’s not supported (by the entire nation) and I’m being traumatized,” he said. “My staff of healthcare workers are being traumatized.” Thousands of experienced healthcare workers are leaving the profession because they feel unsupported and are no longer willing to risk themselves and their families in an endless war, Gilman said. Many have collapsed under the depressing and exhausting conditions, he said, and the aftermath is alienation from their own families, nightmares, trauma and constant stress due to the emotional toll of working under brutal conditions. “(We are losing) the ICU nurses who have been there for years and who know how to work everything,” he said. “They are being replaced with new grads who haven’t really had any experience.” To compensate, the remaining experienced nurses overextend themselves in a heroic but unsustainable

COVID HERO’S JOURNEY Cleavon Gilman joined the military in August 1999. He served five and a half years in the Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

In 2009, Gilman transferred from SC to UC Berkeley. He completed physiology coursework at UCSF East Bay.

In 2016, Gilman earned a Doctor of Medicine and became an emergency medicine resident physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

effort to pick up the slack, said Gilman. “Instead of caring for the norm of two ICU patients, some people are caring for five or six, because they just aren’t enough nurses to go around,” he said. Gilman said healthcare professionals are not receiving adequate PPE and are often forced to attempt to resterilize N95 masks and other items meant for one use. Cleaned up PPE is never as effective as new equipment, he said, and can be a cause of coronavirus spread among doctors and nurses. Even with the sunny narratives cropping up in COVID-exhausted America, the reality in many parts of the country is still grim, Gilman said. There are still not enough beds for all COVID-19 patients and ICUs across the nation are still jammed. Non-COVID patients suffering other ailments are often unable to be admitted to hospitals or treated, he said, which is also unnecessarily driving up fatalities. Thousands of very ill people are parked in emergency rooms or makeshift facilities because COVID-19 wards have swallowed up so much of America’s hospital footprint.

pandemic, he said, and time is of the essence. “We just haven’t gotten a break as healthcare workers and as educators throughout this pandemic,” said Gilman. “We are constantly battling to stop the spread of misinformation. During the (Trump) administration there was not a clear public health message, so the misinformation filled in.” Misinformation and political denialism led to the COVID-19 breakout in America, Gilman said, and these forces have slowed progress against the pandemic. Trump’s attempt to convince Americans that the novel coronavirus was not dangerous and his administration’s slow roll of countermeasures was catastrophic, Gilman said, and could well be again. “There are new variants of the virus spreading and hopefully the vaccine holds up against these,” he said. “It may be (that Americans will require) an annual vaccine because when you let a virus spread uncontrollably, this is what happens.”

MISINFORMATION A LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH

merging from this pandemic is going to be difficult, Gilman said. A critical percentage of the population must receive the vaccine, continue to wear masks and social distance for the foreseeable future, he said. Though he has great faith in the medical profession, he said, he has grown wary of Americans who lack the courtesy and discipline to remain vigilant. Gilman said watching televised super spread events like maskless Trump rallies, careless holiday gatherings, the Capitol Riot and the Super Bowl were demoralizing to him and his colleagues. Super spreader events overwhelm hospitals and their staffs, knocking down all the coronavirus dominoes again. “I think it’s patriotic to wear a mask,” said Gilman. “It’s the most patriotic thing that you can do right now at this moment for your country and for other human beings here and around the world.” u

oronavirus has been a two-front war, Gilman said. COVID-19 is one front, misinformation the second. Misinformation, magical thinking and denialism creates a never ending stream of patients and perpetuates relentless suffering and death, Gilman said. Misinformation comes in many forms, he said, from the ignorant (“young people cannot spread COVID”) to the preposterous (“hydroxychloroquine will save us”) to the flat-out delusional (“Bill Gates is using the vaccine to inject us with microchips”). People died when Trump suggested ingesting bleach and some of his followers did it. Anti-vaxxer groups are capitalizing on the crisis to fan misinformation and further their anti-science agenda. Vaccines are the key to leading humanity out of the

ESCAPING THE PANDEMIC

COVID-19 pandemic 2020–21 During his residency, Dr. Gilman submitted “Rise Up Now,” a multimedia art project, to the National Academy of Medicine’s Expressions of Clinician Well-Being Project. He wrote and performed the song lyrics heard over the imagery.

On March 20, 2020, Dr. Gilman began documenting the pandemic on Twitter at #cleavonmdjournal.

In Dec. 2020, President-elect Joe Biden called Dr. Gilman to thank him for his humanitarian efforts and courage.

In the summer of 2020, Gilman was terminated for tweeting about the conditions in the ER hospital in Yuma, AZ, where he worked. He was reinstated after inspectors concluded he was right.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

HUMAN RIGHTS

ACRES OF THE DEAD

America’s secret cemetery of the unknown By Julia Woock PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIA WOOCK

Remembering the forgotten Enrique Morones and Gente Unida volunteers place handmade crosses at the unmarked graves of unidentified migrants.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

OLTVILLE, CA — Holtville keeps a terrible secret. Death is underfoot. Even most of its 6,700 citizens are unaware that this hardscrabble town near the Arizona border is the final resting place of almost 1,000 nameless people buried in pauper’s graves in anonymous acres of rust-tinted Imperial Valley dust. Unlucky migrants who drown in the filthy New River, withered under the relentless desert sun, froze during frigid mountain nights or starved ambling toward an American agricultural oasis will spend eternity unmarked, unwatched and unaccounted for in this unkempt depository of the unwanted. Except for one day each year. It is Día de los Muertos in Holtville, and Enrique Morones has summoned the volunteers of Gente Unida to the chain link fence separating the paid customers of the verdant Terrace Park Cemetery from los inmigrantes who never expected to end up there. As the gate creaked open visitors entered an unknown world of the dead before them in a sprawling horizon of nothing. Nothing on the surface. La tragedia, said Morones, is what is beneath the desiccated soil that collects like chocolate powder on the boots of the mourners. “It’s a cemetery where people that don’t have the money to be buried are buried,” he said. “When I first came here in 2002 there were like 20 undocumented people buried in this place. Now there are hundreds. These bodies were found out here in Imperial Valley by the sheriff or the border patrol. If they cannot be identified they are buried with no ceremony or anything. It’s truly sad. Every life is equally important.”

Final ignominity Desperately poor in life, anonymous migrants and refugees are buried nameless in paupers graves in lonely Holtville. The unmarked dirt lot is located behind Terrace Park Cemetery in Holtville.

Terrace Park Cemetery is privately owned, Morones said, and the area where the unidentified migrants lie is a pauper’s grave that is not kept up save an occasional dragging to knock down spring weeds. It is the largest non-military graveyard of unidentified bodies in the United States. No newly deceased will be buried again in Terrace Park Cemetery. It is closed because it is full. Unidentified bodies are now cremated by the INS without consideration to the victim’s religious beliefs. Otherwise, Morones said, Holtville’s acres of the nameless dead would extend even further into the relentless desert. “I’m upset they still don’t have grass and even in death they are kept separately,” he said. “It’s important that we honor them and pay our respects.” Once a year Gente Unida generates a religious burial service for the dead of Holtville. A Catholic priest offers blessings while volunteers evoke the traditions of ancient Aztecs and other indigenous people of Mexico. Mourners pay tribute to the forgotten residents of the cemetery by placing handmade wooden crosses and flores de cempasúchil (marigolds) by dirt-encrusted chipped bricks stamped with John or Jane Doe. Las flores de cempasúchil are a staple on Día de los Muertos altars and graves. Flowers rooted in Náhuatl mysticism, they are cherished for their powerful scent that guides spirits home to commune with family. Hospice chaplain Frank Modic led prayers in English, and gave his blessing. “People do care,” he said to the departed, “even if we do not know your names.” Then a moment of grace and beauty. Mourners released painted lady butterflies which pranced and bobbed in the warming morning air, carrying the hopes and dreams of the departed Heavenward.

Butterflies are a metaphor for transformation and rebirth, Modic said. Releasing las mariposas honors those who have gone ahead and extends hope to those left behind. Fragile and delicate like life itself, butterflies are a strong connection between the earth and the flower heaven of the Aztecs, he said. Modic said Native American tradition dictates people should make a wish when releasing winged creatures because they take our hopes to the creator. Butterflies, he said, represent divine grace. “A butterfly is a universal symbol of being set free,” he said. “There’s an old saying that just when the caterpillar thought its life was over, it began to fly.” While the butterflies spread out over the grave sites, Morones said America needs to do more to remember who is in the ground at Holtville. He said he would like to enlist forensic anthropologists to help identify remains and repatriate them. Money is an obstacle, so are arguments about which governments should pay. “We don’t know if they are all Mexican,” said Morones. “Then the excuse is: what if they’re Central (American)? I say regardless, we should find out who these people are. The U.S. government has the money to pay for it. They are people who died in the United States and there could be Americans here, too.” Gente Unida Vice President Ari Honarvar, an Iranian refugee, said she could relate to the unfortunate immigrants in Holtville. “I had to leave Iran at the age of 14 when people were getting killed by the bombs (of the Iran-Iraq War) and government oppression,” she said. “We couldn’t get out. The smugglers would tell people to run in zig zags so when the authorities shoot at you, you might have a chance to survive as you cross the border. Others would marry their daughters at the age of 12, 13, 14 to someone who could get them out. This is how difficult it was.” Love is the answer, she said. “We have to open our hearts and with our hearts we open the borders.” u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

HUMAN RIGHTS

IF IT BE MAN’S WORK, I’LL DO IT By Julia Woock

Parking lot pot luck Volunteers from Gente Unida periodically bring food, water and clothing to Mexican and Haitian migrant workers outside Home Deport stores. Some San Diegans abuse the men by not feeding or paying them after hours of backbreaking labor. 18

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIA WOOCK

uan Hernandez is a walking Swiss army knife. He can paint. He can mow and trim. He can hammer, saw, drill and bevel. He can glue, sand and varnish. He can make anything out of wood, fix anything with a motor and get any balky car to run again. He can landscape with plants, wood chips, bricks, blocs and rocks. He is a rare talent, but because he is a Mexican Swiss army knife he often works all day, all weekend or all week for less than minimum wage. Sometimes he gets nothing. He lives in a frigid streambed near a Home Depot with his compadres, praying that rain and la migra stay away. Mexican day laborers are San Diego County’s very productive, very hidden labor force. They are the creativity and sweat behind thousands of landscapes, buildings and interiors. Their products are on display in every community, but they themselves rarely get a second glance from passersby. They are invisible, and often cold, sick and hungry. Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones equates the region’s “expendable” day laborers to the “expendable” farm workers Cesar Chavez fought for in the 1970s. He said they are not expendable at all, but essential with a capital E. Hernandez, 42, is from Tijuana, though he lives in a slice of earth across the street from a busy Home Depot. Every day for the past four years he ambles out of his camp, cleans up to look presentable and stands along the roadway hoping a contractor, landscape crew or weekend warrior will open the door to his car or truck to wave him in. Where they are going, what he will do, how long he will do it and how much he will be paid are rarely mentioned. “Sometimes they will hire us for a job and then not pay us,” he said. “It is something that happens often, either to me or someone else here. So we try to stick together to know who to work for.” Fernando, 43, is from Culiacán, Sinaloa. Like his compadre

Straight from the friar Homeless day laborers accept food and drink from Franciscan Friar Adolfo Mercado at an encampment near a Home Depot. Starting at dawn, the workers amble up from a stream bed and wait alongside the road offering themselves as landscapers, carpenters or strong backs to do hard work.

To learn more about Gente Unida visit its website, https://genteunida.net.

Juan, he said he has worked for about four years as an itinerant day laborer. Working as a day laborer on spec is a grind, he said, and the hardest part is showing up every day of the week and only finding work one or two days. “We are always ready, waiting and willing to help,” he said. Fernando said hours vary depending on the employers and the projects, but a typical workday is 6:30 a.m. — 3:30 p.m. Jobs are generally 10-15 minutes away, but can be much further. Most employers give them water and lunch of some sort, but not always. Morones said day laborers are ghosts that hundreds of motorists see, but flesh and blood people who are invisible. It was not until 1986, he said, that he became aware of San Diego County’s gente del canons (people of the canyons). One of his first actions when he founded Border Angels in 1986 was feeding farm workers living in the canyons of Carlsbad. He said Gente Unida activist and SDSU MS graduate Erika Alfaro told him her father knew Morones from his visits to the canyons years ago. Her father was a farmworker in the strawberry fields who picked fruit to help pay her way through CSU San Marcos and SDSU. “(There are) a lot of myths (about day laborers) because a lot of people just drive by the Home Depot and don’t think about those people out there (along the road),” he said. “None of these people want to be homeless. People don’t know their stories.” Unlike some of the areas occupied by San Diego County’s homeless population, the day laborers take pride in keeping their homes in the canyons and roadsides picked up. Unfortunately, the city of San Diego is not picking up the barrels of trash. Hernandez said city and county crews used to pick up trash every 3-4 weeks, but no one has emptied dumpsters in at least four months. “We clean up around here,” he said. “We sweep and we

pick up trash. We formed a group and took turns picking up trash. Those with pickup trucks take trash bags away as often as possible.” Gente Unida schedules periodic visits to day labor camps in San Diego and Chula Vista, bringing food, drinks, clean clothes and encouragement. Even during the pandemic volunteers brought supplies on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King Day and other holidays. Mexican day laborers at the Home Depot in Mission Valley have new neighbors — refugees from Haiti. Polylingual card games in Spanish, French, creole and fragmented English were punctuated with laughter. A small group of Haitians snacked on strawberry Pop Tarts and orange juice from the back of an old grey pickup truck and recounted their harrowing experiences working on stadiums in Brazil. Olympic and World Cup Soccer organizers shipped thousands of Haitians to Brazil to build stadiums and infrastructure for the glamorous global athletic events, only to abandon them when the work was done. Rather than return to destitution in Haiti, they made their way up the west coast of South America, through Central America and onto the “refugee highway” of Mexico. Many are stranded in Tijuana, but those who found sponsors are now working menial jobs in the United States and Canada. “There is nothing in Haiti, nothing,” said one who winked and said his name was Eddie. “Better here, man. At least we are not starving, you know?” Morones said the day labor camps are American capitalism at its worst. As long as society benefits from the cheap labor and takes no responsibility for the men who do it, the Home Depot camps will grind on and the pre-dawn wakeup calls will continue. Juan, the Mexican Swiss army knife, will stay sharp. There’s work to be done. u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Bands of Brothers and Sisters:

Kumeyaay People of SoCal and Baja Indigenous Kumeyaay People have lived in what is now the border region for at least 12,000 years after crossing the Bering Strait Land Bridge from Asia and migrating down the coast. Spanish missionaries called the natives Los Diegueños. Americans often called them Mission Indians, a name some Kumeyaay bands kept in honor of their ancestors who bore the name. Southern California is home to 13 Kumeyaay bands. San Diego County has more Native American reservations than any other county in the United States. The Kumeyaay were split into SoCal and Baja People by the border drawn after the Mexican-American War in February 1848. Southern California Kumeyaay Bands: • Campo Band of the Kumeyaay Nation • Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians • Barona Band of Mission Indians • San Pasqual Band of Indians • Inaja Cosmit Indian Reservation • Capitan Grande Indian Reservation • Santa Ysabel Band of Diegueno Indians • Ewiiaapaayp Band of Kumeyaay Indians • Manzanita Indian Reservation • Jamul Indian Village of the Kumeyaay Nation • Mesa Grande Indian Reservation • Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation Baja California, Mexico, Kumiai Bands: • San Jose de la Zorra • La Huerta • Juntas de Neji • San Antonio Necua • Santa Catarina (Kumeyaay Pai Pai) 20

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Native Americans of the Southwest borderlands including the Kumeyaay, Apache and Tohono O’odham have seen their ancestral lands vivisected by the border after the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Homeland Security Redux Kumeyaay demand end to destruction of burial grounds, sacred sites By Julia Woock PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIA WOOCK

NTERNATIONAL BORDER, TECATE, CA — Four generations of Kumeyaay bird singers offered sacred songs for those who came before. ...before Abraham. ...before Caesar. ...before Cabrillo. ...before Columbus. ...before Trump. Horrified Kumeyaay recently discovered that a portion of Donald Trump’s $13 billion border wall slices through burial grounds and sacred cultural sites in the arid mountains of East County — unearthing tools, pottery shards and human remains. Complaints to Trump Administration officials have fallen on deaf ears, so elders appealed to a Higher Authority. Dr. Stan Rodriguez, a Santa Ysabel Kumeyaay elder,

led the traditional bird singing and called for non-violent defiance of the desecration of his ancestors’ graves with bulldozers and backhoes. “They go over our sacred burial sites,” he said. “They go over our sacred places to pray. Although they have made this border, this land is Kumeyaay land. They have tried to separate us. They have tried to keep us apart.” For at least 12,000 years the Kumeyaay and their forebearers flourished on a vast area of life-supporting land from what is now Oceanside and Escondido in the north to the beaches and mountains of Ensenada to the south. They also gathered food and traded as far east as modern day Yuma and Las Vegas. On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day they gathered at the sleepy Tecate port-of-entry in front of the tiny U.S. Border Patrol station to demand a cessation of the desecration of their land and religious sites by Homeland Security EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Kumeyaay bird singers seek divine intervention to prevent further desecration of ancient lands. Kumeyaay People have lived in the region for at least 12,000 years.

construction crews and heavy machinery. Tecate, a border hamlet tucked high in the dry mountains about 25 miles east of Southwestern College, is symbolic because it is separated by the rest of the original frontier community which is now Tecate, Mexico by the border drawn after the Mexican-American War. Politicians of the day redrew the border right through Kumeyaay land without consultation or care. Traditional Kumeyaay lands are sheared by the border much like the Berlin Wall or the Korean Demilitarized Zone, separating families and decimating a culture much older than that of the European invaders. Kumeyaay activists are in the fourth year of a raciallytinged battle with the Trump administration and its infamous wall that vivesects sacred lands where the remains of their ancestors rest in the sandy soil among granite boulders and chaparral. Rodriguez called the wall a violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Kumeyaay activists drew national attention last month when a viral video showed a vicious White woman profanely mocking and insulting Kumeyaay protesters 22

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at a remote border wall construction site near Descanso. She hopped on one foot and spun drunkenly in circles as she spewed vituperous names and racist invectives at the Native Americans gathered for a religious ceremony. She taunted them for “losing” their land and pushed them as they sang and prayed. Rodriguez said winning and losing are in the eye of the beholder. “These borders are an effort to keep us away from our own family, our own friends, our own relatives,” he said. “Borders do not work. They will never work. It is a waste of time and a waste of money.” Kumeyaay were hunted and chased into the rocky mountains of what is now eastern San Diego County by Mexican expansionists in the early 19th century, then nearly exterminated by Americans in the 1880s and 1890s during the period that marked the Indian Wars. Survivors were stripped of their language, culture and lifestyle. Children were forced into English schools, forbidden to speak their Ipai language or practice any ancient customs. Some Indian schools lasted into the late 1960s

KUMEYAAY LANDS IN 1769

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Homelands of the Old Ones

First Americans are hoping for better treatment under the Biden Administration, according to Kumeyaay elders protesting the desecration of Indigenous lands in border regions.

Kumeyaay People have lived in this region for 12,000 years after traversing the Bering Strait Land Bridge during the Ice Age. They are thought to have lived primarily west of the Cuyamaca Mountains, though they are known to have wandered great distances north to acquire trading materials and east to trade with the Yuman People in present day Arizona. Kumeyaay moved back and forth from the mountains to the ocean with the seasons, harvesting plants and small plots of crops they had cultivated earlier along the way. During summers they gathered acorns and hunted in the mountains, during the winters they would live closer to the beaches. They were acute stewards of the land, which they considered a living, sacred entity and a partner in survival. As Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans invaded their homelands, Kumeyaay were forced to the east, living most of their existence in the dry foothills and mountains. After the Mexican-American War of 1846–48, an international border was drawn between the two countries right through the heart of Kumeyaay land. During the Indian Wars of the period from about 1880–1900, Kumeyaay lost much of their remaining land to greedy settlers, prospectors and other invaders. They also lost most of their culture and heritage for more than a century until Mexican Kumiai helped to reteach it in recent years. Southwestern College is built on Kumeyaay land, as is the entire college district. Construction of homes and shopping centers have routinely unearthed the sites of Kumeyaay villages and burial grounds. EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Kumeyaay activists protest the Trump Administration’s extension of the border wall east of Tecate that disturbs burial grounds and sacred cultural sites.

and were not banned until 1978. Only in recent years have Mexican Kumeyaay who were able to maintain their Ipai tongue, bird songs and other cultural treasures helped to reestablish the culture among the northern Kumeyaay of San Diego County. Rodriguez said Kumeyaay are survivors who still pray, celebrate life and find ways to come together. “Everything they have tried to do since 1492 to erase us as a people has been unsuccessful,” he said. “We still live in our traditional homeland. They have not taken that away from us. We still have our singers. We sing our traditional songs, which they tried to erase and make illegal until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed on August 11, 1978.” Singing, speaking and living are acts of resistance, Rodriguez said. There is power underfoot. “When we talk about the Holy Land, this is our Holy Land,” he said. “Each peak is holy. Each valley. This mud. This land is sacred to us and by us coming together we acknowledge that. We do this not only for the Kumeyaay, but for all people. Each and every one of you here is native from somewhere. To be able to hold that deep in your heart and allow it to grow is important.” Americans should not be satisfied with “tolerance,” Rodriguez said, because it is a mediocre standard at best and corrosive at worst. “Tolerance has a connotation, it’s negative,” he said. “Like I tolerate this heat or this inclement weather. Each and every one of us has something we can teach each other. We can be like a bundle of arrows. One arrow is easy to break. A bundle of arrows is unbreakable.”

Kumeyaay lived in harmony with the land in what is now Tecate, where the border splits through ancient lands.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

“They go over our sacred burial sites. They go over our sacred places to pray. Although they have made this border, this land is Kumeyaay land. They have tried to separate us. They have tried to keep us apart.” Dr. Stan Rodriguez

Santa Ysabel Kumeyaay elder

Rodriguez pointed toward Baja California where Kumeyaay on the other side of the border were conducting similar ceremonies. “It is regrettable that we cannot come together as one People again because of this border and sing our songs together and celebrate our indigenousness and our lives,” he said. “This is the best we can do right now. Someday we will all be together again.” Brooke Baines, 19, a member of Saving Homelands of the Indigenous and Ending Land Desecration (SHIELD) represented a new generation of Kumeyaay activists. “I wish we could just come together and have a gathering right here,” she said. “We can hear them and they can hear us. There’s just this invisible line stopping us from being together.” Forcible separation has prevented Kumeyaay from interacting with “cousins” al otro lado, Barnes said, in some cases preventing close relationships from ever meeting, similar to a 200-year version of the Berlin Wall. Ronny Paipa, a Campo Kumeyaay, said separation feeds sadness. “Obviously the border separates us and I think it’s really hard because (Kumeyaay living in Mexico) have it a little bit harder over there than we do,” said Paipa. “I think people tend to forget that our people are over there, too. Just because the border crossed us (people may) think it’s just Mexico or they’re Mexicans, but that’s not the case.” Baines agreed. She said it is essential to raise awareness of the border-spanning reality of the Kumeyaay. “I feel like it’s very important that the Border Patrol has a good understanding that our people are on both sides and that it affects us and it saddens our heart that we can’t just easily come together,” she said. “This border wall and all these Border Patrol (agents) interfere when we try to do things together. I feel like the Kumeyaay people and people of this land, in general, go unnoticed, especially on the (southern) side.” As historic transgressions loom, so does a 21st century killer — COVID-19. Baines said Native Americans — including local Kumeyaay — have been hit hard. Gov.

Gavin Newsom and his COVID-19 response team have acknowledged the situation. “We are faced with the stark reality that Indigenous Peoples are being disproportionately impacted by the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic and make up many of the people on the front lines – tribal leaders making sure elders and communities are cared for, farmworkers ensuring that we have fresh food on our tables and medical personnel treating those who have fallen sick,” said Newsom. “As the state faces historic wildfires, Indigenous Peoples have fought fires, provided shelter and shared traditional ecological knowledge of cultural burns to prevent future large-scale fires. And, in the midst of these challenges, Indigenous families continue to be impacted by the federal government’s xenophobic immigration policies, and construction of a border wall could threaten cultural resources.” Baines said it was “beautiful” to have people unite to raise awareness, even during a pandemic. Education is the greatest tool, she said. “Get educated on the Kumeyaay people,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing you can do. There’s a Kumeyaay Community College that’s open to all people.” Courses include Kumeyaay history, culture and the Ipai language. Kumeyaay Community College is hosted through Cuyamaca College and offers an Associate in Arts in Kumeyaay Studies. California’s Native Americans are not alone when it comes to bisection by the border, said Baines. Apache, Tohono O’odham and San Xavier People in Arizona face the same struggle, as do Pueblo People in New Mexico. “In weeks to come we would like to plan a day where we are all out on the border wall on the same day and creating a line almost as if we were holding hands,” she said. Rodriguez said Kumeyaay culture was like an earthen pot shattered by encroachment. Each community got a shard of the pot and when they come together, he said, they grind them together to make a powder. They then add new clay and form a new pot. “It has our past, what we do today as our present and we make it strong for our future.” u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

HUMAN RIGHTS

Invisible in the data. Invisible in the media. Invisible in death. By Julia Woock A Perspective

ILLUSTRATION BY JI HO KIM

INDIGENOUS

HOLOCAUST

Were it not for a single DOJ study we would have no empirical evidence to describe a problem that we know anecdotally exists on a horrifying scale. Of the 5,712 cases of murdered or missing women in 2016, only 116 were logged into the Dept. of Justice database. 26

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haunting American Holocaust is claiming new victims every day in the most frightful and dangerous way. Out of sight and invisible. Indigenous women are statistically the most murdered members of our society, killed with such regularity that victims are vastly undercounted. Native American women are allowed to disappear three times, advocates charge: in life, in the media and in the data. It is like they never disappeared. It is like they never existed. They did exist. Data is shocking. Native American women face murder rates 10 times the national average. Homicide is the third leading cause of death of American Indian females aged 15-34. More than 95 percent of the cases were never covered by the American or international news media. The lack of data is also shocking. Of the 5,712 cases of murdered or missing women in 2016, only 116 were logged into the Dept. of Justice database. Hundreds of law enforcement agencies have no category for Native American crime victims and lump them in with White victims. Hundreds of known murder victims and disappeared women appear in no law enforcement records whatsoever. No law enforcement or Native American advocates will even take an educated guess at how many women have been killed or disappeared in recent years. All fear the number is staggering, but no one is counting. Were it not for a single DOJ study of the problem we would have no empirical evidence to describe a problem that we know anecdotally exists on a horrifying scale. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Mastro are members of a bipartisan group of lawmakers concerned about America’s missing and murdered Indigenous women. They introduced the “Not Invisible Act” this month in an effort to bring forward meaningful recommendations from law enforcement, tribal leaders, federal agencies and victims. A previous bill, Savanna’s Act, was signed into law in October. It is a small step in the right direction. Introduced by former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp in 2017, the legislation bears the name of 22-year-old murder victim Savanna LaFontaineGreywind of the Spirit Lake Nation. She was eight months pregnant when she was killed by a neighbor. Savanna’s Act aims to: • Train law enforcement how to record tribal enrollment of victims in federal databases;

• Educate the public on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System; • Make it easier for Native American tribes and organizations to enter crime information into the system; • Train law enforcement to better respond to cases of missing or murdered Native Americans; • Track and report statistics on missing or murdered Native Americans in an effort to develop a federal database; A UBIQUITOUS TRAGEDY Crimes against Native American women are not isolated to remote reservations. Health care advocates report that thousands of women living in urban centers are also victimized, but fall through the bureaucratic cracks. Canadian and Mexican women face the same dark fate. Some of America’s most cosmopolitan cities have some of the highest crime rates against Indigenous women, according to The Urban Indian Health Institute. Wealthy, well-run cities like Seattle, San Francisco, Tucson, Sacramento, Albuquerque and Anchorage are among the urban centers with high rates of murder and other forms of violence against Native women and girls. Other cities almost certainly have comparable or worse records, but again, there is little or no data. Part of the reason is likely incompetence by law enforcement record keepers, but some of the blackout is intentional. Many jurisdictions refused or slow-walked Freedom of Information Act requests by government researchers and journalists. Some of the worst offending cities were Bakersfield, Gallup, Billings, Portland, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Fairbanks, Ketchikan and Flagstaff. America’s news media shoulders much of the responsibility for this stealth tragedy. To say that coverage of Native American women murdered and missing is pathetic would be generous. We have been too busy salivating over Donald Trump’s deranged Tweets, the kooky Kardasians and COVID deniers at motorcycle gatherings to give any meaningful attention to the barbaric treatment of our Native sisters. America is rightfully convulsed with a reckoning about its dreadful treatment of African-American men, Latinas and our LGBTQ community. Hope glimmers on the horizon. A case could be made that Native Americans are the most mistreated of all people in this country. While other people were enslaved, sublimated, terrorized, marginalized and abused, Indigenous People alone were exterminated. There is a reason they make up just 2.09 percent of the population. Native Americans are the powerless in this country, and need us to add our voices to theirs. Native American women are disappearing without a trace. They need our voices most of all. u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

HUMAN RIGHTS

A PARTIAL LIST OF KNOWN MEXICAN FEMICIDE VICTIMS Yolotzín, Teresa, Cinthya, Amelia, Rosa, Mariana, Nazarea, Anayensi, Gabriela, Iris, Lucero Areli, Jennie, Karla, Yadira, Evelyn, María Guadalupe, Minerva , Magali, Maritza L., Elsa M., Miroslava, Zelania, Ana Luisa, Patricia, Rosaura, Carmen, Dayana, Julia, Karina, Werly Celina, Jasmin Vera, Wadejesus Azul, Claudia Erika, Deyanira, Agustina Luly, Felicitas, Johana Paola, Francisca G., Gabriela G., Catalina L., Josefina, Cristy C., Lourdes C., Claudia U., Natalie, Beatriz, Maria L., Amada, Olympia, Jiovana, Luz Fernanda, Perla, Eva, Kenia, Esveidy, Keyra W., Johana Michelle, Noelia E., Adriana G., María Asunción, Claudia, Maricarmen, Itzel, Cinthya Luz, Adriana Camila, Alma, Yulisa, Bernardina, Araceli, Citlalli, Karla Paola, Aranza, Susana, Abril P., Aminda A., Brenda J, Hannia, Tania T., Wendy, Anabell C., Perla P., Dorotea, Angie, Claudia, Vianey, Erika, Saira, Eloisa, Betsy R., Ma. Teresa, Joselin, Norma, Alejandra, Judith J., Yesenia L., Cinthia E., Mariana, Ingrid, Angelica, Irma, Laura E., María, Sernity, Montserrat, Fatima, Patricia, Elizabeth B., Adilene P., Cristina H., Thelma, Patricia M., Maribel, Alejandra E., Esther, Yadira, Jaqueline, María A., Clemencia, Ana Laura, Olga-Noemi, María Luz, Melanie

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

MEXICAN WOMEN LIVE IN FEAR OF RAPE AND MURDER By Paulina Nuñez and Edgar Ortega PHOTOGRAPHS BY DIEGO PEDROZA

IJUANA, MEXICO—Women in this city face an even graver threat than rampant COVID-19. Their leading cause of death is men. Tijuana is a global capitol for femicide, with a murder rate of nearly 11 per 100,000 in 2020. Mexico loses at least 10 women daily to femicide, often unspeakably violent. Studies by the World Health Organization concluded that 1 in 3 women on the planet have been physically or sexually assaulted. World Economic Forum data shows that six women are killed every hour by men worldwide. At least 4,000 Mexican women and girls were murdered in 2020 — that were counted. The actual number is almost certainly much higher. Mass graves in Tijuana, Juarez, Irapuato, Alcapulco and other femicide clusters sometimes have uncountable

ILLUSTRATION BY JI HO KIM AND XIOMARA VILLARREAL-GERARDO

numbers of dismembered bodies — all female. Activists in Tijuana and across Mexico have expressed outrage at Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an erstwhile progressive who critics say has made little or no effort to stop the genocide. Southwestern College student Bridgett Valenzuela was among the protesters at a recent rally in this city of between 2.2-3 million. Valenzuela and her fellow protesters were advocating for people of color and women’s rights. She said the news media needs to do more to cover the issue of epidemic femicide. “The only reason it’s even being talked about is because of all the people taking a stance, marching and taking part in protests,” she said. Valenzuela said women are the targets of violence in Mexico because of a toxic macho culture where they are perceived as weak. Many men think they can get away with hurting women because nobody is going to believe the women if they contact law enforcement, she said.

America’s Me Too Movement has helped make people more inclined to believe Mexican victims of violence, she said. “Women came out and said ‘This is happening to me, too. We’re not making this up,’” she said. Harassment and sexual objectification of women has no borders. Briana Ramirez (a pseudonym) is an SC student who crosses the San Ysidro border daily for school. She said she experiences chronic catcalling, stalking and harassment on her way to campus. “I cross the border walking almost every day and I like to go to school comfortably, so I wear leggings and a sweatshirt, nothing really provocative,” she said. “I’ve noticed that when I’m walking, men see that I’m alone and they think it’s easy to catcall me, ask for my phone number.” Ramirez said she is often followed by men from Mexico all the way across the border into the U.S. “Instead of thinking about my day at school, I’m thinking I need to walk faster so the people following EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

G., Julia, Rocio A., Concepción, Ana, Luz Nayeli, Juana, Angie, Fanny, Katherine Sandra, Vianey D Myrna, Saira, Arely, Luna, Alejandra Karen, Lorena, Janeth, Carmen, Juana, Mara, Susana, Ma. Luz, Adriana, Nancy S., Denisse, Minerva, Agustina, Lucero S., Isabel C., Jaqueline, Ingrid E., Araceli N., Raymunda J., Esmeralda P., Malena, Sarahi G., Piedad, Karen A., Gertrudis S., Zoila E., Jaqueline E., Yuritzi E., Laura P., Elizabeth A., María, Araceli R., Martha M., Obdulia, Blanca, Sirenia, Anaxeli, Cinthia I., Josefina, Socorro Alma, Laura, Leticia, Carmen O., Carmina, Laura N., Adriana, Ma. Elizabeth, Sara, Arcelia, Rebeca, Mercedes, Veronica, Daisy, Denisse, Liliana, Laura, Milagros, Ingrid, Miriam, Janeth D., Lucia M., Veronica M., Leydi G., Melissa G., Natali Y, Guadalupe V., Aurora, Julia, Silvia, Yuli, Elvia, Claudia, Juana, Lizbeth, Thalia, María de Jesus, Vanesa, Norma, Fernanda, Elena, Ilse, Rosalia, Nayelli N., Gabriela, AnaJosefina, Dulce Paola, Cecilia-Rosa, Mercedes T., H. Jaqueline, Adriana Ana, Rosario-Dora, Diana-Jesusita, Blanca G., Brenda C., Argelia, Ivett Gina, Guadalupe, Isabel, Dalila, Esbeydi, Carolina D., Mayra, Dolores G., Veronica, Victoria, Stephanie, Monica Z., Fabiola, Lucero H., Nancy R., Karina C.

me don’t approach me,” she said. Valenzuela said she became a femicide activist after a horrific personal tragedy, the murder of her own mother. In January 2020 several men broke into her family’s home in Rosarito, she said. Her mother had just ended a call with her granddaughter while in the company of her autistic 14-year-old son and a visiting neighbor. The killers broke in, shot the neighbor, then gunned down Valenzuela’s mother. Valenzuela’s brother was in an adjoining room. He discovered the bodies. Authorities have not identified the murderers or their motives. “I don’t know who would do something like that to my mom, especially because she was the type of generous person who would see somebody on the street and take them home to help them,” she said. Valenzuela said she suffers from PTSD as a result of the murders. “If it can happen to somebody like her, who literally made piñatas for a living and took care of her child with a mental disability, if something like that could happen to her, then what could happen to somebody like me?” she said. Her mother would have been 53 this month, Valenzuela said. She left behind three grieving children. “My mom’s case went under the radar and that is part of the problem here (in Mexico),” she said. “So many women are brutally murdered almost every day it becomes normalized.” Diego Pedroza of Tijuana said he supports the feminist movement and opposes Mexico’s toxic machismo culture. Femicides have been normalized in Mexico, he said, and usually go unreported by the nation’s news media. Pedroza said the problem is rooted in a culture that treats men as superior to women. “Mexico is a very sexist and misogynistic country,” he said. “As men, we must stop objectifying women and end the (traditional way) men see women as inferior.” Pedroza said change starts with individual men. “I believe the best way to support the movement is to look at yourself in the mirror first, then try to fix sexist behavior within your own group (of male peers),” he said. “We must protect all women, not just our moms and sisters.”

Mexican femicides are increasing so sharply they have become uncountable. 30

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Women are a disproportionate percentage of the soaring homicide rate in Tijuana. Antifemicide activists are also growing in number and demand that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador take meaningful action.

Valenzuela said Indigenous women are the most victimized, a statement backed by data from WHO and American health organizations. Crimes against Indigenous women and girls are frequently miscatagorized by law enforcement and unreported by the news media because they occur in remote parts of the country. “I just feel like there’s a lot of White feminism,” she said. “If you’re not White, they usually don’t listen to you.” Valenzuela encouraged people who witness any kind of abuse against women to intervene and help end the violence. “I would definitely try to help them get professional help,” she said. “Nobody who loves you should be hurting you.” u

Testimonials from Tijuana Women’s Rights Protest By Ana Paola Olvera ANONYMOUS: We emigrated from Honduras. We face great injustice in Mexico. We are here to say no to femicide and no to violence towards women. We come from a free place, where people do not see women as delinquents, but human beings. Here, it is far from that. We face discrimination because we are immigrants. We face discrimination because we are women. We deserve respect. We should all fight for the same cause and move forward. MARIAN LEÓN (19) A lot of men try to diminish our message by saying that men are murdered, too. But I’ve never seen a news story where a man is killed and raped, his body found on a hill and skinned like Ingrid. It is not a question of just another murder. It is systemic violence against a gender. We must raise awareness or it will continue. More than anything, I want this to stop. Years ago the problem was body shaming. Now we are not even asking them to stop criticizing us. We are asking them to stop raping and killing us. I do not want to die tomorrow because I am a woman. I do not want to be raped and killed, then in death blamed because I went out at night. I do not want to be shamed because I am a woman. They see us as the gender that is always in the wrong and responsible for everything awful that happens to us. They say, “Women go to parties. They go out at night.” They should say, “Men rape at parties. Men rape at night. Men kill and harass women at work.” ZUZELY QUIROZ (28) This movement has given me life. My ex stole everything from me when he hurt me, violated me, hit me and almost killed me. He took everything from me. He took my life, my voice, my security, my self-esteem. He stole everything. It took a long time for me to get back to being me and to realize my worth. I gather strength from this fight from all the women that I respect and love. We demand justice for every woman -- for me, for the girls that are no longer here, for the women that are no longer here. This movement returned to me everything I thought I had lost. The authorities did nothing to help me. I reported my rapist. I did everything I was supposed to do and the authorities did nothing but humiliate me. EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

A journey of a thousand miles Refugees from Central America, Haiti and Southern Mexico traveled more than 1,000 miles to the United States-Mexico border in Tijuana, only to be stopped barely 100 yards from possible asylum in the U.S. A pop up refugee camp is wedged between the border wall and the concretelined Tijuana River channel. It is a river in name only most of the year and a collection basin for waste water and sewage that bakes daily in the sun. HUMAN RIGHTS Thousands of immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are pressed against the border wall from Tijuana to Matamoros waiting for an opportunity to apply for asylum. The Trump Administration blocked or slow walked applications. Refugees are hopeful that the Biden Administration will grant more hearings.

HOPE FOR REFUGEES MAROONED IN TIJUANA

Cold, stressed, sick and hungry Central Americans struggle to survive a harsh tent encampment on grimy concrete lining a filthy river By Paulina Nuñez and Aranza Gutierrez Cortes PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARANZA GUTIERREZ CORTES

IJUANA — It is no vacation for Tijuana’s border campers living in rows of tiny tents on the unforgiving concrete along the fetid river canal. To passersby, the array of pastel tents create the pallet of a flea market or the allusion of a neighborhood festival, but this is no party. For thousands of desperate Central Americans and destitute Indigenous Mexicans, the tent city on the cement-lined Rio de Tijuana is a harsh purgatory swarming with eager souls hoping for a pass into the Promised Land literally a stone’s throw away. 32

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An estimated 25,000 asylum seekers are pressed up against the border wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, waiting for a hearing in the United States Immigration Court. Guatemalan refugee Eugenia and her family are among the people living in waist-high pup tents near la frontera. “We have been waiting in line hoping to receive a number,” she said. “I always stay near my tent to maintain my place in the line.” Eugenia has been in line for nearly two years. She and asylum seekers are frequently sick, sore from sleeping on frigid concrete, hungry and scared. They shiver through nights in the 30s, choke back nauseating wafts of nearby raw sewage fermenting in the sun and wolf down meager bits of food offered by visiting humanitarian groups. Even so, they are hopeful, Eugenia said, because

So close, yet so far away Tentative in tents Rows of small tents line the north edge of the Tijuana River canal, some jammed with entire families. Occupants dare not leave their place in line lest they be pushed aside by another desperate refugee clan.

after two years of no action, the line has slowly started to move. The Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy has not been officially overturned on a large scale, but refugees are beginning to get longawaited hearings. Still, it is a glacial process. Patience and survival skills are required to make it through long stretches of anxiety and boredom punctuated by moments of panic. Many have given up and left, returning to dire circumstances and even death. Gloria Delgado clings to hope in Tijuana after surviving hopelessness in Guadalajara. She is sheltering at nearby Casa de Luz and volunteers to serve breakfast along the canal every morning. She said the shelter has been a House of Light, giving her a purpose and sense of belonging. Delgado fled Guadalajara five months ago after her husband died, she said. “He left me a house, but his family turned against me,” she recounted with a trembling voice. “I lost everything. They threw me out at gunpoint like an animal from my own home.” Ana Uribe is Delgado’s neighbor in the

Refugees huddled in Tijuana’s tent settlement are within sight of their goal— the U.S.A.—but stalled by Trump-era immigration policies. Gustavo, a Honduran refugee, said he is hopeful the Biden Administration will give him a hearing.

claustrophobic colonia of tents. She, her seven children and other family members wedge into one tent together like a package of chorizo franks. Relief agencies that bring food and supplies also bring chaos and sometimes unintended violence. “When the (humanitarian) organizations come to the area to give out food, all order is lost,” she said. “People get out of control, they push and shove each other.” Charitable distributions intended for the refugees inevitably attract other poor people from Tijuana, who aggressively insert themselves into the aid lines. Eugenia said there is rarely enough food for everyone. One of those competing for food and supplies is Gustavo, a former carrocero (auto body mechanic) from Honduras. He made an epic 3,200-mile trek from Central America through Mexico to land in Tijuana, mere meters away from el norte where his dreams of peace and freedom reside. He escaped the rampant organized crime of Honduras where armed gangs extort “protection” money from farmers and small businesses. Gustavo waved a sky blue Joe Biden campaign

Staying patient, staying in line Ana Uribe and her family of seven crowd into one small tent every night. She said she worries about feeding her family because whenever a humanitarian organization sets up to offer food to the refugees, hungry people from other parts of Tijuana descend on the encampment and aggressively insert themselves into the food lines. There is not enough food to feed everyone who needs it, she said.

“When the (humanitarian) organizations come to the area to give out food, all order is lost. People get out of control, they push and shove each other.” Ana Uribe

flag much as Mexicans fly banners of la Virgen de Guadalupe, a standard of hope and deliverance during times of conflict. “We want to get away from the criminal gangs like ‘Los Mara’ because we want to work with honesty and integrity,” he said. “The gangs don’t let us do our work. They demand a war tax. If you refuse to pay their tax, they kill you.” Murder is practically a cottage industry in Honduras, he said, and good people are victimized by gang members and local police, who line their pockets with bribes to look the other way or to handle the murders themselves. Tijuana is also a terribly dangerous place for Central American refugees, he said. “Staying in Tijuana is like being in Honduras because there is a great deal of violence here as well,” he said. “Migrants are not safe in Tijuana. We are not treated fairly or with compassion. There is racism towards Hondurenas here in Tijuana.” Gente Unida volunteer Adolfo Mercado said Gustavo is right. Poor Central Americans are too often treated 34

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with disdain by Mexicans and rejected by U.S. officials. Mercado is working at the Pro Amore Deo shelter in Tijuana, as well as shelters and aid stations in San Diego. Asylum seekers have suffered greatly under the “Remain in Mexico” policy, he said. Gente Unida, an American human rights organization founded by Enrique Morones, has been advocating for migrants since the rise of the restrictive immigration policy Operation Gatekeeper in 1994. Mercado said the situation along la linea remains desperate. “As a human and as a patriot it breaks my heart to see how ugly and how nasty we can treat our neighbors,” he said. “These are people who live next door to us. We need to respect and honor them.” Mercado said while Trump was denying that coronavirus was a problem in the United States, he concurrently used it as an excuse to slow walk or freeze Migration Protection Protocols cases. “Every day we wait is one more day we prolong their agony,” he said. “We must address this situation with the urgency it requires.”

Many languages, much misunderstanding Refugees come from many parts of Latin America and speak an array of languages. The tent town Tower of Babel includes speakers of Spanish, French, Creole and at least six exotic Indigenous languages rarely heard in Tijuana. Aid workers say many refugees miss appointments and fall through the cracks because no one speaks their language.

Refugees are turned away if they or their children have chickenpox, measles or other childhood diseases which are rampant in Tijuana’s shelters and tent city. Those fortunate to be allowed to cross must self-quarantine for two weeks.

Michelle Celleri, an attorney with the Human Rights Council of Alliance San Diego, said gaining an asylum hearing is an arduous and confusing process for refugees who speak Spanish, Mixtec, Garifuna, Miskito, Sumo, Pech, Jicaque or other Indigenous languages. Logistics are complicated due to the “Remain in Mexico” rules that can make it difficult to locate migrants who have appointments to give them revised information or date changes. Hearings are frequently rescheduled without informing the refugees, she said, who are then scratched off the waiting list as no-shows. “Border Customs personnel have to coordinate with the shelters in Mexico after asylum seekers are put into the system to figure out the date each person will go to the border,” she said. Celleri said asylum seekers can fall through the cracks through no fault of their own and never get a hearing. COVID-19 protocols amplify the difficulty, she said, requiring testing and other medical considerations before refugees can cross the border. Refugees are turned away if they or their children have chickenpox, measles or other childhood diseases which are rampant in Tijuana’s

“Border Customs personnel have to coordinate with the shelters in Mexico after asylum seekers are put into the system to figure out the date each person will go to the border.” Michelle Celleri

Human Rights Council of Alliance San Diego

shelters and tent city. Those fortunate to be allowed to cross must self-quarantine for two weeks. Until his appointed time with la migra, Gustavo continues to stroll the colorful squatter’s village on the colorless concrete of the Tijuana River, waving his azure Biden flag as if hoping to be spotted from the air and rescued by archangeles or the United States Marines. He may not be far off. Department of Homeland Security officials report that the influx of refugees along the Mexican border has become unmanageable and may require flying asylum seekers to border processing stations along the Canadian border. Rumors blow through the camp like the cool spring breeze off the Pacific, some based in fact, others tales of fantasy. While the Americans in Washington D.C. and San Diego devise their plans, another day rolls by in the camp wedged between the river and the wall. Eugenia herds her seven niños like unruly puppies careening in every direction. Gloria prepares the next day’s desayuno, while Ana brushes out her familia’s tent with a disintegrating Tom Petty t-shirt. Hope survives, but the waiting is the hardest part. u PHOTO COURTESY MICHELLE CELLERI EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

HUMAN RIGHTS ILLUSTRATION BY THE SUN STAFF

PHOTO COURTESY TODENHOFF

XINJIANG

RUSSIA

KAZAKHSTAN

JAPAN

MONGOLIA URUMQI TURPAN

BEIJING

KASHGAR EAST CHINA SEA

SHANGHAI

CHINA

PACIFIC OCEAN

INDIA

HONG KONG SOUTH CHINA SEA

200 miles

Escapees from Xinjiang Province say China’s communist government is engaged in a comprehensive effort to erase the Muslim Uyghur minority.

Uyhgurs Battle Extermination in China

Local refugees recount horrors of Xinjiang Province atrocities

By Israel de Jessus Nieves

hina’s Uyghur minority is being systematically erased. A trio of local refugees refuse to comply. Lost in the nightmarish news cycles of global pandemic, insurrection at the capitol and economic malady, the human rights tragedy of the 21st century has gone barely noticed. Mustafa, Nurxat and Ali escaped the dystopian horrors of China’s Xinjiang Province for a new life in the American borderlands. Freedom comes with a cost, including gnawing worry about those left behind. “It’s very hard to be Uyghur,” said Nurxat, with unintended understatement. Mustafa, Nurxat and Ali (all pseudonyms) expressed happiness to be free from Chinese oppression in San Diego County, but great sadness at the systematic efforts by the Xi Jinping regime in China to obliterate the unique Muslim Uyghur culture and force an entire race to intermarry, assimilate or die. Xinjiang Province is on the northwestern edge of China, far from the population and power centers, but not far enough. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never been fond of the Muslim Uyghur minority, which 36

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comes from a different gene pool than the dominant Han Chinese race. It is also more religious than the largely secular dominant culture, though without any history of conflict or antagonism.

XINJIANG UNDER ASSAULT

n July 2009, the CCP ramped up its assault on the Uyghurs, horrifying human rights activists around the globe. Planet Earth’s political class, however, has mostly looked the other way. Money talks, critics complain, and China is an economic Goliath with trade entanglements on every continent. Even countries concerned about the plight of the Uyghurs seem afraid to rile the Chinese government. Ali, like many Uyghurs, insists that his grievances are not against the Chinese people, but focused on the communist government of China. Like many Uyghurs, Ali said he has family in “re-education centers” that he called poorly-disguised concentration camps. International human rights organizations, including the United Nations Rights Council, estimate that between 1-3 million of the estimated 20 million remaining Uyghurs are confined to the camps or forced labor. He fears for his family, he said, and longs to speak out on their behalf.

PHOTO COURTESY TODENHOFF

He dares not. Uyghurs, he said, are conditioned to be cautious, even across the ocean from the CCP. Ali has found unexpected moments of grace in America, he said, from unexpected sources. “My first history class in an American high school my teacher asked me where I was from and I said China. He looked at me and said ‘no you’re not,’” Ali recalled. “I said ‘I’m from China’ and he said ‘no you’re not.’ And then I understood what he was actually saying. I should stand up for who I am. It gave me goosebumps, bro. He was my favorite after that and we talked about a lot of things. He was an amazing person who changed my life.” Ali said other Uyghurs live their lives like the early-high school version of himself. They are often conditioned through terror and intimidation to “become Chinese.” “I’m not dissing any Asian-looking person, bro, but I don’t look like Chinese,” he said. “I’m not Chinese, I’m a different identity. I’m from a different culture.”

NO DISSENT TOLERATED

n China, Ali said, the CCP has total control of the state, education, and all news and entertainment media. Criticism of the government or President-for-Life Xi Jinping is not tolerated. Dissenters often disappear. Scrutiny is even worse for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which may be the world’s most closely surveilled region. Cameras are ubiquitous and guard posts are found every few hundred meters. Ali described an Orwellian dystopia, a description shared by American, British and French news networks which have broadcast video of the Xinjiang network of spy cameras. Uyghurs are restricted from speaking their language or congregating. Dissenters are captured and sent to labor camps euphemistically called “economic opportunity centers.” “Any sort of gathering with (10 people or more) is illegal,” he said. “Ten people are nothing in America. Like every birthday party has 10 people, right? (In Xinjiang, however,) 10 people (meet up) and they send swat teams, maybe 15 swat cars with four officers (in each car). Why?” Public expressions of disagreement are met with overwhelming force, he said. “If even a small protest group of a few kids is marching down a lane of the roadway, a line of 16 or 17 heavy artillery military in tanks will shoot them all down,” he said. When Ali first came to America, he said, it seemed surreal. He experienced freedoms he did not have in Xinjiang. Even so, he worries that the CCP is watching. He is careful about what he says and does around Chinese or Mandarin-speaking people, even in San Diego County. “They take your name, your language, your race away,” he said. “They take your family members. They take your men away, your women away. They take away

your ability to have kids.” China’s antipathy toward the historically-peaceful Uyghurs is undeserved, Ali said. “Why to that extreme, bro? Why to that extent?” he said. “Are we some kind of a werewolf or something that they need to kill off? Are we gonna have super powers and explode all over them?” EDUCATION AS “BRAINWASHING”

ustafa and Nurxat had different upbringings. Mustafa was raised under a Chinese education system, while Nurxat was raised in a Uyghur system. They both agreed the systems are nothing alike. Mustafa said as a child he was “brainwashed” into rejecting his Uyghur identity and conforming to the orthodoxy of the CCP. Nurxat said differences were easy to see, including disparities in maintenance and upkeep of Chinese schools versus Uyghur schools. Mustafa immigrated to America in 2015. A few years later he returned to visit China, he said, and saw a new world he did not know. His parents had tried with prescriptive subtlety to warn him during video conversations over “We Chat.” He said he missed obvious signs that the situation in Xinjiang was not safe. When Mustafa flew into Xinjiang, he said, he was detained at the airport and questioned for hours by Chinese officials. On the same day his family received a call from the police ordering Mustafa to the police station. Mustafa said he was questioned extensively about his life in America. He was compelled to surrender his passport to CCP officials. He stayed for two months, unable to leave until he and his family bribed Chinese officials to return his passport. He feared he would be sent to a concentration camp and “disappeared.” “Thanks to Allah,” he said. “I was so lucky. I made it out.” Nurxat described a similar grilling and harassment after he had traveled to Turkey. He was questioned as though he were a Muslim terrorist, he said, which was an unnerving experience.

FAMILY LEFT BEHIND

ustafa and Nurxat both said they have family members in concentration camps, some they know are alive and some they have lost contact with. Both said they feared a similar fate if they remained in China. Mustafa said he and Nurxat consider themselves extremely fortunate and thrilled to be in the United States. American freedom has allowed him the opportunity to finally feel human, Mustafa said. Nurxat agreed. “I’m free now and I’m happy,” he said. u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

HUMAN RIGHTS

ASIAN HATERS MUST NOT KNOW THAT WE HELPED BUILD AMERICA

By Jennielyn Cato A Perspective

n Atlanta, six Asian-American women are gunned down by a White supremacist. In San Francisco, an 84-yearold Asian-American is knocked to the ground and killed by an antimasker. In Oakland, a 91-year-old man is severely injured by a man who knocked him to the ground and ran away. In Chula Vista across from Southwestern College, a 46-year-old Filipina is accosted by a MAGA-hatted man who screamed, “Go back where you came from and take your f***ing virus with you!” Americans of Asian ancestry are being scapegoated for the novel coronavirus pandemic, often with acts of brutal violence. Like so much of the recent explosion of racist and anti-Semetic violence in America, Donald Trump is the propellant. His insistence on calling the novel coronavirus “the China virus” and “Kung Flu” was his declaration of open season on Chinese Americans. Unfortunately, too many MAGAs cannot tell Chinese apart from Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Guamanians, Thais and Cambodians. Even Navajo, Zuni and Kumeyaay People are targets of Asian haters. Asian-Americans, like many other immigrants, have long received rough treatment in the United States. Chinese railroad laborers, Filipino farmworkers, Japanese growers, Vietnamese fishermen and other Asians were brought to America when this country needed them, only to be pushed aside when the work was done. When America had its technology 38

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bloom of the 1990s, Asian computer programmers and engineers were imported from China, India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore to help bring it to life. Oops! Here we go again, trying to defend Asians in America. We should not have to. The contributions of Asian-Americans to this nation and its culture are unassailable. So why the disrespect and violence toward the same folks who helped create so much of what 2021 Americans love about our society? Probably the usual suspects: perceived job competition, economic imbalances, cultural tension — perhaps a dash of jealousy and a dollop of xenophobia. Trump was played like a drum by China’s cagey leader Xi Jinping and he aided China by pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, bullying nations who helped keep China in check and turning the focus of the military toward Iran, Afghanistan and other distractions. Trump says China embarrassed him, but he embarrassed himself. Maybe this novel coronavirus did originate in China, but Trump and his ilk never seem to mention that the 1919 “Spanish” Flu that killed 50-100 million around the globe came from an east Kansas hog farm in the United States. American troops took it to Europe during World War I with catastrophic results. No one named it “Yankee Flu” and coldcocked elderly White Americans in 1921, and no one should be sucker punching elderly Asian-Americans in 2021. We need allies. Filipinos and other Asian-Americans in the South Bay need our Latino, White, Black and Indigenous brothers and sisters to stick up for us. We also need the news

media to speak up about AAPI crime and hatred. Distracted by COVID-19 and the Trump Circus, the news media has been slow coming to this long running story. “In many ways Asian-Americans are still seen as foreigners,” said Juju Chang, co-anchor of ABC’s Nightline. “That’s why it’s so important that when Hollywood influencers or social media influencers speak up to be able to then say ‘oh,we have people’s attention, let’s dig deeper into this issue.’” Joie Chen, a former news anchor for America Tonight, said too many Asian-Americans are quiet about what happens to them. The same applies to many minority groups. “Silence has never been good to us,” she said. It was not until older people of the community were being targeted that Asian hate started to get national attention. About 10 percent of hate crimes against Asian-Americans are against the elderly. Stop AAPI Hate is an advocacy organization founded by the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON), Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) and the Asian American Studies department of San Francisco State University. Stop AAPI Hate has recorded more than 3,000 cases of attacks on the AAPI community already in 2021. We all need to call out racism. We must not tolerate violence. We must stop attacking our fellow Americans. That’s right, fellow Americans. Telling an Asian-American to “go back where you came from” is rich. Chances are they came from Wichita, Seattle, Austin, Kansas City, Santa Fe, Philadelphia or Chula Vista. We are home. u

PHOTO COURTESY JOEL LEVINE

ROLE MODELS

PHOTO COURTESY WIKIPEDIA

Music over Mantle In 1968 the legendary Mickey Mantle played his final season and the New York Yankees were looking for his replacement. They wanted to sign a slender centerfielder from The Bronx, but Joel Levine had another great offer to consider.

SOUTHWESTERN 1, YANKEES 0

By Andrew Sanchez

capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium fell deathly quiet during Game 2 of the 1951 World Series when transcendent rookie Mickey Mantle writhed in agony on the right field grass after stepping on a sprinkler, his knee shredded. Seconds earlier Mantle had veered out of the way of iconic New York Yankee center fielder Joe DiMaggio to avoid a collision on a fly ball by Willie Mays. The venerable Yankee Clipper stood over the Kid from Commerce, concerned about his teammate and heir. Mantle left right field on a stretcher, never the same. It remains one of the most notorious injuries in baseball history. Joel Levine made sure to avoid the sprinkler. Southwestern College’s dean of Language, Literature and Humanities, Levine stepped over the Mantle sprinkler

when he stepped onto the outfield turf at America’s most venerated baseball stadium. He also stepped across hallowed ground during his 1968 tryout with the New York Yankees. A South Bronx native, Levine grew up near Yankee Stadium during the Golden Age of the “Bronx Bombers,” who appeared in 13 World Series in the 1950s and early ‘60s, winning eight. Like other young New Yorkers, he played baseball and stickball in the streets when not on a grass field playing youth ball. In high school he was a talented pitcher and center fielder. He was also a very talented musician who even as a child demonstrated precocious virtuosity and flair on the clarinet. Levine dreamed of baseball, but his mother encouraged him to play music. For years he did both, he said, dreaming of playing center field for the Yankees during the day, and first chair clarinet for the New York Philharmonic at night. Fate collided as Mantle and DiMaggio almost had. Manhattan School of Music had an eye on Levine and offered him a full scholarship. MSM was and remains neck-

“If I could do it all over, I wouldn’t cha exceeded my wildest dreams, even I ha nge a thing. My life has Yankees. I am grateful for the opportud been successful with the great life and I love being part of Southnities I’ve had. I’ve had a western College.” EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

and-neck with The Juilliard School as the New York Yankees of music universities, all-time champions. The Yankees had an eye on Levine, too, and invited him to a tryout the summer after he graduated from high school. He grabbed his glove and spikes and headed to The House That Ruth Built, the Bronx baseball cathedral of Yankee Stadium. About 300 high school and college baseball standouts were invited to the tryout. Most were sent home after the first day. Levine stuck. And he kept on sticking. For two grueling weeks he kept sticking. Yankee scouts liked him as a pitcher, but also liked his bat and saw his powerful arm as an asset in the outfield — possibly as a replacement for Mantle himself, who in 1968 was hobbling through the final season of his Hall of Fame career. Levine took flyballs and fungos in the outfield, stepping around the Mantle sprinkler and gliding in front of “Monument Park” where bronze and stone obelisks stand erect through time honoring Yankee greats Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, DiMaggio (and a short time later, Mantle.) He gloved fly balls where the mighty Ruth trod in the 1920s, threw from the same places DiMaggio had cut down baserunners in the 1940s and guarded the gaps like home run champion Roger Maris early in the 1960s. After a fortnight of relentless workouts, the Yankees winnowed the field down to 20 teens who had risen above the rest. Levine was left standing. The New York Yankees wanted to sign him. Levine said he was ecstatic, but his mother conflicted. She was proud of Joel for being offered a spot in the Yankees organization, but concerned about his spot at Manhattan School of Music and his scholarship. She had never liked the sport and her baseball-obsessed husband did not help, chain smoking in front of the TV, watching every possible Yankees and Mets game. Young Joel said he still remembers the bright Bronx morning when the phone rang around 9 a.m. At that time of the year sunlight reflected off the fifth floor tenement

Levine earned a B.A. in music with an emphasis in clarinet performance in 1972. He completed an M.A. in music in 1973, while working in several education classes, also at the Manhattan School of Music. He completed a teaching credential program in 1975 at Columbia University, where he developed a love for the science of education. In 1980 he earned a second Master’s and a Doctorate in education administration from Columbia, completing both degrees from the venerable Ivy League University in just two-and-a-half years. 40

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across the alley into the Levines’ tiny unit. Mrs. Levine happened to answer the phone the day Yankees scout Arthur Dede called to make Joel a formal contract offer to play late summer rookie baseball in the Yanks’ system. “I don’t want my son riding in a bus all over the country,” a horrified Levine recalled his mom telling the Yankees’ representative. “He’s got better things to do with his life!” He coaxed the phone away from his mother and set up a personal meeting with Dede. Rookie league for high school players started in late August, he was told, about the same time Manhattan School of Music started fall classes. It was a pivotal moment in his life, Levine recalled. “Time slowed down,” he said. “Even though I was very young, I knew I was about to make a lifetime decision. I still remember how the light looked reflected off the fifth floor windows. I figured I could play the clarinet long past the time I could play baseball.” He chose music over Mantle, college over professional baseball. He told the Yankees he did not want to abandon his scholarship.

PHOTO COURTESY WIKIPEDIA

Baseball’s holy land Yankee Stadium is home to more MLB World Champions and Hall of Famers than any other. NYC native Joel Levine aced a two-week tryout with the Bronx Bombers in 1968 and offered a professional contract. As a youngster he envisioned playing centerfield for the Yankees in the afternoon, then first chair clarinet for the New York Philharmonic in the evening. Turns out he had to choose between the two.

“It’s okay, son, you are still young,” Levine recalled Dede telling him. “We will watch you play in college and see how you progress there. We can sign you up later.” Levine said he did not have the heart to tell Dede that Manhattan School of Music was not exactly an intercollegiate baseball powerhouse. In fact, it had no sports programs at all. It enrolled about 450 students at that time — all musicians. “Not a Babe Ruth or Willie Mays in the bunch,” Levine said. Levine had hit that moment in time where so many young men with dreams of baseball stardom reluctantly arrive. His baseball career was over. Other great adventures lay ahead. As the baseball cleats grew cold in the crisp fall air, Levine’s clarinet was hotter than ever. His scholarship paid for almost everything at MSM except lunch, he recalled, so he took a thermos of soup, a sandwich and an apple to campus each day to fuel his music. One of his classmates was Santo “Sunny” Russo, the alreadylegendary trombonist for “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” who came to school during the day to study music education. Levine earned a B.A. in music with an emphasis in clarinet performance in 1972. He completed an M.A. in music in 1973, while working in several education classes, also at the Manhattan School of Music. He completed a teaching credential program in 1975 at Columbia University, where he developed a love for the science of education. In 1980 he earned a second Master’s and a Doctorate in education administration from Columbia, completing both degrees from the venerable Ivy League University in just two-and-a-half years. Levine was offered a cushy job in mostly-white, upper

middle class Staten Island, but turned it down to teach in low-income, mostly-minority Spanish Harlem. “Best decision I ever made, it was great,” he said. “That experience taught me so much about inequities in our education system and what we needed to do to elevate disadvantaged communities.” Teaching in NYC’s barrio communities helped to spawn and nurture what became a decades-long devotion to developing critical thinking skills in underserved students on Native American reservations and borderlands schools. He took that mission with him to Pittsburgh, California in the East Bay north of Berkeley, then to work for the Campo Band of Mission Indians (who now refer to themselves by their ancestral name of Kumeyaay). In 1989 he ignored discouraging naysayers and staggering odds to write a successful grant application to the Federal Indian Act of 1988. Levine’s Campo Indian Education Project was awarded $250,000, which he used to establish a preschool on the Campo reservation, hire counselors, employ seven after-school tutors and build two modern classroom structures. In eight years the Native American high school dropout rate nearly flipped, dropping from almost 90 percent to just over 10 percent. Levine arrived at SC in 2006 as dean of Language, Literature and Humanities. He teamed with Professor of Reading Dr. Sylvia Garcia-Navarrete and instructor Yuki Yamamoto to develop the award-winning curriculum “My Reading Toolbox” that has spawned successful textbooks and requests for workshops and classes around the globe. Levine also serves as a mentor and adviser for doctoral students at San Diego State University where he serves on dissertation committees. He is, colleagues agree, still a wicked clarinetist who practices every day for 60-90 minutes. “I actually think I’m better now than ever,” he said. “That makes sense because learning should be continuous. We can all continue to improve at whatever we like to do as we grow older.” Levine said he enjoys performing with Dr. Cynthia McGregor, Dr. Jeff Nevin, Dr. Jenna Posey and other talented classically-trained musicians on the SC faculty at recitals and concerts. He played in the SC Orchestra performance of the “New World Symphony,” conducted by Nevin. One of his favorite all-time gigs was playing the world premier of the Joseph Julian Gonzalez chorale “Misa Azteca,” which featured SC’s lauded Concert Choir directed by Dr. Teresa Russell. His career in education has been richly rewarding, he said, but does he ever wonder “what if?” “If I could do it all over, I wouldn’t change a thing. My life has exceeded my wildest dreams, even I had been successful with the Yankees. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. I’ve had a great life and I love being part of Southwestern College.” u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

BRAINY EDITOR SHINES AT HBCU

By Julia Woock

ernisha Gaines is an award-winning journalist, an accomplished poet and a talented leader who guided a national champion publication. Her favorite title, though, is Mom. Gaines, her adorable daughter Ayris and her array of talents have left Southwestern College for North Carolina A&T State University, an elite HBCU (Historically Black College or University). Transferring to an HBCU was her dream, her goal and her mission — all of which crystallized during a painful divorce. “In 2019, when my divorce was finalized with my daughter’s father, I started to recognize that I needed to put myself in a position to win,” she said. “I needed to put myself in a position to succeed in life, take care of my daughter, my health and my education.” Gaines said she faced many challenges that would have

Five Black former SC students who are enrolled in or graduated from their dream universities shared messages of encouragement while acknowledging that the journey can be bumpy.

Nabressa Lilly, UCSD Nabressa Lilly entered Southwestern College looking for a smart, cool role model. Now she is one. A recent UCSD psychology graduate, Lilly acknowledged that Black community college students face challenges and Black university students face larger ones. She insists they are surmountable. “You are worthy and you are exactly where you should be,” she said. “You can do this!” Lilly said she attended the Black Student Welcome event during her first semester at SC and heard the president of Black Student Union give an inspiring speech. She said she clearly remembers thinking, “that would be an amazing thing to do someday.” 42

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PHOTO COURTESY PERNISHA GAINES

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made anyone want to quit. Being a single parent in college in a city with no relatives made it rough when she or her daughter got sick. There were times she cried and prayed to God for strength to get through the divorce. As she realized she was going to make it, a new confidence took hold. That same strength to survive divorce could also power her dreams. “Divorce taught me that I can overcome anything, because that is the most challenging thing any woman with a child can go through by herself,” she said. “I didn’t have family or friends holding my hand during the process and it instilled confidence that to this day cannot be shaken.” Her other motivator is Ayris. Gaines said she is earning a degree for herself and because her daughter watches her every move. Coronavirus was a hurdle, one that almost torpedoed the publication of Southwestern’s El Sol Magazine she was leading as Editor-in-Chief. When The Sun broke the story on March 10, 2020 that SC was closing, El Sol was a beautiful vision that was nowhere near finished. Staff scattered to every corner of San Diego County and into Mexico. Slowly, relentlessly, Gaines and her staff pulled together the contents and published El Sol Magazine in July. It was named National Community College Magazine

A year later, Lilly was herself president of Black Student Union. One of her most important lessons learned at SC was, “define yourself outside of institutional labels.” “I have had this idea that if I got to a certain level of education or if I got to a certain point in my career where I am making enough money, that (race and identity) wouldn’t matter and that is simply not true,” she said. Lilly confessed to being over-eager at SC and at first overcommitted. Stress and exhaustion followed. She learned to balance her activities to preserve her physical and mental health. “You cannot pour from an empty cup,” she said. “I’d rather do a few things in excellence than do everything on a lower level.” — Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo

PHOTO COURTESY AYONA HUDSON

PHOTO COURTESY SAN DIEGO ASSOCIATION OF BLACK JOURNALISTS

Ayona Hudson, UCLA

Mother on the move Pernisha Gaines covers a story at the San Diego Association of Black Journalists ‘Pro for a Day.’

of the Year by four collegiate journalism organizations so far, as well as Best Collegiate Magazine by the San Diego Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists. SC graphic design instructor Kenneth Pagano worked closely with Gaines on the publication of El Sol. He said he noticed a natural leader with the perfect balance of managerial and interpersonal skills. “She’s so bright,” he said. “She could talk about anything, she can talk to anybody. She could listen and she really inspired us.” Pagano said Gaines was good at working with diverse, creative people. “One thing I’ve always liked about the journalism program is that it attracts people from all backgrounds, all races, nationalities, politics, ethnicities and she was such a guiding light,” he said. “Even though she’s had her own struggle, she used her own struggle as a source of determination and did not let her struggle define her success.” Dr. Cynthia McGregor, dean of the School of Arts, Communications and Social Sciences, said Gaines is smart, visionary and tough. “I remember her coming in looking like she wasn’t feeling well, but she was so committed to her studies and committed to her work in journalism that she had the perseverance to flourish,” McGregor said. “I could tell by

Ayona Hudson, a political science and African-American Studies major at UCLA, advised SC students to “go for it!” “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take,” she said. “So never be scared, never be hesitant.” Hudson recommended that first-year Jaguars connect with UMOJA (Kiswahili for UNITY). UMOJA changed her life, she said. “That’s where I had great counselors, where I felt encouraged with my academic journey, where I met great people,” she said. “UMOJA opened me up to so many opportunities in terms of going to conferences and navigating my financial aid, knowing who to talk to and getting help.” Starting at UCLA was a bit intimidating at first, Hudson confessed, partly because all the students surrounding her seemed so outstanding. She entered UCLA with a 3.6 GPA, she said, and knew that students with higher GPAs did not get in. She said for a while she felt unworthy, and wondered how and why she was admitted. She got over her imposter syndrome. “We’re always looking at the next person instead of just looking at ourselves,” she said. “I was accepted (to UCLA) for a reason. I can do this!” At SC Hudson was vice president of the Black Student Union and secretary of Soul Sisters, a club to empower women of color. “I had the opportunity to help really uplift those clubs and create a community for fellow Black students at Southwestern,” she said. “I know we are a minority in the population, so being a part of BSU and Soul Sisters, having leadership roles, I felt very empowered to make sure other Black students know that we are in this together.”

— Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Monte Clark San Jose State San Jose State biology major Monte Clark said Delta Sigma Phi, the most diverse fraternity on campus, was exactly what he was looking for. Clark was president of the Black Student Union at SC and is now Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at his frat. “I saw that they didn’t have a position, so I offered to create it and unanimously they agreed,” he said. — Xiomara Villarreal-

Gerardo

PHOTO COURTESY MONTE CLARK

her commitment that she’s got a bright future.” McGregor said an HBCU is a wonderful choice for Gaines because she would have the support to continue to flourish and become the best version of herself. She said Gaines was invaluable to the journalism program and “did a great job as Editor-in-Chief of the national champion school magazine, El Sol.” “When you see students like Pernisha embrace those challenges and move forward, it’s the best feeling,” she said. “It is very inspiring.” Gaines said the pandemic brought on additional challenges, but she embraced a mindset that she can tackle anything, making her unstoppable. “I only see myself winning,” she said, “nothing is a fail. Everything is a lesson and I’m going to continue to go to my lessons and win in my own way, whatever that means for me.” North Carolina A&T was warm, welcoming and made her feel important, she said. After earning a BA in African-American Studies, Gaines said she aspires to a Master’s from Howard University, an HBCU in Washington D.C. Her down range goal is to become an HBCU faculty member or administrator where she can empower students like herself to accomplish their dreams. “I want to reach back one day and help someone else,” she said. “I think we should focus not just on ourselves, but also on our community.” NCA&T called to her, she said, because she

consistently read motivating things about the college. At predominantly white institutions, she said, AfricanAmerican culture and history is an afterthought. At an HBCU they are at the forefront. “I would much rather go to a school which considers me and my legacy a top priority, than to attend a college or university that plays down my relevance,” she said. Black women are no different now than they were years ago when icons like Coretta Scott King were fighting in the hot Southern sun for the civil rights of African Americans, said Gaines. Vice President Kamala Harris exemplifies that spirit, she said, paving the road for all women of color. Black women should care about all people who are burdened, she said, and be a force for goodness. “I think Black women are the mothers of this earth and that is only because we’ve given birth to so much,” she said. “We’ve given birth to the race. We’ve given birth to our families. We’ve given birth to ideas, careers and innovations. We will continue to make a way out of absolutely no way. When there is a wall, we find a way to break it down.” Black women face myriad issues, she said, and so do young Black children. Black women must fight to keep families together, Black communities together and Black culture together, Gaines said. “Representation is essential because my young Black daughter can look up to me as a Black woman and say, my mommy did it, so can I,” she said. “And if my daughter doesn’t say it, my granddaughter can say it, and if my

“Comparison is the thief of joy. Don’t dim your light for others. You are there for a reason and you deserve to be there.” SDSU Graduate Khalil Adisa 44

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daughter happens to bring a set of friends around who are also young Black women, they can say it.” Gaines said it is important for Black women to see themselves in other Black women. “As a Black woman, I’m looking up to Black women,” she said. “I’m looking up to the familiar race and that is how important representation is. If I don’t see that, then I have to go off of someone who doesn’t necessarily experience the culture I do.” Work remains to make American a place where all men and women are created equal, she said. “I can’t believe that after hundreds of years we are still not there,” she said. “I want my daughter to be able to walk outside and know that she’s not going to be harmed or killed by someone who is not Black because of her skin tone. I want her to have a very Black experience, but I also want her to be able to feel comfortable in her skin in any room. I feel like that is what we’re struggling with now as Black individuals — feeling uncomfortable being Black because someone else is uncomfortable with us.” Former SC President Dr. Kindred Murillo said Gaines is a deserving student and she hopes others will follow her from SC to HBCUs. “Our Historically Black Colleges and Universities are doing such an amazing job getting students into great jobs and advanced degrees such as law and medicine,” she said. “Pernisha will thrive at her HBCU and continue toward her potential.” Gaines has advice for Black women and girls: Work hard, ask for help and do what you can with whatever resources you have. “You never know when the opportunity that changes your life may present itself,” she said. “Never give up on yourself no matter how hard it gets and learn what it means to go above and beyond for yourself. A lot of times we go above and beyond for people who don’t value us enough. Learn to go above and beyond for yourself.” u

Khalil Adisa, SDSU SDSU Criminal Justice graduate Khalil Adisa is also a SODA recipient. He was secretary then vice president of the SC Black Student Union. He said he strongly recommends that SC BSU members join the Afrikan Student Union at SDSU, which he served as treasurer. “Follow their Instagram (@asu_sdsu), talk to them,” he said. “They help make your transition much smoother. I recommend every student, if there is an identity that you identify with, make yourself at home. There are so many resources that can help you out.” Adisa shared a personal story about a protest he PHOTO COURTESY KHALIL ADISA

Solé Ortiz-Ruiz UC Santa Barbara Solé Ortiz-Ruiz is studying English, journalism and film at UC Santa Barbara. At SC she was president of Soul Sisters and the awardwinning Sports Editor of The Sun — one of the few female sports editors in the state. She was named the nation’s best community college columnist by the Associated Collegiate Press. Ortiz-Ruiz said she loves UCSB, but felt more at home in Southwestern’s diverse culture. “At UCSB it’s predominantly white and everyone is really nice and sweet, but you don’t see people that look like me,” she said. “That (means) people don’t share the same experiences as me.” Ortiz-Ruiz said her most amazing memory at SC was being the Sports Editor of The Sun. “The greatest thing that Southwestern has given me has to be the newspaper and Professor Max and just all my friends that I made there,” she said. “I walked into Southwestern thinking, ‘this is the worst because I’m going into community college’, but my opinion changed after three months on campus.” Ortiz-Ruiz left SC with its highest student honor, the Student of Distinction Award, and was selected a Bonitafest Youth Ambassador. “Now I am going to one of the top universities in the nation and I wouldn’t have without Southwestern College,” she said.

— Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo

attended in spring 2019 when SDSU’s Black Resource Center was vandalized. “You could definitely see so many student’s frustrations, there were students crying,” he said. “It was so hurting to see our safe spot on campus vandalized. A whole mass group of Black students and allies were there supporting us and saying ‘we are not going to stand for this!’” Like Hudson, Adisa copped to a brief bout of imposter syndrome, but shook it off. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” he said. “Don’t dim your light for others. You are there for a reason and you deserve to be there.” — Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

PHOTO BY JULIA WOOCK

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Muralista Maravilloso Salvador Barajas is a Chicano icon, a legendary activist-artist and a San Diego County treasure By Julia Woock

al Barajas has already painted more of the murals in Chicano Park’s iconic collection than any other artist. Legendary faces of heroes like Cesar Chavez, Frida Kahlo, Dolores Huerta, Herman Baca, Benito Juarez and Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez stare out from the park’s “Historical Mural” like Aztlan’s Mt. Rushmore. Many Chicano leaders insist the vastly talented but famously humble arts legend should himself be a face on the park’s preeminent gateway mural. “He is our Diego Rivera,” said Gente Unida founder

Lasting impressions Salvador Barajas creates posters and other artistic products with uplifting messages for young students about the value of education and self-respect. Motivational Designs products hang in classrooms, cafeterias and hallways throughout San Diego County. Barajas calls education “the great equalizer” for young people of color.

Enrique Morones. “Salvador Barajas is one of the greatest San Diegans, Chicano or otherwise.” Baca, the fiery chairman of the Committee on Chicano Rights, agreed. “Sal deserves to be up here,” Baca said as he patted the mural on a cloudy morning in Chicano Park. “He is a great artist and an important figure in Chicano history. The Historical Mural is the most important mural in the park because it is like a giant textbook. It is a portal into the history and heritage of our people.” Upon hearing such adulation, Barajas, 77, blushed and changed the subject. “I am blessed that I can be a conduit of history and help to tell the stories of Mexican and Chicano heroes,” he said. “For such a long time no one did. When I grew up, we were not mentioned in textbooks. We were invisible.” Barajas joined Huerta, Morones and Baca this spring as recipients of a Southwestern College honorary degree, the institution’s highest honor. It was a popular decision, according to SC PIO Lillian Leopold. An article about Barajas on the college website generated EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

La Virgen de Chicano Park Barajas has painted four Chicano Park murals, the most of any artist. His fifth is in process. His “Amor, Si Se Puede” mural is on the back wall of the restroom building in the park. It celebrates the work of Gente Unida and human rights groups that serve migrants, the power of the free press and the importance of family. In this piece, the Virgen de Guadalupe appears as a human rights advocate providing water for los inmigrantes crossing the scorching deserts of California and Arizona.

ILLUSTRATION BY EDWARD HERRERA

more than 40,000 hits within days of its post – the most read post in college history. SC President Dr. Mark Sanchez said honoring Barajas “is a surreal experience.” “It’s hard to imagine that I’m reaching out to him as the president of a college that I attended,” he said. “I’m reaching back to someone who had an influence on where I grew up.” Morones said many people know Barajas painted three of Chicano Park’s murals (a fourth is planned), but few know about his role in saving the entire collection. In the 2000s Caltrans planned to destroy the murals for a seismic retrofit of pillars supporting the Coronado Bridge. The City of San Diego had also drawn up plans to pave over Chicano Park to create off-site parking for the new downtown baseball stadium.

Honorary degree recipient This spring Southwestern College presented Barajas with its highest recognition, an honorary degree. He was cited for “his courage, generous spirit and enormous talent that helped to transform Chicano Park into the planet’s greatest collection of outdoor murals.”

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FLASHBACK TO THE TAKEOVER

or Chicano activists, the Caltrans proposals were echoes of April 1970 when the city went back on its word to build a community park in Barrio Logan. When it began constructing a California Highway Patrol substation instead, Chicanos and their supporters poured in from around the nation to become human shields against bulldozers. Loganistas with shovels and rakes started to scratch out their own park. After a weeks-long standoff with

PHOTOS COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA

Science saves the sublime During his service in the U.S. Air Force, Barajas studied materials and the science of painting high-stress projects. His uncommon knowledge of the physics and chemistry of outdoor art led to his hiring by CalTrans as a consultant to advise engineers performing a seismic retrofit of the pillars supporting the Coronado Bridge (and Chicano Park’s beloved murals).

a small army of peaceful but assertive protestors who refused to leave the area beneath the Coronado Bridge, the city relented. Chicano Park was born of rebellion. That same spirit of standing up for the Chicano community permeates the park’s colorful murals, Barajas said. Just as Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera used their art in the first half of the 20th century to protest war and injustice on epic murals, Barajas and a small group of artists transformed dusty grey walls and pillars into statements of affirmation, strength, beauty and community. “In 1973 we just got whatever paint we could get our hands on and started painting what is now called the Historical Mural,” he said. “We invited artists who were university professors from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno and all over the (state) to come and paint the pillars. We prepared the pillars for them, spending money out of our own pockets.” After five frantic days, the first wave of murals was completed, Barajas said. They stood unthreatened until the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake severely damaged roads and bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley. Quake damage spurred Caltrans to plan a statewide seismic retrofit project of bridges. The Coronado Bridge plan included beefing up pillars with concrete, an action that would obliterate the park’s murals. Barajas and members of the Chicano Park Steering

Low rider is a little higher The newest Barajas mural commissioned by the Amigos Car Club of San Diego has roots in his childhood home of Colonia Libertad in Tijuana. Misunderstood and harassed by local law enforcement in the 1960s and ‘70s, the creative lowrider owners are a team of successful professionals who do trans-border philanthropic work.

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PHOTO BY ERNESTO RIVERA

Committee fought ferociously for three years against the Caltrans plan. They insisted the bridge could be reinforced without harming murals. “It was an incredible battle,” he said. “Caltrans is in the business of building roads and bridges. They did not care if the murals were destroyed. We did.” Science carried the day, he recalled, when UCSD seismologists hired by Caltrans reported that the pillars required reinforcement at ground level and the very top, but that the faces of the pillars did not need new concrete. Chicano Park’s murals dodged destruction, but faced

damage by the dirty retrofit work. Bowing to political pressure, Caltrans granted $1.6 million to the Chicano Park Steering Committee to restore the murals following construction. Barajas created a manual to guide the process. His “Chicano Park Mural Restoration Technical Manual,” a detailed study of each mural and a precise plan to restore it, was the first of its kind in the United States. He worked more than 500 hours to create the manual, but accepted no compensation. He preferred, he said, that the entire grant go directly to the murals.

PHOTO BY JULIA WOOCK

CONGRESS TAKES ACTION

“Now the murals are finally protected and recognized for their cultural significance,” he said. Morones said the role Barajas played in saving the murals is overlooked. “Salvador, in Spanish, means savior,” he said. “Salvador Barajas is a savior because he saved our park by saving its murals.” Barajas, as usual, deflected credit. “There were a lot of people who fought against Caltrans,” he said. “That is the beauty of Chicano Park. It belongs to everyone and it has its own organic army

“

al does it right!” said Baca. “He figured out where Caltrans was coming from and what they needed to hear. He then collected the evidence to carry the day. It’s a constant struggle. We were fortunate he was here to answer the call.” Barajas said he felt he could finally start to rest easy when the U.S. House of Representatives declared Chicano Park a National Historical Monument in January 2017.

Historical Mural’s Living History Barajas was one of the young artists who began painting along a wall beneath a Coronado Bridge off ramp in the spring of 1970 during the people’s takeover of Chicano Park. It became the world famous “Historical Mural.” Barajas was one of the artists who repaired and repainted the mural in 2012 when he added Chicano heroes Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez and Herman Baca.

A towering figure starts small Barajas makes exacting miniature representations of his epic-sized projects before he starts. His detailed model for his upcoming mural commission featuring United Farm Workers legend Dolores Huerta (above) allow his patrons and members of the Chicano Park Steering Committee to see what a completed mural will look like on a pillar.

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PHOTO COURTESY ERNESTO RIVERA

Restoration as resurrection Barajas devised the successful strategy to retrofit the pillars under the Coronado Bridge following the Loma Prieta Earthquake without destroying the murals. CalTrans commissioned his study “Chicano Park Restoration Project,” a precise description of each mural and strategies to restore them. His work is a sophisticated blend of science and art that Chicano activists said came along at just the right moment to save the collection.

PICKING UP THE BAT

aca said every generation of Chicanos must consider whether it wants to “get into the game or not.” “Each young person needs to decide if he or she is going to pick up the bat and face the pitcher,” he said. “Some people pick up the bat, but don’t enter the game. Some stand there with the bat on their shoulder and strike out without swinging. Sal picked up the bat and played hard, only in Sal’s case his bat is his paint brush.” Barajas, who calls himself “a huge baseball fan,” smiled at the metaphor. “We can all make a difference in our own way,” he said. “That’s why I like to speak at schools and colleges 52

PHOTO BY JULIA WOOCK

of people to protect it whenever it needs protecting.” Ironically, the National Historical Monument designation generated another threat. A white supremacist group, provoked by anti-immigrant rhetoric from former president Donald Trump, announced its intentions to swarm into Chicano Park and destroy its “un-American” murals. Barajas, an Air Force veteran, bristled at the characterization. He was one of more than 1,000 counter protesters who showed up that morning in 2017 to defend the park. As profanity-spewing white supremacists bellowed from the east side of Logan Avenue, Barajas and a group of his friends linked arms to form a human fence around his new mural honoring the human rights organization Border Angels. Asked if he was worried that the motley coalition of Klansmen, Nazis and Minutemen would damage the artwork, the normally cheerful septuagenarian and boxing champion grew somber. “They will have to come through me first,” he said.

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Niño de la Colonia Libertad A proud product of Colonia Libertad, one of Tijuana’s oldest communities, Barajas meets with surviving friends periodically in Chula Vista. His childhood running mates grew up into an impressive array of Mexican and Mexican-American executives, businessmen, soldiers, athletes and educators.

PHOTOS BY AMY MORALES

A promise broken, a mural lost San Diego’s Chicano community has battled SDUSD over reconstruction projects that destroyed murals by Barajas and Mario Torero at Memorial Preparatory School in Logan Heights. Chicano leaders like Herman Baca and Enrique Morones said the murals should be relocated, not destroyed. “Sal Barajas is our Diego Rivera,” said Morones. “It is unconscionable to harm his artwork.”

C Treasures trashed, heritage destroyed Demolition crews at Memorial Prep destroyed the Salvador Torres masterwork “The Memorial Mural of the San Diego Unified School District.” A three-panel monochrome work by Barajas, “Graduation, Education, Motivation” may be next. The artists said the school district promised them the murals would be permanent and never harmed.

to talk about our art and heritage. Maybe there is a kid or a young college student who is an artist or a journalist or who has talents they can use to help people. That’s what I like about Southwestern College. I think the community college system is one of the greatest things about California. Southwestern College students can make a difference.” (Barajas illustrated the cover of this edition of El Sol Magazine, creating an image to announce its theme, “Courage in the Time of COVID.”)

MURALISTA MARAVILLOSO

hicano Park is not the only San Diego landmark to receive the Barajas touch. In 1974 he was one of the artists who painted the new Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park. Several local schools feature murals by Barajas, including an ambitious two-part tour de force at King-Chavez Elementary, which he admitted is his favorite. His motivational posters with a rich Chicano aesthetic resonate from walls of classrooms and offices across the Southwest. “Education is the great equalizer,” he said. “For Latino kids, and all kids of color, a good education is essential. We have to keep working hard and studying because it is the only way out of el barrio.” Born in Nio, Sinaloa, Barajas grew up in the venerable Tijuana community Colonia Libertad. In 1961, he moved to San Diego with his father to work and send money to his family. He attended adult school at San Diego High to learn English. He joined the Air Force, where he worked as a technical artist illustrating manuals. He learned the importance of detail and about the science of painting challenging surfaces, knowledge that later informed the “Chicano Park Murals Restoration Manuel.” He used his GI Bill benefits to attend Los Angeles Trade Technical College and subsequently SDSU. He had a successful 30-year career as a commercial artist working in advertising. All of his life experiences prepared him to become a prolific muralist in Act III of his life. “Advertising art requires precision, which fine art may not,” he said. “It is good for me that I have experience in both.” Baca said he is amazed by Barajas’ energy and productivity at age 77. “We’re the same age, man, and I can hardly believe everything Sal does,” he said. “Chicano Park has a lot of pillars left, so we got to keep Sal going.” u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Slipping the surly bonds of Earth A surfing accident left teenage Humberto Gurmilan a quadriplegic, but did not tie him to his wheelchair – physically, spiritually or professionally. The former Telemundo television sports anchor and award-winning journalist said he enjoys bucking convention and showing other members of the disability community that their physical limitations should never limit their dreams. Gurmilan tells audiences at his motivational speeches that our personalities, spirits and souls live in our minds, not our arms and legs. People who are free to dream, he says, are free to do almost anything.

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PRESS SECRETARY * STAR TV SPORTS ANCHOR * AUTHOR * EMMY-AWARD WINNER * FILM

RENAISSANCE By Xiomara Villarreal-Gerardo

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY HUMBERTO GURMILAN

Pioneering Press Secretary

Gurmilan was recently named Press Secretary for new San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas. He said it is an honor to work for the region’s first-ever Latina County Supervisor, though he confessed he will miss teaching journalism at Southwestern College and San Diego City College. Gurmilan is a gifted writer in English and Spanish, with 15 years of on-air experience at Univision and Telemundo.

EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

eto and Pablo ran into the Baja California surf like the happy 15-year-olds they were, splashing through the whitewater until they could plop down on their boards to paddle out past the breakers. The waves were firing and the water was good. Everything was good. Until it no longer was. At the end of a ride, Beto dove off his board with a flourish into the shallow water. He landed on his head on the ocean floor and felt pain...then nothing. He could not move his arms or legs. For interminable seconds Pablo thought Beto was clowning around again, playing dead in the churning water. Then he realized something was wrong. Beto was hurt. Badly hurt. Pablo screamed for help as he dragged his motionless friend from the ocean. A bystander started CPR and a Red Cross ambulance crew loaded him for transport to a hospital. Beto had broken his neck. He would never walk again. Humberto Gurmilan was a quadriplegic that day forward. He was hospitalized for six months. Six very long months. “That is when my second journey started,” he said. “I

Popular motivational speaker A popular motivational speaker, Gurmilan said he enjoys speaking to journalism students, educators and philanthropists, but he has a special place in his heart for members of the disabled community. He said he wants to be a living example of what people can do if they set aside fear and the limited expectations of others.

R * FILM MAKER * FOUNDATION CEO * PROFESSOR * ELECTED OFFICIAL…and BORN AGAIN SURFER

CE HOMEBOY started back to a ‘regular’ life, quote-end quote.” Few people who know Gurmilan today would say there was anything “regular” about the 42-year-old polymath. He is an international news media star. An author. A popular college instructor. An elected official. A motivational speaker. Emmy Award winner. President of a foundation. And this month the newly-hired Press Secretary for San Diego County’s first Latina Supervisor, Nora Vargas. Also — best of all — once again a surfer.

(His adviser wanted to promote him to Editor-in-Chief, but he transferred mid-year to SDSU.) One day he told his adviser he was interested in becoming a television sportscaster and wondered what he should do to prepare. The professor suggested that in addition to continuing his journalism studies, he should develop his oral presentation skills by studying theater arts or joining the forensics team. Drama’s loss was the speech team’s gain. Gurmilan became an award-winning competitive forensic, successfully juggling that, the time-intensive student newspaper and his full-load of classes. He transferred to SDSU after six semesters at SC. Gurmilan wasted no time after earning a B.A. in Communication. He secured an internship at Univision and learned the ropes of broadcast news. Six months later he got a job at Telemundo as a sports writer. One fateful day when the sports anchor was unable to go on the air, the producer asked Gurmilan if he would like to fill in. Gurmilan saw that a door had opened for him. He took a deep breath and went through.

GATEWAY TO TELEMUNDO

urmilan’s “second journey” began at Montgomery High School when he joined KMMI, the school’s highly-regarded multimedia news outlet. He dabbled in the television component of the facility and found he enjoyed print journalism, too. Moving onto Southwestern College, Gurmilan joined The Sun and rose quickly to the position of News Editor.

“I think I was given a second opportunity to be able to do good things.” * EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

Shredding stereotypes Like the injured cowboy who stares down his fears to get back on his horse, Gurmilan decided he wanted to return to the waves. Gurmilan rides an adaptive surfboard his coach pushes into a swell. Once he is in the wave, Gurmilan is able to steer through the breaker and ride to the beach. Of his many talents, he said, surfing may be his favorite.

It was, he said, a boyhood dream come true. Soon his smiling face was on billboards, the sides of buses and benches at transit stops throughout the region. He became, arguably, Southwestern College’s most famous alumnus, a star on the most-watched newscast in one of America’s largest cities. His friends say Gurmilan’s fame never went to his head, not even for a minute. Ever the student, he continued to learn and grow, enrolling in a Master’s program at National University. He earned an M.A. in Communication while he ran the sports department at Telemundo. Gurmilan spent 15 years as sports anchor at Telemundo when he decided it was time for another journey. “I had a really great opportunity to do things that I dreamt about when I was young,” he said. “I have always been really grateful for people I have met along the way who believed in me and provided me with opportunities, especially (opportunities) to do things I love.” CALL OF THE CLASSROOM ...AND THE OCEAN

eaching beckoned and Gurmilan returned to Southwestern College to begin a new career. He was hired as an adjunct to teach journalism and communication classes. In a short time he blossomed into a popular profé at SC and San Diego City College, as well as other colleges across America where he taught online. “I am so happy that I got that opportunity to come back and see some of my old mentors and professors,” he said. “I hope I can help my students like they helped me.” Gurmilan also ramped up his schedule of motivational speeches. He said he feels blessed every time he is asked to speak. “It is part of my mission and why I believe I am here,” 56

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he said. “I think I was given a second opportunity to be able to do good things.” In 2012, Gurmilan wrote a critically-acclaimed book titled, “From My Chair,” a narration of his improbable journey and philosophical musings on love, family and perseverance. Writing his life story led him to thinking again about surfing and the fateful day he was injured. For 18 years he figured surfing was something he would never do again. Then he thought some more. Perhaps it was possible after all. While filming a documentary related to his book, Gurmilan returned to the exact Baja California surf break where he was so badly injured as a teenager. With the help of adaptive surfing professionals, he was strapped to a board and pushed into the breakers. His coach positioned him in a four-foot left break and let go. Gurmilan carved the wave under the warm Baja sun, grinning boyishly as a GoPro mounted on the nose of his board captured the moment. He had made it back. “That was my first experience and once I did that I was like, ‘I can actually do this’,” he said. “And it was fun, it was exciting. It was different than before, but at the same time it was the same feeling.” Gurmilan bought himself a specialized surfboard with handles and adaptations. He is, once again, a waterman free to live the excitement of riding the waves. Gliding through the water, he said, is a transcendental experience. “At that moment everything else goes away,” he said. “There is no stress, there is no work. There is no sadness, only a really great feeling of fulfillment and joy and excitement. It’s just amazing. I love those seconds I am on a wave. It could be just 30 seconds, but those become the best 30 seconds of my life. It’s awesome.”

Ebullient elected official In November 2018, Gurmilan was elected to the San Ysidro School District Board of Trustees. An outspoken advocate for equal educational opportunities for students living in low-income communities, Gurmilan promised to advocate for higher standards and higher student achievement in the border community. San Ysidro educators struggle with very high transiency rates and students who enter school at different ages with little or no English, but the district has made progress.

including adaptive surf camps. “The foundation is one of my favorite things in the world because I get to help other people just like other people helped me,” he said. “My inspiration was that I wanted to give back to other people with disabilities and support them so that they can experience how awesome it is to feel the support of others.” Gurmilan was elected to the San Ysidro School District board in 2018 and has been part of a progressive movement to improve educational opportunities in a challenged corner of the United States. Education was his ticket to the life he dreamed of, he said, and he is devoted to his community’s public schools. ANOTHER DOOR OPENS

Humble humanitarian Gurmilan and his family created the Gurmilan Foundation to encourage children and young adults with disabilities to achieve their dreams. The foundation recently helped to adapt a van for a bright young woman who uses a wheelchair so she could attend college and prepare for a career. Gurmilan and his team also lead adaptive sports activities, including a popular surf camp.

Inspired by his return to the surf, Gurmilan began to attack his once-dormant bucket list. He even went skydiving. In 2016, Gurmilan received an Emmy Award for Best Documentary. That same year, he started the Gurmilan Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to providing adaptive support to disabled people who, like him, are striving to reach their fullest potential. The foundation provides scholarships and hosts inspiring events —

hen former SC trustee Nora Vargas was elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in November, she became the first Latina seated on the powerful board. She asked Gurmilan to join her team as Press Secretary. He made the difficult decision to leave SC for the County Administration Building. “It is bittersweet because I will not be able to see students and will not be able to teach, but it is for a great reason,” he said. “I’ve joined an awesome team, a group of people committed to helping their community. Everybody is so smart and so experienced. I feel humbled to work with them. I am very grateful for the opportunity to join the team and to work with Supervisor Vargas. It’s (already) been amazing.” Gurmilan, ever the optimist, said he is still young and would not rule out a return to teaching later in life, perhaps as a full professor. After all, he explained, if he could return to surfing, anything seems possible. u EL SOL / SUMMER 2021

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AUTISM IS NO MATCH FOR AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST By Andrew Penalosa

A Perspective

ne typically sunny day in high school I sat down at my worn wooden desk and unzipped my backpack to prepare for my fifth class, Social Communications. My teacher played a VHS about the characteristics of autism. It changed my life. I identified with the autistic people on the screen. Blissful ignorance that had protected me was shattered like an eggshell and the pieces fell away one by one. Prior to that day I was a selfcentered autistic kid who lacked basic social skills like empathizing, reading body language and evaluating facial expressions. I had only two friends. Everyone else felt far away. I didn’t know how to communicate with my peers. I adapted to my environment through trial and error, not always well. My biggest obstacle was learning how to approach girls without coming off as a “creep.” A rough lesson ensued when I developed a crush on an attractive classmate. My feelings soared whenever I laid eyes on her. I felt I had to make her my girlfriend, even though I did not know how. One day I spotted her in a hallway. We spoke briefly and hugged. I left that experience thinking I needed to build on it by seeking her out and talking to her as often as possible. I thought it was okay to chase her down and talk to her every chance I had. I searched for her in hallways, injected myself when she was with her friends and often stared right at her. 58

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My vice principal called to talk about what I was doing, but nothing he said clicked. Another adult from school was more direct — I was stalking her. My speech therapist told me I could never approach my crush again because she would call the police. I broke down and cried. My therapist taught me about “emotion scales.” The target of my affection saw me differently when we first met compared to later when she called the vice principal. That moment was the emotional slap in the face I needed. It made me realize the world does not revolve around me and that other people have feelings I need to think about. I slowly learned how to make friends without crossing the “creep” line. I wanted to improve upon my interactions with young women in particular. Adjusting to casual language and learning not take jokes seriously were part of that journey. During my senior year, I unintentionally embarrassed a friend when I spoke about seeing her in a dream. I was not aware that such a comment might have romantic implications, even though I did not have a crush on her. I was summoned to the speech therapist’s office again. After that experience I grew some more. I learned I make friends when I put others’ needs and feelings before mine. I try to be careful about what I say. When I arrived at SC I felt clueless about what to do with my life. A counselor suggested I explore journalism. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. It led me to a wise professor who guided me to my true calling. At first I thought he was disinterested and I felt outclassed

by peers with experience in writing and photography. After completing my first class with him, I decided to take more journalism classes until I found the courage to register for The Southwestern College Sun newspaper. Once I arrived, I learned he was battling cancer and would not lead The Sun that semester. I decided to stay. I had a passion recommending products, movies and games to my peers. That led to writing reviews on campus art exhibitions. When the regular professor came back, I did my best to get to know him and show him my developing skills. He suggested I review an upcoming theater production called “Bring It On.” He said he had faith in me. Theater reviews were difficult at first because it required that I evaluate the play, the actors, music, production values and direction. I wrote three theater reviews that semester with confidence. That fall something wonderful happened. I learned I had won an award from the San Diego Press Club for a review of the play “Waiting for Lefty.” I was completely shocked and humbled. On October 28, I experienced one of my happiest birthdays when I learned I had won first place in the category of Critical Review. These awards are some of my proudest accomplishments. They showed me how far I have come from being a self-centered kid to a young man who has grown and is learning every day. Journalism led me to friendships and experiences that improved my life. Now I know that I can be autistic and still be successful. u

EL SOL Courage