We remember. You lived, like your forebears in Mexico, as men, contributing to your times, to others, to society. My father,
Jesús B. Ochoa Sr., (1903 - 1976): my uncle, Cleofas Calleros, (1896 - 1973). You live, still. You are remembered, and honored.
"There are moments, writes poet Charles Simic, 'when true invective is called for, when it becomes an absolute necessity, out of a deep sense of justice, to denounce, mock, vituperate, lash out, in the strongest possible language.' But however we act, we'd do well to treat ordinary citizens with respect."
-- Charles Simic, quoted in "The argument culture," Irish Times, December 17, 1998
A Short Note: This is a very public declaration of Unconditional Surrender in what are known as the "browser wars." For more reasons than I can understand, Internet Explorer does not read, in some instances, my attempts at html language or style sheets correctly. But the Firefox and Opera browsers more or less do so. I have created this page, with a little help from my friends, from scratch instead of using any of the splendid and free blogger templates available. This for a reason. I am old, and need to exercise the brain to fight the short (and some long) term memory loss. But pleasing Microsoft is harder than solving the NY Times Sunday crossword. Besides which, I have spent time exercising my poor brain trying to please Internet Explorer sufficient in quantity to reach 80 years. And the odds of that happening are slim indeed.
So if you want to read the thing more or less how it is meant to be read, preferably use Firefox. Just because it is open source, and is free. And you need to install the latest Adobe Flash Player, which is also free. I know it is in poor form to write what I just wrote, but like I said, I am old and am not willing to wait until Microsoft or I, for that matter, clean up our act.
I had meant to post the Carlsen article which appears below earlier, but because of complications due to recent eye surgery, I was banned from the computer for a few days and this time I decided to pay attention to the docs. Here from the great black group Sweet Honey in the Rock, an unforgetable, powerful musical shoutout for all the people. A tip of the beret to my good pal Chava Avila, who continues to keep me on my toes.
Enjoy.
Boycott Arizona!
Poetry Corner
Today I Saw a Butterfly Die - Hoy Presencie la Muerte
de una Mariposa
Odd mismatch, two words that fail
to parse you, shimmering beauty,
tasting this flower and the other
in no apparent order, then off
to ride the wind with wings
so poorly suited to the task,
stuttering in measureless dance
ah, so blind to the lurking mantis
leaving an exquisite piece of wing
floating soundlessly to Mother Earth,
brief remembrance of translucent
passage that unmarked, must serve
to honor God's unfathomable palette.
Palabra sin sentido que falla al
analizarte, belleza translucente,
saboreando esta flor y la otra
sin orden alguna, para luego
montar el viento con alas
pobremente aptas para tal tarea,
tartamudeando en baile sin medida
ay, tan ciega al mantis acechante
dejando un trozo exquisito de ala
flotando silencioso hacia la Madre Tierra,
breve remembranza de un claro pasaje
que sin dejar huella, ha de servir para
dar honra a la insondable paleta del Creador.
Jesús B. Otxoa, © 17 Mayo 2010
June 17, 2010, Demonstration in Honor of
Sergio Adrian Hernandez
United States Embassy, Mexico City
We have the right to peace, which is why we erect a border for peace, a mobile border, to face so much violence. We have no walls, we are not armed, all we have is one another. There is nothing higher, wider, stronger, than the solidarity between people.
Who can pierce it?
Solidarity is to embrace the pain of another, to make it ours, wound for wound, to heal with the hope of constructing a different now and today.
Who can pierce it?
This is the history of our peoples, its struggle, its song, its joy with life -
Who can destroy this?
Join us, be a part of this border for peace, bring flowers, bring candles, bring ribbons, so that together we can build a world without borders.
Murder at the Black Bridge
In a thoughtful article published on June 17, 2010 in Foreign Policy in Focus, a publication of the Institute for Policy Studies and picked up by Common Dreams, Counterpunch and David from Molly Molloy's list at Frontera Norte-Sur over at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, Laura Carlsen wrote:
"Sergio Hernandez Guereca's short life revolved around the U.S. - Mexico border that ultimately led to his death. On June 7, at approximately 6:30 p.m., a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot the 15-year-old Hernandez in the face in Mexican territory between Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas.
Most of the facts are not in dispute. A cell-phone video aired on Univision shows four people crossing into U.S. territory over the dried-up riverbed of the Rio Grande. When one is captured by a Border Patrol agent, the others begin to run back to the Mexico side. The Border Patrol agent opens fire across the border.
Sergio fell dead under a bridge. The Chihuahua medical examiner's autopsy revealed that he died from a gunshot wound to the head. Witnesses stated that the boys threw rocks at the agents, and the Border Patrol agent let loose with at least three direct shots.
Initial U.S. Defensiveness
Reactions came swiftly from both sides. The U.S. government responded defensively, even before the facts were known. An FBI statement released June 8, entitled 'Assault on Federal Officer Investigated,' announced aninvestigation into the 'assault,' although there were no reports of any injuries to U.S. agents. The statement asserts that the agents responded to 'a group of suspected illegal aliens being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.' It further states that 'the subjects surrounded the agent' - a contention in no way borne out by the video.
In an almost offhand manner, it adds in paragraph three: 'The agent then fired his service weapon several times, striking one subject who later died.'
In an interview with CNN, FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons noted that she did not know the Border Patrol's policy on use of deadly force, which was not in any case the FBI's concern. She dismissed the relevance of the boy's murder, stating, 'This is not a civil rights investigation.' Simmons then went so far as to spin out a purely hypothetical situation in which the immigrants 'could potentially overpower him (the agent) and take his gun and shoot him,' a situation that was not even remotely the case.
The next day the State Department responded to a question saying only that 'an agent discharged his firearm, killing one of the suspects' and affirming that the only investigation ordered pertained to the assault on the federal agent. The U.S. government has to date refused to identify the agent, stating that he is currently placed on paid leave."
The article goes on, but the salient points have been made. As I see them, they are three:
One. The Border Patrol agent was not hit by any rock, real or virtual. He suffered no injury.
Two. Truth continues to be a low, if not the lowest, priority when the FBI investigates a crime committed by a federal law enforcement type. Dehumanizing the victim normally follows.
Three. A crime committed by a federal law enforcement type and/or the consequences suffered by the victim, including death, are apparently irrelevant vis-a-vis the safety and public image of the perpetrator.
I believe we are living the consequences of lawless law enforcement that began back in the 20s and peaked in the days of "Cointelpro" - the FBI's ill fated counter intelligence progam. For the young among us, here is how the Wikipedia, in a heavily annotated article, partially describes this seminal exercise in lawless activity by the armed buffoonery:
"According to FBI records, 85% of COINTELPRO resources were expended on infiltrating, disrupting, marginalizing, and/or subverting groups suspected of being subversive . . . The other 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert 'white hate groups,' including the Ku Klux Klan and National States' Rights Party . . . A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the 'Church Committee' for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.
"In the Final Report of the Select Committee, COINTELPRO was castigated in no uncertain terms:
"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that . . . the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence . . .[8]
"The Church Committee documented a history of FBI directors using the agency for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up 'anarchists and revolutionaries' for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976 . . ."[5]
I have added the emphasis.
So am I surprised by special agent Andrea Simmon's abject performance in the CNN interview? Not in the slightest. She in the very personification of the arrogant federal law enforcement type, comfortable with the mantle of invincibility which she believes clothes her and gives her comments, foolish and awkward as they may be, the ring of truth.
Surely this is because with a few exceptions across the years, save in what I call in-house crimes like drug smuggling and human trafficking, the sad truth is that crimes against the dread alien committed by federal law enforcement types have rarely been prosecuted.
There are, of course, exceptions. And fortunately so, some of these have arisen from incidents in El Paso. The prosecution of the rogue Border Patrol Agents Compean and Ramon comes to mind, as does the following, reprinted in its entirety:
'WASHINGTON - Pablo Rosario, a former U.S. Border Patrol Agent stationed in El Paso, Texas, was sentenced today in federal court in El Paso to 24 months imprisonment for violating the civil rights of two illegal aliens. After release from prison, Rosario will be on federal supervised release for one year.
Rosario worked as a Border Patrol agent from 2000 to 2006. On July 26, 2007, Rosario pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the civil rights of two female undocumented aliens, a mother and her 15-year-old daughter. Specifically, Rosario admitted that he apprehended the two women on March 7, 2004, and fondled the victims' breasts and genitals during the course of a search incident to their arrests. After the assaults, Rosario released the aliens without processing them.
'This defendant violated the public's trust and committed reprehensible assaults against two innocent female victims,' said Rena J. Comisac, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. 'This prosecution demonstrates the Justice Department's commitment to aggressively pursuing law enforcement officials who willfully abuse those entrusted to their custody,' Comisac added.
The Civil Rights Division is committed to the aggressive enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws. In the past seven years of this Administration, the Division has convicted over 50 percent more defendants for color of law, or official misconduct, violations than in the previous seven years. The Division continues to set records in the enforcement of criminal civil law. Last year, the Division convicted 189 defendants for civil rights violations, which is a record number in the 50-year history of the Division. Last year's record broke the record set in 2006.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General. Assistant United States Attorney Russell Leachman and Trial Attorney James Felte from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice prosecuted the case."
24 months?
Do I expect an indictment in this latest killing on the border? The available evidence shows that:
independent witnesses have stated the agent sighted for about 4 seconds and then fired several times:
the agent's life was not in imminent danger, nor did he suffer any injury prior to and during the time he discharged his firearm:
the agent's actions deprived the victim of his most basic civil right, the right to life as a breathing, living human being 15 years of age.
So, do I expect an indictment? No, at least not until facially incompetent agents like Simmons are removed from the case. But I do hope, probably foolishly, for one somewhere down the road.
At the minimum, someone needs to tell the Hernández-Guereca family to sue the agent and the United States Government in a Federal Court in El Paso.
Do I think the FBI is the victim-friendly outfit as portrayed in tv shows and at least one historically incorrect, stupid movie - Mississippi Burning,? No, I do not.
During my early years as a lawyer, the FBI was complicit, along with rogue local police, in the murders of several Black Panther Party members - notably Fred Hampton, who was murdered while asleep in his bed in his Chicago apartment. During this era, the infamous Leonard Peltier trial, based on doctored evidence, took place.
One day in 1966, I think it was, Gordon Ellison came to my office and introduced himself. Some forty years later, on April 27, 2006, I sent out the following as part of an e-mail to a few people:
"Long ago I was visited at my office by a dapper man not much older than I who introduced himself as Gordon Ellison, special agent, FBI. I invited him to sit down and he immediately launched into his speech. The FBI, it seemed, had been watching my growing list of dissident clients, some of whom appeared from time to time in the media.
Agent Ellison was too clever by half. Telling me that since I had graduated with honors from a school that had produced many patriots and staunch Catholics, I had a right to be proud of being a good Catholic lawyer. When I told him I was rather surprised at his comment, given that I had graduated from the University of Texas School of Law, he immediately and smoothly answered that he wasn't referring to UT but to the University of Notre Dame.
Then he said that because I'd only been practicing for a short while, I really neeed to be careful that I wasn't being "taken in" - that expression has stayed with me all these years - by some of my more activist clients, because he knew that some of them were, of course, subersives and not above seeking to overthrow the government.
In any event, he was so full of himself it was obvious he really believed that should I suspect that any of my clients were in fact subversives, I would not hesitate in the slightest to call him. I immeditely said, 'absolutely so. My first duty is to the country and the Constitution.'
He arose, handed me his card, congratulated me on my work, and left. I was impressed with the ease with which he had immediately begun to talk, his apparent sincerity, in fact, with his whole demeanor and command of the situation. There was only one flaw: his patronizing attitude was way out in front, and I saw right through him. I threw his card in the wastebasket when he left. Besides which, he had let me know that I too was being watched, and carefully. It was a message that has stayed with me as if our meeting had taken place yesterday.
Years later, during a Democratic precinct meeting I ran into the same patronizing attitude when in a discussion with an older liberal white lady, she blurted out "you Chicanos don't" - and stopped, and then apologized. I simply told her I guess you really have to be one to know one, and moved on.
I dimly remember having run across Gordon Ellison's name at about the same time some five or so years ago when the liberal lay Catholic magazine Commonweal ran a couple of articles about Ambassador White's work in Central America and how he was replaced by John Negroponte, whom I think can accurately be described as an apologist for murderers and torturers. (Note: - and who is one of the Bush holdovers who continues to work for the Obama Administration).
Either in one of those articles or in a link that led to him, Gordon Ellison surfaced again and was identified as some variety of attaché to some embassy or another. I remember thinking, Gordon, you've come a ways.
Then I decided to Google his name, so I typed in 'Gordon Ellison, FBI', and this is what I came up with
'AIFLD on the Prowl along the Border
'Watch your wallet if Gordon Ellison walks in your office he wants to slip something in it. Ellison is an old hand with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), itself the old guard of the AFL-CIO's Cold War foreign policy apparatus, and he's looking for a few good labor organizations along the border.
AIFLD's sordid history in Central America, where it undermined independent, left-leaning labor movements, financed opponents of Nicaragua's Sandinistas, and was widely accused of providing cover for CIA agents, gives good reason for concern about its recent interest in Mexico.
Early this year AIFLD received a grant of $113,400 from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy to monitor labor rights violations in Mexico and it has a $2 million, four-year grant application for union-related work pending with the U.S. Agency for International Development. AIFLD has encountered difficulty establishing an office in Mexico City, however, where CTM officials made it known they were opposed to the institute's presence.
'We're having problems with immigration officials,' AIFLD's Mexico programs director Mike Verdu said. 'There are people who don't want us here.' One possibility Verdu is considering is seting up office in El Paso.
Even before moving to El Paso, AIFLD is clearly interested in moving into the cross-border organizing activity along the border. Ellison has visited at least two progressive activists, Mary Tong of the Maquila Support Committee in San Diego and Gustavo de la Rosa* of Despacho Obrero in Ciudad Juarez.'
I also found this: 'The slow, sensitive and delicate work of developing relations between U.S. and Mexican labor organizers has been disrupted by AIFLD coming in and throwing money around,'says Phoebe McKinney of the American Friends Service Committee. The AIFLD approach to independent unions is headed by Gordon Ellison, a retired FBI agent who has received praise from the NRED's Carl Gershman for makig a 'sterling contribution' to the downfall of Nicaragua's Sandinista party."
There were several links in the above e-mails. They are all dead, so I do not reprint them here. Unfortunately, the closest thing I can find currently that documents Ellison's post-FBI history is here, if you scroll to the bottom of #3.
But you know, the FBI, like the ICE people, are components of the same federal behemoth. This is where it gets nasty, because all of them, Homeland (ugh, germanic nazi overtones) Security, State Department, Interior, they all dance to the tune coming from the White House. And there is where the fault likes. I heard the President's take on "immigration reform" yesterday. I have no idea who wrote the sorry speech, but it sure sounded like Rahm Emmanuel. What was clear is that the culprits were the dread alien, en masse.
Pay a fine. For daring to work? Right, Mr. President. Even for status offenses?
Learn English. Well yes, they have to, when they apply for citizenship.
Pay taxes. But they do, in vast numbers, through numbered accounts made possible by the IRS. You might check your departnemt heads, Mr. President, because there is credible data from your government that the very people who will never receive any benefits for their contributions are in fact and in large part keeping the Social Security Administration afloat.
But of course, you're probably too busy thinking up scholarly ways to continue to justify torture - are you on Dershowitz's mailing list? - to keep Guantanamo Bay open, to appoint people to a commission to overhaul Social Security by working to privatize it, to continue fighting two wars that are draining the eonomy, terribly punishing our youth, for what? To appease the Israeli hard right and to hell with our country and its desperately felt needs?
You get the picture, Mr. President, or should. More than a few of the Chicano-Mexican-American-Latino commuhnity have lost faith in you, let alone hope.
You really should stop preaching, and take a lesson or two in how to lead. And, by the way, the advice you get from your doctor of charm who teaches you that when giving a speech, you should look from side to side but never directly at the camera and therefore not at your audience, simply serves to make you come on like someone selling pirated movies.
Finally, Mr. President, you simply do not have the moral standing to preach about the dread aliens who have broken the law and must pay fines, at a time when your aunt received political asylum on a rather thin claim of being fearful of returning to her home country. Understand, I am not unsympathetic to her, but I do wonder how you justify the raids to deport even the non-criminal people which have increased in comparison to those under the Bush Admninistration.
Are you really not aware of what goes on, and of the thuggish behavior and winking at the Constitution that accompanies these inhumane raids? Surely someone in the West Wing subscribes to the Progressive Magazine. If not, you should really read it now and again and find out what goes on that the friendly press fails to report. It could help you understand the temper of the times and the perils in trying to work with the radical right, known to you as bipartisanship. Talk about chasing a gossamer.
And on that note, let's listen to a Charlie Chaplin as he delivers his "speech for humanity, which he wrote himself - with a grateful tip of the sombrero to the good people over at the Bellaciao Collective.
*My old friend Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, ombudsman for the state of Chihuahua's Commission for Human Rights, was honored last April by the Board of Directors of Annunciation House in El Paso with a Voice of the Voiceless award for his many years of labor in Juárez, Mexico on behalf of human rights. At the time, he was in El Paso for his safety, having been threatened with death should he return to Juárez.
- 30 -
Jesus B Ochoa
About
(previous entries)
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