Mariposa - Candice Coffee

Book notes and author interview on the novel Mariposa, set in West Texas.

http://rebecca2007.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/mariposa-author-interview-candice-coffe/

Teresa's Journey - Josephine Harper

Teresa's Journey.

By Josephine Harper and Jo Harper. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2006. viii, 162 pages. 28 illustrations, ISBN 089672591X $17.95 paper. Includes a “Pronunciation Guide to Nahuatl (Aztec) Words,” chapter notes to elucidate cultural points, and a bibliography. For young adults. http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/

Maybe you met Delfino in the earlier novel, Delfino’s Journey. Teresa is Delfino’s sister, and she must reunite with the earlier immigrants to the U.S. Teresa is now a 19-year-old widowed mother on a journey from “a safe nest,” a mountain paradise outside Mexico City through Texas to Houston. Their journey is hard. First there’s the erupting volcano, then there’s the strange fortune teller who tells her when danger comes to “Follow the caged quetzal,” and then there’s a menacing, murdering gang. She makes friends along the way. Family reunion follows, but then little Antonio is kidnapped. Full of action and character development models.

Both Josephine and Jo have written good books before, Prairie Dog Pioneers by Josephine and Olly Jolly, Rodeo Clown by the duo.

Wetback Nation - Peter Laufer

Wetback Nation:

The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border.

By Peter Laufer. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2006. $14.95 Paper 304 pp ISBN: 978-1-56663-670-1 http://www.ivanrdee.com/

Well, here’s a solution to border concerns, not so simply stated since U.S. Senator Sam Houston recommended to the Senate that the U.S. establish a “protectorate” over Northern Mexico.

Peter Laufer, originally a New Yorker but reared, educated and now practicing in California as a journalist, suggests that we ignore the old restrictions implied by traditional definitions of border. Free movement, it’s called.

Among Laufer’s other books are Made in Mexico, A Question of Consent, and Iron Curtain Rising.

Even Robert E. Lee seemed to disapprove of Houston’s protectorate idea, preferring to praise the U.S. Constitution. And this similarly “outrageous” proposal can evoke quick denunciation. Laufer’s case is based on his description of America’s “desperation” in our need for the workers, and it is buttressed by the human rights of the immigrants to be un-subjected to abuses. Among his documentation of many attitudes on the matter, poor Mexican economic conditions, tragic personal events, border guard incidents, and characterization of the recent border “militias” as vigilantes and Nazis, are also accounts of older history of border affairs and a lingering consideration of the concept of borders, both the U.S-Mexican and others around the world. Most of the material may be California based, but some Texana is included, such as the Victoria truck smuggling deaths.

In his final “Epilogue: A Practical Blueprint for Normalizing the Border” Laufer declares that border enforcement is unworkable and that both an autonomous zone and border militarization are politically impossible. Besides, the immigrants will find a way to cross. He offers the option of legalizing crossing freely and thereby solving a myriad other problems. Laufer acknowledges that “I’m prejudiced to favor Mexico and Mexicans,” and he explains that by his rearing in California’s Mexican culture.

The book could be a good one to introduce into book discussion groups.

El Paso - W.H. Timmons

El Paso: A Borderlands History.

By W. H. Timmons. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2005. ISBN 0-87404-246-1 Paper $40.00, 6 x 9, 473 pp., photos, illustrations, bibliography, index, a re-issue of 1990. http://www.utep.edu/twp; twp@utep.edu

W.H. Timmons, born 1915, studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin. After teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso for 30 years, he became a professor emeritus of history. He knew El Paso. Timmons’ volume stretches from antiquity to the 1980s and includes many illustrations by Jose Cisneros. The 40-page bibliography is itself a starting point for historians of the El Paso region. You should have this volume and C. L. Sonnichsen’s Pass of the North as bookends. See Timmons’ archives at UTEP described at http://libraryweb.utep.edu/special/findingaids/timmonswh.cfm

Often referred to as the “oldest town in Texas with some justification, Timmons treats in detail the pre-American period before 1848 in the first third of the history. El Paso, like Amarillo, is stuck way out there on the map, and its connection to broader Texas is often overlooked, but without El Paso as an immigrant and transportation nexus the westering would have blunted and splayed elsewhere. The stagecoach and railroads passage were literal bloodlines in economic development. Fort Bliss became a major economic engine. Folks in El Paso have a blurry Rio Grande line with Mexico’s Juarez with which their history is critically entwined.

Timmons brings unexpected facts to life. A Chinese community developed in wake of their laborers in laying the 1870s railroads. Folks took tourist trips to the actual border line to witness the “Battle of Juarez” during the Mexican Revolution. The cultural life was enlivened by the novelist and artist Tom Lea, artist Jose Cisneros, and printer Carl Hertzog, a trio rivaling Austin’s Dobie, Bedichek and Webb writing triumvirate and Amarillo’s writer J. Evetts Haley and artist Harold Bugbee twosome.

Overall, Timmons is an excellent selection for reading and edification.

Brush Country.

By Lionel Garcia. Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2004. ISBN 1-881515-62-1 paper $12.95 5 1/2x8. 88 pages. http://www.shsu.edu/~www_trp/ Winner of the 2003 Texas Review Poetry Prize.

The widely acclaimed and successful writer, Lionel Garcia reflects on his rearing and heritage of his homeland, the brush country of Southwest Texas. Garcia’s poems begin with notices of the countryside – the dry, nearly barren land, with the cenizo and frijollo in bloom, a rabbit licking moisture from the leaves, and a red-tail hawk, a green jay, and a feeding deer. “The brush speaks to me / The voice is hard and strong, like the people.” The infrequent rain is almost mythological for the condemned. But there’s dancing on Saturday night at the ranch. The boys go off to war. His horse, Rocinante, dies and his grandfather works away from home. He struggles between sport and food with the killing of a deer. A dove, the wind, and a pelican lift him and leave him to be “I am the door at a Brush Country house.”

For a riding accident, the horse is killed to regain control of life forces, else what stability is there in life. A child dies, and the death is ascribed to God’s will, and the child is better dead than in this hard life, else what stability is there in life. A cowbell rings as if announcing the birds’ flight of fate. The priest reprimands the poor parishioners for risqué clothing, but even “God cannot change the fates of life.” Pacho intimates with Maria. The oilmen come, the hunter goes, and Garcia wonders about yesterday. A crazy woman cries for her children. A father denies his hunger.

Throughout a dry, persistent love lingers in the shadows. The cenizo and frijollo scent the air. Garcia concludes “How beautiful to live without / Remorse of what could have been.” Else, the reader may wonder what stability is there in life. Would you love the caliche upon which you were born?

Fighting Padre - Edward Bastien

The Fighting Padre of Zapata :

Father Edward Bastien and the Falcon Dam Project.

By Edward Bastien; edited by María F Rollin. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2003. Southwestern Studies Series No. 110. ISBN 0-87404-285-2 Paper $18.00. 6 x 9, 265 pp., b&w photos, appendices, notes, biblio. http://www.utep.edu/twp/

Father Bastien was a good priest. When he arrived in Zapata on the Rio Grande, poor folks were being rather cavalierly, if properly according to the bureaucrats, displaced and poorly compensated by a giant engineering project to create the Falcon Dam Reservoir. He took pen in hand and began mailing or nailing letters and newspaper articles in protest and supplication. From President Eisenhower and Senator Johnson on down, he wrote. He invented a pen name “I. Poz” (that is, Irate People of Zapata) to use in his writings to the Laredo Times.

With wit and persistence, Father Bastien respected the community’s needs and brought some needed change to the affair. Father Bastien eventually grew ill and was transferred to another charge from where he covertly continued his efforts. He eventually created an additional manuscript, a portion of this volume, and left it in the care of the editor’s family. The letters and articles are remarkable to read. The book is more than just its own story. If you or others wish to learn how to write letters in support for a cause, it is an excellent laboratory and inspiration. Maybe the folks trying to save Caddo Lake could use the good Father’s model.

In that case the Eagle would follow the Dove. The reviewer would have liked to see some photographic reproductions of the letters in the Father’s own hand and typescript. Editor Maria Rollin earned degrees in Spain and Texas and has taught in both. He current teaches ESL in the Laredo Community College. She is congratulated for her insight and loyalty. The Flores Magon brothers would be proud.

Child of Many Rivers - Lucy Fischer-West

Child of Many Rivers: Journeys to and from the Rio Grande.

By Lucy Fischer-West, Foreword by Denise Chavez . Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2005. xvi, 190 pages. 32 b/w photos, index. ISBN 0896725561. $21.95 cloth http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/

This Child won the 2005 Southwest Book Award and was a 2006 WILLA Literary Award Finalist. Lucy Fischer-West teaches English at El Paso’s Cathedral High School, and her students are lucky that she does. You are lucky if you read the volume.

It started with contributions on her father and mother to the Texas Folklore Society. In the “Epilogue” she summarizes that “Rivers for me are a continuum, linking not only each other but also past and present and most importantly all the people who belong to them and have touched my life.”

Her father was a German sailor, her mother was the “youngest and most beautiful girl in a family of twelve” in Camargo, Chihuahua. As young girl, Lucy patted tortilla balls beside the Conchos River, and as a mature woman she washed her hands in the Ganges and received a blessing from Sister Teresa. Her autobiographical essays lure the reader through the gifts of cultures.

Whether she’s sharing the aroma of the El Paso market, the horrible auto accident near the River Clyde, French rocks with Paulette, touring India and Nepal on the Rotary trip “to improve international understanding,” Lucy’s waters mingle in a beautiful human stream. Un millon de gracias, Lucy.

Patrolling Chaos - Robert Lee Maril

Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas.

By Robert Lee Maril. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004. ISBN-13 978-0-89672-594-2 (pbk) 368 pages. $24.95 http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/

This book is real – real life of border patrolling, and it’s messy. Experienced sociologist and book author, Maril spent several long months living the work and private lives of a dozen agents on the McAllen border. His intent to “understand” the agents and their world comes out honest and clear. His sharp prose and psychological insights leave the reader feeling the wrinkles on the agent’s tanned faces and hands, the family strains, the hardship of solitary midnight duty, in the dark, often subject to danger from narcotraficantes and immigration coyotes.

The chaos comes from the agents existing in a kaleidoscopic world where the illegals are unpredictable, the bizarre, surreal federal bureaucracy functions in la-la land, practicalities of daily living emerge, and frequent social disdain covers entanglements. All this is back-grounded by the obvious reality that the border is not under control.

Maril’s book can be viewed in four perspectives – agents’ work and lives, historical retrospectives, and the rigid, politically driven policies and rules.

Yes, incompetence, bribery, beyond-dumbness on many sides, racism, and violence all play a role. And the agents, most good, honest folks, show up for shift work each day to patrol your Texas border. Maril puts you there, and he does it well.