Nuestra Palabra Turns 21

Nuestra Palabra Turns 21 and Transforms Houston & Latino art                        

Houston, Texas, February 22, 2019.  With two decades under its belt, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say has made a significant impact on the city and its arts. Now, as the group celebrates its 21st anniversary, Nuestra Palabra is poised to take Latino Art and Literature to the next level and fuel a city a wide movement to make Houston the nation’s leader in delivering Latino Art and Culture.  Nuestra Palabra plans to accomplish this by helping the community take advantage of new technology to work more closely together. One example of this is the new website www.MANTECAHTX.com. This is the nation’s first online directory for Latinx artists ranging from visual artists to writers, to musicians and filmmakers. “We are cultural accelerators,” said writer, Tony Diaz, the founder and director of Nuestra Palabra. “We have worked to cultivate our community’s voice through literature. We are now collaborating with other art forms through technology to multiply our efforts and reach more of our community. Houston will be seen as the nation’s leader for supporting and delivering our community’s art.” MANTECAHTX.Com is a collaboration with Houston Latina visual artists. It is made possible in part through a grant from City Initiatives. Nuestra Palabra is also the fiscal sponsor for Macondo Writers, the writers retreat founded by writer Sandra Cisneros over 20 years ago. Nuestra Palabra helped the group launch, maintain, and market its website. Over 100 applicants apply for the annual workshops which take place in San Antonio and are conducted by the leading Latino writers in the nation, take place annually in San Antonio. Nuestra Palabra will soon be making a major announcement with Texas A & M University San Antonio about The Macondo Writers Workshop. Nuestra Palabra’s 21st anniversary showcase will reflect all of these influences as well as the group’s dedication to literature and literacy. The literary celebration is funded in part through a grant from City Initiatives. It will take place Wednesday, April 3, 2019 from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Brown Auditorium. Admission is free. RSVP at www.NuestraPalabra.org. The evening will feature: The Godfather of Chicano Literature, Dagoberto Gilb who is the author of nine books, including The Magic of Blood, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, Woodcuts of Women, Gritos, The Flowers, and Before the End, After the Beginning. He is also the editor of two canonical anthologies, Hecho en Tejas: Texas Mexican Literature and Mexican American Literature, and the founding editor of Huizache, the country’s best Latino literary magazine Mari Carmen Ramirez is The MFAH Wortham Curator of Latin American Art. She will discuss the museum’s holdings of Mexican American and Latino art. Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garciawill make a special announcement on a new Latino Art Initiative. The evening will feature leading Latino writers, thinkers and leaders, as well as 3 Nuestra Palabra 2nd Generation Writers who began writing with Nuestra Palabra and are now nationally published authors. Poet Lupe Mendez will present his his new book “Why I Am Like Tequila”. Poet Jasminne Mendez will read from her new book “Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry”. Poet Leslie Contreras Schwartz will read from her book “Nightbloom & Cenote”.   Who: Latino leaders, thinkers, and writers What: Celebrate Nuestra Palabra’s 21st Anniversary When: Wednesday April 3, 2019. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Where: Museum of Fine Art, Brown Auditorium 1001 Bissonnet St, Houston, TX 77005 Why: Nuestra Palabra has transformed the landscape for Latino Literature and is now changing Latinx art for the next generation. Contact:  Tony Diaz Tony@NuestraPalabra.org (713) 867-8943 Librotraficante, P.O. Box  41628, Houston, 77241

Chiapas: Mass Forced Displacement in Chabajeval, Municipality El Bosque

(@Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights)

The crisis of internal forced displacement in the highlands of Chiapas reached a new peak on November 7th when, according to the parish priest of Simojovel, Marcelo Perez Perez, in the community of Chavajeval, municipality of El Bosque, almost all of the inhabitants of the town (about a thousand people according to the first estimates) fled from there after a conflict in which a 65-year-old man died. On the same day, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights reported that, “while a community assembly was held, there was an explosion and shots were later heard.”

Since that date, displaced people have sought refuge in various places, including in nearby mountains or in the town of El Bosque and in the municipalities of Chenalho, Chalchihuitan and San Cristobal de Las Casas.

Given the rumor that more displaced people were…

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IMMIGRANT INVADERS RAID THE FEDERAL RESERVE

Eléctrica in the Desert

EMPRESS AND HER CABINET  LEAD ATTACK  IN PERSON

From left, Coordinator of Defense, known only as O’Boyle, the Empress, Secretary of State Kito Gamble, and Minister of Justice Joshua Drayton. Note that O’Boyle proudly rests her elbows on a weapon of mass destruction.

Following a shocking terrorist attack on the Federal Reserve, I.C.E, has been granted temporary political control of the nation.

Leaders of the government installed in Phoenix by the invading Zapata-Nat Turner-Geronimo Coalition raided the Federal Reserve in a surprise attack that immobilized the System’s Fourth District Bank in Cleveland, leaving its officers stunned and without comment. The operation was personally led by the Empress of America herself, who was driving a custom-made Terror Tank, followed by two of the Coalition’s  international volunteer units, the Victor Jara Brigade (Chile) and the Harriet Tubman Brigade (US)

The House granted  Designated for Unilateral Approval status to the ICE National Emergency Plan, citing its authority in…

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It is Your Duty to Refuse: Former Army Rangers Write to U.S. Troops

To All Active Duty Soldiers:

Your Commander-in-chief is lying to you. You should refuse his orders to deploy to the southern US border should you be called to do so. Despite what Trump and his administration are saying, the migrants moving North towards the US are not a threat. These small numbers of people are escaping intense violence. In fact, much of the reason these men and women—with families just like yours and ours—are fleeing their homes is because of the US meddling in their country’s elections. Look no further than Honduras, where the Obama administration supported the overthrow of a democratically elected president who was then replaced by a repressive dictator.

These extremely poor and vulnerable people are desperate for peace. Who among us would walk a thousand miles with only the clothes on our back without great cause? The odds are good that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. lived similar experiences to these migrants. Unless your ancestors are native to this land, your family members came to the US to seek a better life—some fled violence. Consider this as you are asked to confront these unarmed men, women and children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. To do so would be the ultimate hypocrisy.

US is the richest country in the world, in part because it has exploited countries in Latin America for decades. If you treat people from these countries like criminals, as Trump hopes you will, you only contribute to the legacy of pillage and plunder beneath our southern border. We need to confront this history together, we need to confront the reality of America’s wealth and both share and give it back with these people. Above all else, we cannot turn them away at our door. They will die if we do.

By every moral or ethical standard it is your duty to refuse orders to “defend” the US from these migrants. History will look kindly upon you if you do. There are tens of thousands of us who will support your decision to lay your weapons down. You are better than your Commander-in-chief. Our only advice is to resist in groups. Organize with your fellow soldiers. Do not go this alone. It is much harder to punish the many than the few.

In solidarity,

Rory Fanning
Former US Army Ranger, War-Resister

Spenser Rapone
Former US Army Ranger and Infantry Officer, War-Resister

 

Published in The Nation, November 2, 20018

Click Below

RORY FANNING AND SPENSER RAPONE

 

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SELF-PORTRAITS OF THE EARTH AS ME

  I want to live inside a camera.

 

I want to migrate back and forth across the sky

inside a flock of wild geese.

I am their camera and their eye.

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I Chose Sides/Claire O’Brien 2001

 

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PLEASE SHARE

N I G H T M O T E L

 

  N I G H T  M O T E L                                                           Claire O’Brien 

 

Untitled /. Claire O’Brien

 

Follow the Green Line / Claire O’Brien

 

Taxi Service /. Claire O’Brien

 

The King of Baltimore ./ Claire O’Brien

When I saw my teacher

Eléctrica in the Desert

Kindness Blog photo 18 Jan 2014 /Graphic additions, Claire O’Brien

PLEASE  TEACH ME WHAT YOU KNOW:

NOTES FROM RICHARD, LONG AGO

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I saw you right away,  standing alone while a clickety-clack crowd walked right through you.

Nobody saw you. It was such a thin October day.

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There are people stuck forever on the edges of the town:

No one ever told them that the railroad tracks are gone.

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For all I knew, the sun might have set off-schedule and then splintered into neon rings, now circling above San Antonio. In those days, people refused to believe in things like their shoes and the weather.  The rain was as unpersuasive as a stranger bumming rides to a parade.

“When no one can see you, how do you stop from becoming invisible?” I asked you. I really had to know.

 Deceit’s standard bearers have long military careers but short lives.  For…

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A HOME IN THAT ROCK: THE WAR ON BLACK BOYS

Eléctrica in the Desert

                            IT WILL LIVE INSIDE ME FOREVER

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, halfway between sleep and consciousness, I go to the place where that bewildered boy of long ago still dwells in me, and my eyes fill with tears. I tell him that he is safe now, and that I will protect him. But the scars on his soul ache, and although he wishes me well in his little, manly way, he is able to draw little solace from my presence.

When I stand in front of my students, my mind often wanders back to those years. Almost as if it were yesterday, I vividly recall watching my father being beaten by the police. I have never felt more impotent and powerless than I did in those days.

They will live inside of me forever.

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HEY, IS THIS ART?

Eléctrica in the Desert

Is this art? Or is it a drawer?

That bumpy yellow wall – what for?

I guess I was expecting more…

Look! The gum I lost awaits, resplendent:

Now that is what I call transcendent!

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