i exist. aquí. contigo.

The police claims that this ‘torture’ training is to prepare agents against torture that might be inflicted upon them. Right. We heard this one before. This is the same excuse that the US military/CIA recently gave.

Edil panista de León defiende que se enseñe a policías cómo torturar

Carlos García y Agustín Galo Samario (Corresponsales)

Ampliar la imagen El alcalde de León, Guanajuato, el panista Vicente Guerrero Reynoso (en primer plano), advirtió que continuarán los entrenamientos a policías municipales para enseñarlos a torturar: al fondo, el secretario de seguridad pública del ayuntamiento, Alvar Cabeza de Vaca Foto: Carlos García

León, Gto, 1º de julio. Los entrenamientos impartidos a miembros del Grupo Especial Táctico (GET) de la policía municipal de León, Guanajuato, para enseñarlos a torturar continuarán y ningún funcionario será destituido, afirmó este martes el alcalde panista de dicha localidad, Vicente Guerrero Reynoso, quien pidió a los medios de comunicación: “Por favor, sean más éticos, sean más responsables. Den la nota con elementos, no con supuestos. Ya basta, ya basta de este tipo de cosas. Le hacen mucho daño a la sociedad. Actúen éticamente, por favor”.

En cuanto a los videos que tiene La Jornada, difundidos originalmente por el diario regional El Heraldo de León, que muestran las agresiones y vejaciones infligidas a policías de León como parte de su preparación para torturar, el gobernador de Guanajuato, Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez, dijo que una de las grabaciones es “hechiza”.

Añadió que Guerrero Reynoso se comprometió con él a garantizar el respeto a los derechos humanos y la vigencia del estado de derecho en León. “Yo le creo, creo en su convicción y no voy a entrar en discusiones”, dijo el mandatario emanado del Partido Acción Nacional, al igual que el alcalde leonés.

El presidente municipal señaló que las tácticas enseñadas por una persona no identificada, de nacionalidad inglesa, son “parte de un entrenamiento que no se va a suspender. Así de sencillo”.

En entrevista colectiva, Guerrero Reynoso sostuvo que él y los colaboradores “estamos muy tranquilos, trabajando, haciendo nuestra tarea, y a ustedes (los medios de comunicación) les toca hacer la difusión de las notas en forma ética y profesional”.

El presidente municipal advirtió que ya no dará más declaraciones sobre los videos en los que se observa a policías del GET aplicar a sus compañeros torturas como el tehuacanazo (introducir agua gasificada por las fosas nasales) y el pocito (sumergir la cabeza de la víctima en excremento) porque “ha habido un teléfono descompuesto. En su momento daremos información, si es conveniente, a través de la policía”.

Las autoridades de León se han negado a precisar quién y desde cuándo imparte los cursos, y quién lo contrató.

Es “capacitación” para “situaciones estresantes”

I found this cool looking flower at Alum Rock Park, in San Jose. I never seen a flower like this before. I wonder what kind of flower it is. I think it looks like ‘toloache,’ one of those flowers ‘brujas’ use to make love potions (i think it actually messes up the brain, atrofina i think is the scientific name). I know that there are many hallucinogen and/or curative flowers out there.

Is is a bailarina? A beautiful bird? Yes, its Celeste Quetzalli at the Park. My family came back from their trip in Mexico, and the first things I did, was to take tete to the park.

I advanced/propose the following definition of “Xican@” (xicano, xicana):

A Xican@ is someone who struggles for the well being of others and mother earth. Xicana/o is a holistic nurturing identity, that emphasizes healing of our historical/personal traumas in community. A Xicano/a is an indigenous person as much as it identifies as such, and where indigenous means recognizing our belonging to mother earth and our interconnectedness with all living things.

More than cultural pride (as important as this is) is our ethical commitments. Knowing where we stand in the world and in history is also important.

[Here’s another post inspired by all the philosophy stuff am reading now a days.]

“Liberation becomes then not so much a struggle for freedom and equality as a struggle for human fraternity.” From Nelson Maldonado-Torres Against War (who also happens to be one of my dissertation advisers).

Liberation (or decolonization) is not reached when the King/State decree “an emancipation proclamation” or opens the gates of citizenship. Neither is it reached when every ‘citizen’ is declared equal. Just think about the end of the US Civil War, it ended slavery but did not end servitude and exclusion. The Civil Rights Movement made great leaps in ending ’second class citizenship’ (Jim Crow laws and legal segregation). But today ‘we’ people of color, the working-class, migrants, women, queers, and all the excluded don’t live in the types of societies we desire. I for one don’t feel free or safe (i always feel uneasy around cops or groups of white men), don’t feel like my voice really counts, or that I am loved and accepted in my community (I say hi to my neighbors, but neither of us really tries making bridges).
The hardest thing to do, but also the only way we can be free and equal, is by creating loving communities with those around us (no matter their color, gender, sexual orientation). A community of respect and love. I don’t want to be equal in law only, but in well-being. I don’t want to be free only in isolation, but a freedom made possible with others who are free with me.

Check out my muxtape list. Some musika revolucionaria.

1. Mescalito - Cosa Buena
2. Arpioni - Zapata
3. Cihuatl Ce - Rise Above
4. Manu Chao - Clandestino
5. Olmeca - Ese Dia
6. Cihuatl Ce - The Drums Before The Battle
7. Son Jarocho - Luna Negra
8. Aztlán Underground - Revolution
9. Ikuestion - Krusando Fronteras
10. Olmeca - Batalla
11. Mix Oaxaca Resiste - Señor Presidente
12. Adelitas - Deportemos a la migra

Gas and food prices keep going through the roof, why haven’t we heard about a national day of strike to protest the high prices (in addition to the War in Iraq draining the economy)? Oil and food companies are not loosing any money, on the contrary, they are reporting record high profits. In various countries, like in Ecuador and Argentina, national strikes against banking corruption, high oil and food prices have brought presidents down. President Bush’s approval rating is lying dead on the floor. Depending on what poll you go on, less than 25% of the population support Bush (which means more than 75% of the pop. dislike Bush). How can he even stay president! There are many reasons to protest the Congress and the presidency, when are we going to act?

I know that there are many progressive folk who are for Obama, but while I first gave him the benefit of the doubt, as time goes by, I am convinced that he is just like any other Democratic candidate (besides him being black, which is a symbolic positive). He recently voted for more money for the Iraq war, he voted in favor of building a militarized wall between Mexico and the US (a bill that also doubles the number of border patrol agents), he has made explicit his strong support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and now he is a lover of Wal-Mart.

Honestly folks, is it safe to be an uncritical supporter of Obama? When would you be willing to pull your enthusiastic support for him? Between McCain and Obama, I do think that Obama might be the least-aggressive against immigrants and the Middle East, but given the insane predatory/imperialist tendencies of Republicans, this isn’t really reason for joy (much less enthusiastic support).

Obama’s Chicago Boys

Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, “Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”

Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart’s most prominent defenders, anointing the company a “progressive success story.” On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, “I won’t shop there.” For Furman, however, it’s Wal-Mart’s critics who are the real threat: the “efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits” are creating “collateral damage” that is “way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing ‘Kum-Ba-Ya’ in the interests of progressive harmony.

Obama’s love of markets and his desire for “change” are not inherently incompatible. “The market has gotten out of balance,” he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama–who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade–is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.

I learned early on, not in college but in the community, that in life one must be humilde pero fuerte. And the more I learn, and think about it, the more i see how deep this philosophical code/cypher is. Humble with our words and our presence. That is being deeply aware of how our presence and words affect others, so as to not inflict verbal/physical violence upon others (just think about all the words that have hurt you, especially from the lips of those you love). Strong so that we can give ourselves to others, even when is hard, to put one’s ego aside, to be vulnerable to the other (the loved one). Strong and humble to not reproduce oppression in our daily interactions, not to seek to dominate but connect.

A Jewish philosopher, Levinas, proposed that the vocation of the philosopher is not only the pursuit of truth but the pursuit of justice. Rather than emphasizing individual autonomy (which can lead to isolation and egoism) the emphasis is on love for the other, comradeship (”fraternity”), proximity, the erotic.
I am a student, not because I am in school, but because I seek truth and justice. As i heard a friend say (quoting someone else), “social justice is the framework in which i live my life.” My pursuit of knowledge comes out of my desire to decolonize myself, together with the community of the oppressed, from all the forms of colonization that began (at least) with the colonization of turle island (a.k.a the americas).

From Revolution by Aztlan Underground

500 and sick years without your mama
Is the driving force behind all this drama
Xikano neurosis, chickens without heads
Deuce 4-7 like the living dead
No sense of self is how you function
But the sexto sol is under construction
Bringing back all that we lost
And introspection is the only cost
Like tezcatlipoca and the smoking mirror
We invoke the creator of the far and near
La cultura cura, ancient medicine
Ingest your identity let the healing begin
[…]
We must understand how we came to be
How we view the world how we think we see
We came to be via rape and aggression
And hence a psychoanalytical question
Why is their sickness within the family?
And why is there abuse from A to Z?
Domestic violence and child molestation
Are the consequences of a conquered nation
Domestic violence and child molestation
Are the consequences of a conquered nation!

No porque me las de del que sabe, the more i learn the more I am aware of how little i know. However, if there’s something I learned, is that freedom and decolonization is not the privilege of ‘universitarios.’ It would be elitists and wrong to equate intelligence with freedom, to elevate the privileged abstract thinker as the ‘enlightened class.’ Shit, no. Ser educado no es saber más datos y fechas importantes, si no saber como convivir con los demas humildemente.

I have gain knowledge from the pain I have felt, inflicted by others on me. But I think that I have learned the most from the pain I have inflicted upon others, and then realized how terrible my actions have been. In my need for forgiveness and to give reparations, restore the human bond, I have learned that those that hurt can amend their wrongdoings, but it takes great humility. Those that hurt others, must strive to feel as much as possible, the pain of those that they have hurt.

Lo que busco, es una etica de amor. Levinas called it the wisdom of love.

In our rebellion, in our desire for revolution, for a radical transformation of society into justice, in our working in uprooting the roots of oppression-domination-exploitation-exclusion, we must not reproduce the same logics that fuel injustice. What I mean, is that in our drive to affirm our humanity, we must not deny the humanity of others. And rather than look at ourselves first, we must look at ‘others’ who suffer, maybe more than us.

I do not crave power but love.

From “Señor Presidente” by  Aníbal Sampayo (or Quintin Cabrera, not sure)

Que poder más diferente
El mío y el suyo señor presidente
Mientras que yo hago milagros
Con agua y fideos donde comen cuatro
Usted es un mago evidente
Porque de un gesto suyo brotan los banquetes

Que poder más diferente
El mío y el suyo señor presidente
Que poder más diferente

Y por que toda esta contemplación, bueno, porque he estado leyendo y leyendo bastante para escribir mi dissertation, y me pregunto. pa que chingados sirve leer tanto. y pues, si sirve, sive de mucho. pero lo que leo sólo me sirve si lo pongo a prueba con la realidad, y con las palabras de los que respeto, y especialmente con mi corazón.

tin.

ps. i saw a woman cry today on tv. it was a real case of family trouble, the segment provided the woman’s story. and it made me feel sad. then i wondered why we see so much death and violence on the news and shows, and we often don’t feel sad. and i thought that is because we don’t have the human story. violence is decontextualized on tv. the facts are not the story, but the emptying of meaning. the when and how, is not as important as to who.

pps. i rode my bike around salinas today. i love it.

question, how many “p”s can you add to the post-data. ps, pps, ppps?

Alejandra got me this cool bike for father’s day! I have been saying i wanted a bike for a while (hint hint i guess). It’s not just that gas prices are going up and up, but because I do enjoy bike riding!  (okay, gas prices was a big reason why i wanted the bike).
Although we are not that good financially, the bike store had a liquidation sale (25% off) which made the bike somewhat affordable. I did not know bikes could cost so much money. Mine was down to $650, which in comparison, it’s a great price for the bike.

So, it’s a Strada Bianchi, flat-bar road bike, 55′ inches. 2007 model. The frame is made of steel (i forgot what kind), and the fork is carbon-fiber. I really don’t know much about bikes, but I guess I’ll learn as I go.  I wanted to put my own bike together, but discarded that idea after i found out that it would be a lot more expensive (even if i bought the frame used).

Today Ale and Celeste left to Michoacan. I am sad. I wanted to go with them, but I had to work. Oh well. Maybe next summer. As of this moment, they must be about to board the plane. I hope that my babe and my baby have a safe comfortable trip.

paz, amor y poesía.

tin