L.A.'s premier Chicano blogger EL CHAVO! had this collection of images of the murals at Estrada Courts last week at Metroblogging. Estrada Courts, territory of the VNE gang, is a housing project in East Los Angeles with some of the most interesting surviving murals from the Chicano Movement, including the groundbreaking "Black & White Mural" by Gronk and Willie Herron III, original members of Asco. Of the work above, CHAVO! says: "I really like this one, even the graffiti seems to blend in nicely. Brown people as subject matter, someone's got to do it." I agree. The layers are themselves windows into the city's history. Link.
* ADD: The LA Weekly's web editor Mark Mauer, who has recently launched another LAWeekly.com blog, the street-art focused Lurker, linked to this mural page a couple days after it went up. Another cool post is of fragment images of trash in Los Feliz by Weekly staffer Craig Gaines.
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It seems to have passed under the radar, but it's worth noting that the primary news source for Southern California published last week a Column One by Metro reporter Anna Gorman simultaneously in English and Spanish. The story, "Criando una familia con la basura de Pasadena," is about an undocumented Mexican woman named Juana Rivas who makes her living scavenging for recyclables. (Here's an audio Flash feature.) I don't know how it was presented in print but online the Spanish version of the story goes under the header "Columna Uno" and Gorman is cited, deliciously, as a "Redactora del Times."
The translation is lucid and smart, but a translator is not given credit. Yet this is fairly remarkable step taken for a newspaper that serves a global metropolis that is home to the second largest concentration of Mexicans in the world after Mexico City and operates essentially as a bilingual town. The question is, did Spanish-dominant Angelenos actually find the piece, and will they and the Times benefit from the effort?
Marcela Turati reports in Proceso that government and military personnel with experience in digging through rubble for survivors are complaining that civilians had "taken over" the rescue operations at collapsed buildings in Mexico City.
The trained personnel say picking away stones from the top of a collapsed structure — bit by bit, as civilians have lined up to do since the minutes after the quake hit — does not work.
"We made a tunnel, but we should have made five more," one unnamed engineer told Turati from an apartment tower that crumbled on Ave Amsterdam in trendy Condesa. "One tunnel, because they don't want to listen to the military or to Civil Protection. They're not listening to the firefighters, or those of us who lived through '85. [...] The ones giving orders don't know."
Reports say that site has already been cleared for victims. Watch these other heart-wrenching rescues.
Collapsed building on #Amsterdam Ave. all clear of victims. Rescuers, described largely as young people, break into national anthem. https://t.co/xSmBhMK0bs
My friends' Facebook posts in DF are heartbreaking, stirring. My people are still out there on the streets, finding ways to help. Others I know are joining caravans to reach the most affected and so far largely neglected areas of Puebla and Morelos.
These are streets, places, faces, voices that we know, intimately. I know so many people here in the United States and really around the world who have been touched by Mexico in some form feel the same way today.
More than 300 people are dead, according to official figures. The majority of the victims are in densely populated Mexico City and in Morelos, near the epicenter of the 7.1R sismo that hit at 1:14 pm Central Time on Tuesday. Dozens of buildings fell in Mexico City and in the states of Morelos, Puebla, and Oaxaca, which was still reeling from the 8.1R quake of September 7.
Unknown numbers of people are injured, unknown numbers of buildings are permanently unsafe, unknown numbers of roads and other infrastructure are damaged. I'm worried about the little towns and villages in remote corners of Chiapas and Puebla that have not received aid.
And now the fissures between government and society — always churning just below the surface — are emerging. Among citizens, there is a sense that this moment of "control" over the streets and the soaring solidarity cannot be let go from the people's grasp. We've suffered so much in the last ten years, endured so much chaos, violence, political stagnation.
This morning on Aristegui Noticias live, anchor Carmen Aristegui said: "In this moment of tragedy we are seeing that Mexico we wish to be, that muscle, that spirit, that vigor, that will to not be just a sitting flower but part of a society."
* Above, a woman volunteer rescuer outside the textile sweatshop in Colonia Obrera where 21 bodies have been recovered. Excuse her while she eats her torta. (Via Martha Ugarte)
Criticism has emerged over the Peña Nieto administration's optics handling. Video of one incident shows interior secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong being jeered away from a rescue site on the very first day of the disaster.
Reports have also emerged of convoys of being turned away in Morelos due to bureaucratic stops. This is something to watch out for in the days ahead.
The president and top cabinet officials visited the Rébsamen campus and had photo-ops, but did not illuminate or apparently guide the rescue operation. Differing rumors circulated about the possibility of a girl named "Frida Sofia" alive under the rubble, then circulated through the press, then were later proven false.
Frida Sofía never existed. And parents who are actually real and grieving say the education secretary has not contacted them at all.
Criticism has also rained down on default government-media conglomerate Televisa for apparently having exclusive access to some of the rescue sites, including the Rébsamen school. As far as the story of the child is concerned, some asked, could it be the fatigue, shock, and adrenaline coursing through the volunteer rescuers? Several at the school insisted to the Associated Press even after the story was proven false that a surviving child still existed down there.
Last night a contact in DF told me she was certain that rescuers heard voices, and maybe they did. Maybe they heard ghosts, the spirits of the 21 dead kids, she said.
El Universal is calling Frida Sofia a "ghost story." This is a signal of collective trauma, of course.
Either way, the case demonstrated a breakdown in communication at the government level, and apparently in standards and practices for journalists reporting from these sites. Colleagues say access is restricted. If a shaken and tired rescuer emerged and said something promising, of course, the impulse was to report it ...
The earthquake hit on the anniversary to the day of the 1985 quake that left at least 10,000 if not up to 30,000 people dead. My dad later called the coincidence "diabolical" and that is how I will describe this situation for the rest of my life. There's something cruel about this, a planet rendering punishment.
This time, only two weeks earlier, southern Mexico got severely ratted by an 8.1R monster in the Pacific that left more than 100 people dead, and the city of Juchitán (Oaxaca) largely devastated. Chiapas and Oaxaca were already begging not to be forgotten in the news cycle.
Keep in mind these big ones come about once or twice a year for central Mexico. They shake Mexico City good, because it's 20 million people on a dry lake in a high valley near some volcanoes, but "if it didn't fall in 1985, it won't fall ever."
The quake twelve days earlier put DF on the edge, but there also might have been a false sense of complacency; another heavy one went down, no major damages in the city as in 1985. Saved. Again ...
That morning, as they do solemnly every year, the president and his top brass held a flag ceremony on the Zócalo at dawn, when the big earthquake struck on September 19, 1985. This was Peña Nieto's fifth time doing this ceremony during his term.
Mexico City, which suffered the worst in 1985 because that earthquake was centered relatively close — in Michoacán — has for years conducted a full earthquake drill across schools and office buildings to recall the devastation and the heroic civilian efforts of the '85 disaster.
Every Sept. 19, we recall how the DNA of the country was altered forever. The topos and grassroots brigades mobilized to save people from a sea of collapsed buildings, in a rising stench of human decay, and helped spark the fall of the PRI regime during its most decadent years, and moved us toward reforms.
On Tuesday, DF had its earthquake-drill, and then everyone went back to their offices and classrooms.
Another quake with that level of damage was not supposed to happen again. Not that same day. But it did. And now the regular, tough citizens of Mexico and Mexico City — mexicanos and foreigners, side by side — are rising and leading the way.
The sense of fear and panic that I hear is lingering in the air over DF now, four days into the disaster, is rooted partly in the sudden awareness not only that another 1985 has happened, but that a 2017 is now sure to happen at some point again in the future.
I spent the last eight days on an epic motorbike loop (3035 miles) through Kansas, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Along the way to my ultimate destination, Monument Valley, I visited my friends Alan and Carol Bell at their cabin in the mountains of Dillon, Colorado, navigated the mountain passes from Dillon to Durango, immersed myself in culture at Mesa Verde National Park, and experienced New Mexico’s scenic Highway 64 across the entire northern half of the state. It was such a fantastic trip, I really don’t know where to start, so I suppose a few images from Monument Valley itself would be appropriate for this first post about my adventure.
I’ve always wanted to visit Monument Valley, even before I knew where it was. I had seen so many movies featuring the area, including oldies like “The Searchers” and “Easy Rider,” as well as newer films like “Thelma and Louise” and “Forrest Gump.” Every time I saw the long stretches of desolate highway and the huge spires and buttes, I thought, “Man I’d like to go there.” Well, finally I sat down and planned a trip to this dreamy place and decided that it should best be made on my motorcycle. It would be a heck of a ride, even though I came close to the valley two years ago when I rode my bike out to Great Sand Dunes National Park.
Loading my bike with gear for the trip to such an isolated area was part of the fun. I’d need clothing for temperatures varying from 35 to 100 degrees because I’d be traveling through mountain passes as well as the desert. I needed all of my camera gear, except for my oversized 500/4 lens, and all my camping gear. I also had to think about the possibility of a flat tire so I packed a portable compressor and plug kit. It wasn’t long before my Beemer was fully loaded and ready to roll. I didn’t get much sleep the night before my departure. I’ll highlight some of the events of the actual trip in a future edition.
When I eventually arrived at Monument Valley, I stayed at The View Hotel which has 90 rooms, each with a stunning, balcony view of the Mittens and Merrick Butte. When I entered my room and dropped my gear, I looked out the sliding doors and was floored by the scene of the desert icons. Wow! After a shower to clean the day’s ride off my tired body, I checked my camera gear for the sunset show. First, I had dinner at the hotel restaurant, feasting on a Navajo dish featuring a huge piece of freshly made fry bread covered with beans, onions, tomatoes, sour cream, and salsa. Later, I headed out to the desert to claim the perfect spot to set up my tripod. My first image came at 90 minutes before sunset and my final image was well after dark. The sky could have been more interesting, but I was satisfied with my captures.
After my evening photography session at the hotel, I set my alarm clock for 4:00 AM so I could ride 13 miles north on Highway 163 to get the classic, desert road image, the image I’d seen in some of those movies. When I arrived where I thought I should be, it was still so dark, I couldn’t even tell where the buttes were. As I walked around the edge of the desert, waiting for some light, the Mittens slowly came into view south of me, the direction from which I came, and the picture I yearned for began to materialize.
One thing I didn’t have to worry about was crowds out there on the Utah highway in the desert on a Sunday morning. I was able to set my tripod up right in the middle of the road, framing the scene patiently as the sun worked its magic. Every 5 minutes or so, a car would come by but I could hear it from miles away, leaving plenty of time to get off the road.
As the morning progressed and the sun lit up the buttes, people began to stop for photos. I met an Indian couple from New York and watched as the beautiful, young woman posed in the middle of the highway in a flowing dress with a monarch butterfly print. I could see that her boyfriend was an experienced photographer as he framed shots of her with the buttes in the background. Next, I met a native American named Victor from Las Vegas. I showed him the best spot I had found for a picture and he simply fired a couple shots without a tripod and said that was all he needed. We spent about 15 minutes after that talking about all of the sites in the area such as Antelope Canyon and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Another couple pulled up and I offered to take their picture with their iPhone. They had driven all the way from West Virginia to see the beautiful, desert valley. It was such a great experience for us all!
The iconic image of Highway 163 through the desert of Monument Valley. This is the exact spot where Forrest Gump said, “I’m tired; I think I’ll go home now.”
My last image, above, was my best effort at capturing the vision I had in my head from all those movies from Monument Valley and the surrounding desert. It was my favorite image from my visit to this beautiful landscape. As the morning advanced and the buttes lost their color, I headed back to the hotel, had a wonderful breakfast, and repacked my Beemer for New Mexico. By late-afternoon I was in Taos, but the memory of Monument Valley was still buzzing in my head.
Your images are always stunning and I hear you speaking when reading your words. I have intended to mention this to you for some time, this post motivated me to do so. Thank you and all the best to you and Joyce.
Recorded sessions for performances, featuring violin, cello and piano arrangements of songs by Michael Jackson and Lorraine Ellison.
Performed at Theater 80, June 2- Aug 24, 2011. Produced by David LaChapelle in collaboration with Fred Torres, incorporating a figurative photo installation by David LaChapelle.