San Diego Visit updated

DAY 2 (see day 1 entry below)

On Monday, Chelo gave me a ride to the airport where I rented a car for the day so Brent and I could have wheels to make our many appointments. Our first stop was a quick visit to San Diego Mesa College where newly hired professor Manuel Velez met with us for a little while before his morning Chicano Lit class. Manuel recently moved from El Paso to take this position, but he's not a newcomer to Califas having grown up in Salinas. Manuel eloquently shared his perspective on life in the geographic, cultural, and political borderlands. See clip of Manuel below.


After leaving Manuel we went to a little restaurant in Barrio Logan called Cuatros Milpas that specializes in bowls of beans. Yes, they sell other food but this is the primary dish with rice or chorizo. Inexpensive but rich in taste! We then walked around Chicano Park for a while and I took many pictures while Brent told me about some of the years long struggles to establish and maintain the park

Our next stop was a visit with Monica Hernandez of Casa Familiar in San Ysidro. Monica is a Berkeley Ethnic Studies graduate who grew up in Tijuana, went to school and San Ysidro and who has decided not to apply for citizenship even though she has a permanent work visa and could be eligible. She is soft-spoken but powerful in word and deed as she contributes to bettering her community from the ground up through this powerful agency.
Here is some info from their website on ther mission and the context of their work:

The mission of Casa Familiar allows the dignity, power, and worth within individuals and families to flourish, by enhancing the quality of life through education, advocacy, service programming, housing and community economic development.

To understand our agency's work in affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization, it is important to know about the community and its people. San Ysidro (established in 1908) is located at the U.S. - Mexico border between Tijuana and downtown San Diego, three miles east of the Pacific Ocean. It is known as the busiest border crossing the world. In 1956, the City of San Diego annexed the area, and it still remains geographically and culturally isolated, being some twenty miles to the south of urban San Diego and separated from it by two other incorporated cities.

San Ysidro's population is 27,180 (2000 Census), a growth rate of 6%, and is overwhelming minority: Hispanics, Black, and Asian/Other account for 91% of the total. It is a "young" community --the median age is 27.6 years. The median household income is $22,760. Families tend to be larger than average, with 4.07 persons per household. Two-thirds of the housing stock is multi-family, and 35% of the City of San Diego's subsidized housing is located here, with more than 8,000 families on the waiting list. Of the 4,411 students in the San Ysidro School District, 82% are determined as low socio-economic status (compared to 45% in the County, and 29% nationally). One hundred percent of the school district's students qualify for free or reduced-cost meals. SEE Clip of Monica below.

From Monica's we went back towards central San Diego to meet with immigrant rights activist Enrique Moronoes, the founder of Border Angels (see info below) and radio talk show host of Super K 1040 AM's, “Morones por la Tarde." As a simple web search of his name reveals, Morones is no stranger to talking and clear about his stance that a more humane and honest means of dealing with immigrants is necessary. He has debated with Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly a number of times and pushes them in a confrontational style that has seemed to earn him their respect. The extreme dislike of him by anti-immigrant groups (as evidenced by the web) will only strengthen his credibility in the eyes of more reasonable folks.

After a short break, we went to artist Victor Ochoa's house and sat and talked in his garage/studio as the sun went down. As a life-long resident of southern California, he brought some historical perspective to local struggles and the role of art in social movements. He was an integral part of the movement to establish Chicano Park and currently teaches art in the schools as well as continues to produce public murals, a section of a work in progress is above. He gave me a copy of textbook on murals he uses in teaching youth and showed us a new book on Chicano art that features a section on his contributions. (See video clip below on Ochoa family history in border region.)


The Day ended with an evening trip to Tijuana. We were accompanied by artist Nuvia Crisol (see her website: http://www.artecrisol.com/). After a quick stop at Tijuana's CostCo for some tequila and etceteras we went to the infamous Tacos Salceados which I had heard Brent brag about in what I thought was pure hyperbole. No hype. The real deal. I concede that these were some of the best tacos I've ever had. Simple but fancy and rich in taste to the extreme. Chelo and Brent cross over frequently so they have a Sentri border crossing pass which expedites their crossings but passengers are not allowed, so we hopped off on the way back and crossed by foot. Even late in the evening the lines were extraordinarily long due to the holiday season, we surmised. Chelo said that in the mornings the radio has said that lately the line for peatones in 1,500 long. My border patrol officer apparently lived in Minneapolis at what point as she kept asking me specific questions about cross streets where I lived--though Brent seems to think maybe she was just trying to catch this pocho in a lie. Meanwhile, in the line Chelo was pulled over on a spot check and witnessed a van of indocumentados driven by a woman get busted and the border patrol officers stand around laughing at them as they piled out barefoot. She was righteously pissed when she met us on the U.S. side.

We went back to Nuvia's where I interviewed all three of them for an hour. Well-fed, full of content, and tired from a full day of meeting wonderful folks we ended it when I began to pass out...


DAY 1
I arrived in San Diego on Friday afternoon and got settled into a motel where I could get a warm shower, get my bearings and start making contacts. After a few phone calls, I was invited to dinner at the home of recent Texas transplants Crissy Rivas (UCSD grad student in sociology) and Dave (film maker) where we were to be joined by Calaca Press founders Brent Beltran and Consuelo (Chelo) Manriquez, also a Vice Principal at a local middle school. Before dinner I found a bike shop in National City that could replaced some broken spokes and re-align my rear wheel that had become out of balance on the last leg of my trip. Brent called Cecilia Brennan, a local lawyer who has recently relocated from L.A. to join us at dinner and share insights on some of her work on the role she and the firm she works for had played in helping defeat the local anti-immigrant ordinances in Escondido, CA. Escondido was in the news again this week as it is attempting to pass laws targeting day laborers. The food was great and the company better.

I returned to San Diego this evening after a quick trip to Houston. With Brent's help, I have several interviews planned for tomorrow, including one with Enrique Morones, the founder of Border Angels. From their website (http://www.borderangels.org/):

Founded in 1986, Border Angels is a non-profit organization supporting humanity. The organization consists of extraordinary volunteers who want to stop unnecessary deaths of individuals traveling through the Imperial Valley desert areas and the mountain areas surrounding San Diego County, as well as the areas located around the United States and Mexican border. The high percentage of unnecessary deaths have been results of extreme heat and cold weather conditions, in addition some have sadly been the results of racial-discrimination crimes.

We plan to visit Tijuana tomorrow evening. Below is a video of Cecilia discussing the Escondido case and other immigrations issues in the SD area.

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Cecila Brennan discusses immigration issues in San Diego area from Louis Mendoza on Vimeo.


Manuel Velez, From El Paso to San Diego from Louis Mendoza on Vimeo.


Monica Hernandez, San Ysidro, Casa Familiar from Louis Mendoza on Vimeo.


Victor Ochoa shares his family history in the region from Louis Mendoza on Vimeo.

Across Upstate New York: Through Auburn, Springfield and Albany

Making my way across upstate New York on Routes 20/5 since Wednesday has made for a series of long days of 100+ miles. My primary goal was simply to survive it as I didn't have any firm plans or contacts. Before leaving Batavia I e-mailed my friend, Alan Gomez, who is a professor of Latino Studies at Ithaca College, to see if he wanted to meet me for dinner in Auburn, my goal for destination for Thursday. It wasn't long before I began encountering the steep rolling hills that comprise the landscape of upstate New York. Though difficult, the lessons and strength I gained in the western part of the country paid off as I was able to maintain my pace, though the rhythm was very different. Stretches of flat land were welcome and enabled me to make up lost time.

The farmlands were beautiful as were the Finger Lakes, several of which I passed. The pic below is near Seneca Falls. Many of the towns I went through, Avon, Stratford, Geneva, were established in the colonial period and were very quaint and beautiful, full of tourists and elderly residents. I saw very few people of color in any of them, but then again, my brief stops were limited to getting food and drink.

I passed through Seneca Falls late in the afternoon and couldn’t resist stopping in at the Women’s Rights National Historic Park. The park is on the site of the first national women's convention held in Seneca in July 1848 led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Many aspects of the museums exhibits were fascinating and inspiring, but if one judged the women's movement in the US by this museum's exhibits and the titles included in the feminist collection of books for sale, one would leave with the impression that only Anglo and African American women have advocated for equality and social change. No big surprise, I suppose, but I am still amazed of the willful ignorance (color blindness?) of people about the major and ongoing roles that Native, Asian American and Latin@ peoples have played in resisting oppression, advancing democracy, civil and human rights, and driving social change in this country. Sigh.

It's no wonder youth everywhere think of us as perpetual foreigners or only recent immigrants.



Just past Seneca Falls I began seeing a number of the signs below sponsored by a dubiously named organization called Upstate Citizens for Equality.

Later that night I looked them up on the web and found at that their mission is:

We are a growing not-for-profit corporation of concerned citizens that stand against discrimination, and supports the continuation of free enterprise and equality in our communities

Our platform is:

200 year old bill of sale treaties between New York State and the Cayuga Indians not formally ratified by Congress were fair, equitable, and just. The land claim lawsuits based on a technicality has resulted in Upstate Citizens for Equality, Inc. taking a stand.

We believe:

NO Reservation should be established.

NO tax free residential nor business lands should be allowed.

NO tax free businesses should be allowed.

NO negotiations should be secret, and ALL people should be equal under ONE set of laws.

Talk about unreconciled history and contradictions! I'm sure that these same people also believe that we're "a nation of laws" when it suits their political and economic interests. How convenient it is to choose to ignore this nation's refusal to ratify and/or break treaties with native peoples!

After seeing these signs I could only be amused and curious when I saw signs for the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge and signs for the town of Montezuma. The only explanation I've been able to find for the source of the town's name was the one given on the town sign. I hope to learn more about the history of how this town got its name.



Alan met me in Auburn shortly after I arrived and took me by Auburn Prison, a maximum security prison whose plaque boasts of being the site of the first electrocution in the nation. Though the Latino populations of these towns is minimal, I suspect that Latinos are over-represented in the criminal justice system, as is true all over the country. We walked around the prison a bit while Alan told me of recent visits there to visit a BLA political prisoner.

Afterwards we went across the street to Connie's Tex-Mex Restuarant to eat and talk. The owner is originally from Nuevo Laredo and has operated her business there for 13 years. Her Anglo husband, who she met in Texas, was originally from Auburn, hence their decision to go to Auburn was a homecoming for him. Connie told me that business was good. A big portion of her customers are prison workers and the family and friends of inmates who visit them.


















On Friday I made it to Springfield and then arrived in Albany early Saturday afternoon. The days have been overcast and getting more and more cool.









Albany, NY
I stopped get lunch as I neared downtown and a server told me about a festival going on very nearby. Larkfest, as it's known, has been going on for 28 years. As I walked through the crowd, one of the first booths I went by was one being run by Henry and Carlos, two Colombianos who co-own a healthy, organic food restaurant called Peas and Beans. Henry, is an avid bike rider and he told me about his interest in making a cross-country trek. I interviewed them using the video recorder on my digital camera. (See below.)

Down the street I was approached by a guy who is preparing to go on a cross-country trip. He jst purchased a bike from an 80-something man who did his first cross-country trek at 68! As we were talking another guy came up who rode from Seattle to Virginia last summer. We exchanged stories, thoughts on the trip and suggestions for the newbie. After going through the festival, I rode across town and settled in on the far eastern side of Albany so I could head towards Amherst with minimal delay on Sunday morning.




Larfest: Henry and Carlos talk about Latino life in Albany from Louis Mendoza on Vimeo.