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New Mexico State University associate professor of anthropology Christine Eber, left, works on compiling the family history and life story of Margarita Pérez Pérez, right, outside of her house in Chiapas, Mexico, in February 2009. (Courtesy Photo)

By Daniella De Luca

The water source for Flor de Margarita Pérez Pérez and her family is a hole in the ground with coffee-colored water about a fifth of a mile from their house up a steep trail.

Water from a running faucet, indoor plumbing, kitchen appliances. Such everyday luxuries, most Americans take for granted, but not the Pérez family in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.

These everyday hardships are what Christine Eber, professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University’s College of Arts and Sciences, witnesses each time she returns to Chiapas. Eber has developed a friendship with Pérez Pérez over the last two decades of her research.

Eber returned from a recent visit in the spring semester during which she recorded interviews to incorporate into her next book, which is the life story of Pérez Pérez.

“After knowing Margarita for over 20 years, I have had the opportunity to see the changes through her eyes,” Eber said. “With this book, we would like to reach a broad audience and help them understand the conditions of life in Chiapas for indigenous people.”

As part of these efforts, Eber recently had her first book translated into Spanish. Eber intends to make a bilingual edition of the life story called “Restless Spirits: The Journey of a Tzotzil-Maya Woman.” She will submit the manuscript for publication in fall 2009.

Chiapas has a tumultuous history including long-standing inequalities in access to land and resources, disease and poverty and non-existent health and educational facilities. To combat these setbacks and to support their families, indigenous groups in Chiapas have formed cooperatives that build upon local knowledge and skills in order to market coffee, weavings or other artisan work, Eber said.

“Margarita has been involved in many cooperatives and social movements since she was a teenager. Through her life story, we would like to give a glimpse of the struggles her people go through, and how life has changed in highland Chiapas since the 1960s,” Eber said.

When the armed uprising of the Zapatista movement took place in 1994, Pérez Pérez said she was unsure what it was, but thought that the Zapatistas were going to help change the way of life for the better for indigenous people in highlands Chiapas. She is still committed to the struggles of social injustices but doesn’t see change happening overnight.

“Although I was very excited at first, later as they were saying, ‘We’re going to win, we’re going to win a better life,’ as the years passed, I didn’t see any triumph.  I began to think, ‘Ah, the triumph will not come now.’ All we can do is to struggle and struggle more and not give up,” Pérez Pérez said.

“I could die in a week, or in a few months, so it’s better that I not focus on triumph.  It’s better just to struggle so that something might change in the future,” she said.

In “Restless Spirits,” Eber is also trying to explore some of the differences and commonalities between women in the U.S. and Mexico. Through the story of how Pérez Pérez and her family have confronted the stresses of poverty and social injustices, Eber hopes to illustrate links between the fates of the people of Mexico and the U.S. in the context of the economic crises in both nations.

Eber is also applying knowledge gained through her research in Chiapas as a member of Las Cruces – Chiapas Connection, a volunteer group with goals to empower women in their communities, find fair trade markets for cooperatives and study women’s issues and the negative effects of globalization. The group, which is a project of Sophia’s Circle, a nonprofit art and cultural organization, grew out of a women’s delegation that Eber organized to the highlands of Chiapas in 2003.

In addition to seeking fair trade markets for weavings, the group seeks funding for scholarships for students in highland Chiapas to attend junior high and high school and study grants for weavers to develop their skills and to teach younger members how to weave.

To view video clips of life in Chiapas captured by Eber in spring 2009, visit NMSU’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/newmexicostateu and browse the keyword “Chiapas.”

To learn more about the Las Cruces – Chiapas Connection, visit www.lascruceschiapasconnection.com.

Commentary

By Steve Klinger

I’ve been watching with a buttoned lip as Obama has had a town hall meeting with half the country and still found time to appear on every news show plus Colbert. I’ve watched him extend an olive branch to Republicans, sweet-talk blue dog Democrats and provide a collegiate lecture on everything from fiscal policy to health care. Every day I am thankful that we dodged the McCain Express and have a president who thinks rationally, solicits advice, considers alternatives and expresses reasons for at least some of his decisions. I remain convinced that Obama cares about ordinary Americans and believes in his heart he is doing his best by them.

I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of critics who will never be satisfied with anything short of absolute pacifism and total, instant redistribution of wealth, or the doomsayers who continue to predict societal collapse on a daily basis.

But all that said….don’t you miss Dubya the gunslinger even a little bit? There’s something about having a president swagger up to the podium, plant his hands on his hips and say, “I’m the decider!” that fills the belly with gross comfort, like eating a pound of chile cheese fries, even if you know they’ll do you in.

Of course, the kinds of things Bush decided almost destroyed civilization. Most of Obama’s problem is that he has inherited Bush’s infernal mess. But that’s not my point.

I am increasingly starting to believe that Obama underestimates himself. He needs to think back to LBJ and across the spam of generations to his role model, Lincoln. When he’s tempted to compromise on health care and back away from a public option (not to mention the single payer approach he knows in his heart is best), or when he pushes a watered down energy bill that perpetuates the coal industry, he needs to remember his own miraculous election campaign.

The man has public opinion on his side. His charisma (Republicans excepted, of course) is unparalleled in recent political history. He has science and history on his side to support arguments for stronger positions on global warming, against big banks and insurance companies, etc. He has the example of eight years of catastrophic failure by the very forces who oppose him now.

You can argue all you want that the votes aren’t there, that it’s all he can do to get weak legislation through because conservative Democrats and obstructionist Republicans – all bought and paid for by the obscene power of the corporate lobbyists – just won’t support progressive change. And it’s true from a certain perspective: mathematically, the votes aren’t there now indeed. But they weren’t there in 1965 either, when Lyndon Johnson hammered through civil rights legislation and Medicare, lacking even a shred of Obama’s personal appeal but knowing he held the high moral ground — and he could use his leverage as president to twist arms in Congress and win votes one by one. They weren’t there a century earlier when Lincoln determined he had to free the slaves to save the Union and then wage a war to restore it. And they weren’t there in 1933 when FDR envisioned the New Deal that produced the CCC, the WPA and Social Security.

I was resigned to the expediency of passing the wimpy energy/climate bill currently before Congress until I read Dennis Kucinich’s withering analysis of its shortcomings – on coal, on compromised timelines for greenhouse gas reductions, on all the pulled punches that undermine the good intentions of the original legislation. Even then, ordinary logic tells me a weak bill is better than none at all.

But are those really the alternatives when a leader as unique as Obama has the bully pulpit at his disposal and public approval ratings in the mid-70s? Just as he came from nowhere to beat a field of strong candidates, he has that rare capacity to captivate public imagination and support as chief executive, if he chooses to use it and does so with passion and conviction. Only his fear of failure can hold him back.

Ironically, and he’s way too smart not to realize this, it’s his lowered sights and his readiness to compromise that will likely produce failure in the longterm and provide the forces on the right with an avenue to regain power.

I’m not sure what tactics will best get his attention, though I can think of a few things I’d say to him at a town hall meeting. But I do know that those of us at the grassroots level must not buy into the conventional wisdom that compromise is better than gridlock. It’s a false equation, because strong leadership can change the dynamic and break the gridlock.

We must find a way to hold Obama’s feet to the fire on the crucial issues of global warming, health care, financial reform, nuclear disarmament and an end to empire building. But first  we must reawaken his belief that together we can accomplish the change we know is desperately needed.

Local

By Anna Moya Underwood

Modern agriculture, as practiced by large agribusiness corporations, is broken.  Emphasizing short term profit, it has disastrously polluted the nation’s soil, rivers, and air, as well as the food it raises. It has often pushed the smaller family farmer into bankruptcy. In addition, right now this giant—the food industrial complex,  and another, the financial industry—banks, Wall Street—are pitted against each other. The contention is over the unbridled speculation in the commodities market. Many of us do not realize that the commodities market, the central market of our country’s food supply, has gone through a bubble of deregulations, speculative gambling, and consequent volatile pricing. These high food prices from commodity casinos paid off bankers, investors, and insurers handsomely, not the farmer, whether corporate or not.  It may be wise to find other ways to feed ourselves than to rely on products from modern agribusiness, even if it limits our choices.

Most people, if they stop to think about it, realize that agriculture is necessary to civilization. As food activist Trauger Groh said, “Without a steady supply of clean, lif-giving food, we have neither the leisure nor the energy to develop industry, science or art.”1 While the argument is sometimes made that agriculture (unlike eons- old hunting and gathering) is destructive to the environment, it doesn’t have to be. If  farmers are willing to adopt environmentally sensitive methods, similar to those required for organic farms, the earth can heal.

In particular, large anmal feedlots, where thousands of livestock are huddled together, called factory farming or CAFOs—Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations—puts huge amounts of polluting manure waste into our surface water and noxious fumes into the air. The property value of homes in the CAFO area plummets. The Sierra Club estimates that one corporate CAFO puts 10 family farms out of business, or forces many small farmers into corporate contracts.2

It is a fact, sad to my way of thinking, that the family farms as an occupation in America shrank from 40% of the population after WW II to 1 % or less now. Why sad?  Because first, large corporate farms are able to unfairly price family farms out of the marketplace, regardless of food quality, and then second, they emphasize profit and short-term advantage, disregarding considerations of our relationship with nature. Corporate industrial-size farms, and the ways they use toxic chemicals, animals, genetically modified seeds (GMOs), un-announced food radiation, nutrition-less food, great pollution of the soil, water, air, and vegetative life, along with massive erosion of precious topsoil, have the power to influence our health and the future of the earth.3

Which is not to say the small farmer is completely innocent; from the way European immigrants cleared the magnificent Eastern U.S. forests, to the prairie dust bowl of the 30’s, to nitrates pollution of our rivers, streams and lakes, we as a nation have lost much from the family farmer as well. However, profit and power is not usually the family farmers’ only consideration, and they are usually open to conservation. Usually family farms are interested in passing good farm land on to family members ; or if no one is interested, some consider a land trust instead of selling to developers.

And if the family farmer can make a decent living and not work round the clock for penury, heirs will be more interested in continuing the farm. While there are some millionaire independent farmers, a survey in 2001 showed the farmer’s income range to be from $0 to $30,000.4 In the 19th and early 20th centuries, hard-working farm families were large, almost clan-like. Now the work is even more intensive for a nuclear family, and the wife is almost always overburdened. According to USDA statistics, off-farm income supports 84% of the family farms.5 In the past, the U.S. Government has consistently supported policies to keep food cheap to the consumer; but the small farmer typically gets only 20% of the final price, the rest going to many middlemen.6

As an example of multiple middlemen taking the plums from the pie, from 2006 to 2008 excessive speculation wracked the commodities market where grains and other basic foodstuffs are traded and sold. Such familiar firms as Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, through unregulated speculative futures or derivatives, caused amazingly volatile agricultural prices (along with oil prices—foodstuffs can now be “bundled” with oil and metals!) Because of the spiking prices, insurance companies like AIG were called in to insure the deals, sometimes for as much as $150,000. Unlimited speculation greatly increased the prices of food in the United States and prices of basic foods like grain exported to developing nations. Poorer nations found themselves unable to purchase, and dire worldwide hunger and food riots resulted. (And here in America, 28 million people are dependent on government food programs for their food.) However the cut for the farmer using the commodity market was still discouragingly low during this two year period; the speculators, investors and insurers took all the profits. Much of the speculation was “OTC, or Over the Counter,” i.e., private, secret, and not transparent or subject to the rules.  (www.iatp.org/tradeobservatory/library.cfm; http://en.internationalism.org)  Legislation to demand transparency and limits to speculation (“Derivatives Market and Accountability Act”) passed in the House in 2008 but was defeated in the Senate when Bush signaled he would veto it. The pertinent House committees say they will bring it up again in August of 2009.  Banks like Goldman Sachs, who made billions on the secret commodities swaps, oppose any regulation.

If the complete modern, industrialized process of growing, producing and selling food smells like portions of the interstate driving south between Las Cruces and El Paso, alternatives do exist. The wise small farmer excludes the middleman and sells directly to the consumer. You as a food consumer may already  be frequenting roadside stands, farmers’ markets, and direct sales through catalogs and the internet or you may subscibe to a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture. Here in Southern New Mexico, especially in the deep Mesilla Valley soil, opportunity abounds for more year round farmers with a variety of direct links to buyers.

You may not have heard of CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture, a movement that started in Japan and moved to the United States, Russia and Europe in the 1980’s.
In general, the CSA de-emphasizes price and emphasizes the farmer-consumer connection. The food consumers sign up for shares ahead of the harvest and pledge or pay a certain amount of money that seems supportive, not always in relation to the amount of food received. Usually the the share holder visits the farm once a week for food pick up or if living at some distance, less frequently; an individual or family consumer helps out once in a while with farm chores, or may help with planning or in other ways; sometimes the consumer is privy to the farmer’s expenses and budget. As with organic farming, relating to nature and the health of the soil, air and water is of prime importance to both consumer and farmer.

If you are not looking into the face of your farmer/grower at a roadside stand, farmers’ market, or a CSA pickup, and there is no sticky label on your apple or address on your potato from the bin or bag of carrots, ask the produce worker at the retail store where the item came from.  He or she will try to find out quickly and tell you. In the case of meat, ask the butcher. Sometimes, like a sleuth you have to research on the internet to find out if your chicken was free-range. Sometimes processed and packaged food will have a familiar, old family name yet will be produced by a mega-size corporation like Kraft, also discoverable online.

Everytime you refuse to buy food originating from an industrial-size farm corporation, the power of that firm shrinks.

(Farms of America Revisited, Trauger Groh and Steve McFadden, Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, Kimberton, PA, 1997)

(www.serconline.org/cafozoning.html+CAFO+Sierra+Club)

(Sharing the Harvest, Elizabeth Henderson with Robyn Van En, Chelsea Green Publishing Co. White River Junction, Vermont, 2007, p. 109)

Anna Underwood lives in a suburb outside of Las Cruces in a solar (mostly) off-the-grid home, with an acre of fruit trees, a husband, a dog, two cats, and 12 chickens. She writes fiction and essays when apple harvest is past.

Border

By Rus Bradburd
Just before the November 2008 election, the name “Bill Ayers” became a Republican talking point. Ayers was a founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that formed in the late 1960s. Their purpose, believe it or not, was the overthrow of the American government, something they cooked up in response to our slaughter of millions in Vietnam.
Years later, as a highly respected expert on childhood education, Ayers wound up on the same board of directors as Barack Obama (as did the Republican head of the Chicago Tribune and the Northwestern University chancellor).  The right wingnuts went crazy: Obama was pals with a terrorist!
Bill Ayers remained silent on the issue until after the election. Then he spoke and wrote at length about his time in the Weather Underground, as well as his limited and casual relationship with Obama. Ayers also discussed his memoir, Fugitive Days.
It wasn’t just the national election that thrust Ayers back in the spotlight. In 2003, the documentary film “Weather Underground” was released to great critical acclaim. In the movie, Ayers walks around with a baseball bat, retracing his steps during the 1968 riots around the Democratic Convention, and stares defiantly into the camera. Ayers has nothing to apologize for.
The movie put other Weathermen back on the radar. The most interesting person on the big screen was Mark Rudd, who was the leader of the Columbia University student uprising in 1968 before he and Ayers joined forces to create the Weather Underground. Rudd was featured then on the cover of Newsweek, and became a 1960s icon.
Besides getting booted from Columbia, Rudd was the national secretary for SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the enormous radical student organization.  When Rudd, Ayers and others decided to dump SDS to pursue more violent means, they founded the Weather Underground.
In the film, which intersperses footage from the late 1960s with interviews over 30 years later, Rudd appears befuddled, passionate, inquisitive, reflective, angry and remorseful. His willingness, unlike the other Underground members, to question his life and actions retrospectively make him a much more compelling figure.
Thankfully, that kind of retrospection make him a more compelling author as well, and the perfect storyteller in his new book, Underground: My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen (Harper Collins, 2009).
Grief-stricken by the attack of Vietnam, but inspired by the civil rights movement, Rudd and his 20-something pals left their two-car garages to change the world. When the SDS broke up and the Weather Underground formed, most of the leaders pushed for violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. Rudd did too, but even then he had the passion for violence that Dick Cheney might have for a solar energy convention.
The Weathermen disbanded in the early 1970s – the war was over, and now what was the purpose? Rudd’s photo hung from every post office and police station in America, but he was in hiding.
His story – the plotting, the philosophy, the meetings, the townhouse explosion, the drugs, the motivation – has been a source of both wonderment and legend among the American left. In this brilliant book, Rudd sets everyone, including himself, straight about what happened with the Weather Underground.
Rudd’s sense of learning, joy and sorrow fuel his writing. At times the memoir is hilarious, as when Rudd phones his Jewish mother immediately after seizing the Columbia University president’s office. Other moments are heartbreaking – we watch up close as Rudd and Ayers’ Underground tears apart the SDS, the largest anti-war organization this country has ever seen.
Rudd claims he wanted to “hold a mirror up to this country,” to confront America about their role in the murder of poor people across the globe. More interesting in this book, though, is the way Rudd holds the mirror up to himself. At one point, Rudd gets challenged by one of his peers after a violent night of window-smashing in DC: He watched Rudd closely, and Rudd didn’t destroy anything.
Building a mass movement and increasing the size of the anti-war movement is what Rudd talks about today. (Rudd never served a day in jail, but did do a couple of decades as a math teacher in Albuquerque.)  In his book, Rudd drags us along to the radical meetings, and we watch – as alarmed as he was – as the movement spins out of control. You can feel the burgeoning egos, smell the dope and incense, sense the middle-class guilt, and hear the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead soundtrack.
Coming to grips with his and America’s relationship to violence is what drives this book, as does Rudd’s interest in the American attack of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s also what makes the book a fascinating read today, and, sadly, a timeless and important memoir: The struggles of the left are not over – how will progressives react to endless and senseless war this time?

Rus Bradburd is the author of Paddy on the Hardwood.  His book
about race and college sports, 40 Minutes of Hell will be out in 2010.

Environment

Groups Call on Congress to Repower America with Clean Energy for Consumers and Environment

Albuquerque, NM — Between 2010 and 2030, New Mexico will spend as much as $230 billion on oil, coal, and other fossil fuels –5.8 times the total earnings of all New Mexico workers in 2007. At the same time, pollution from fossil fuels is the number one source of air and global warming pollution and a leading source of water pollution, said Environment New Mexico in its new report.

High spending on fossil fuels is largely driven by our dependence on oil, according to the analysis. New Mexico is on track to spend as much as $8.4 billion on oil alone in 2030, 69 percent of the state’s total spending on fossil fuels.

“This Independence Day, we are calling on Congress to break our dependence on Big Oil and Dirty Coal,” said Jake Horowitz of Environment New Mexico. “Instead of allowing the costs of fossil fuels to continue to mount, Congress should repower America with clean, renewable energy that will create jobs and stop global warming.”

Nationally, in 2006, U.S. consumers and businesses spent $921 billion on fossil fuels – more than was spent on education or the military.  The country is on track to spend between $23 trillion and $30 trillion on fossil fuels between 2010 and 2030, the high end of which is more than double the nation’s total economic output in 2007.

These figures do not include the untold damages to our environment, health, and society resulting from the production and use of fossil fuels – such as global warming, air and water pollution, mountaintop mining, and oil spills. “Every additional dollar we spend on fossil fuels just buys us more global warming pollution, more smog, and more asthma attacks,” continued Horowitz.

In contrast, moving to clean energy – wind turbines, solar panels, and energy-efficient homes and buildings – would save money, even excluding the additional benefits for the environment, health, and security. For instance, a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists <http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/big_picture_solutions/climate-2030-blueprint.html> found that transitioning to clean energy would cut costs in the West South Central region by $980 per household annually and save consumers and business a total of $48 billion annually in 2030. In addition, clean energy creates jobs here at home, since clean energy projects tend to be labor intensive and cannot be outsourced.

“When the choice is between paying to uphold a dirty polluting status quo and investing in a new direction for America, clean energy is the clear winner,” said Odes Armijo-Caster of Sacred Power Corporation. “Businesses like ours which have been working day and night to make New Mexico more sustainable by installing solar panels, building wind turbines and developing new cleaner, and more efficient ways for the citizens of New Mexico to get their energy, are building the new clean energy economy.”

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), historic legislation that creates a framework for moving to a clean energy economy and curbing global warming.

“We applaud Representatives Heinrich, Lujan, and Teague for supporting the bill. Now is the time for bold and meaningful action on clean energy and global warming. The Senate must strengthen and pass this critical bill. We urge Senators Udall and Bingaman to move quickly to enact strong solutions for a clean energy economy and stopping global warming,” said Jake Horowitz of Environment New Mexico.

Environment New Mexico’s report uses government data to quantify current and projected spending on fossil fuels nationally and by state. The High Cost of Fossil Fuels: Why America Can’t Afford to Depend on Dirty Energy, includes the following findings:

New Mexico will spend as much as $1,894 more per person every year on fossil fuels in 2030, if we stay on our current energy path.

In 2006, New Mexico spent $3,868 per capita on fossil fuels. In 2030, that figure is expected to rise to between $4,547 and $5,765 for every man, woman, and child in the state, as much as a 49% percent increase.

Environment New Mexico is a state-based, citizen-funded environmental organization working for clean air, clean water, and open space.