St. Louis: History Museum: #1 in Civil Rights Exhibit

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

I learned about the #1 in Civil Rights Exhibit at the Missouri History Museum through the Readings on Race Book Club at the Ferguson Municipal Library.

Although I'm not much of a museum person, the exhibit captured my attention for about an hour.

I plucked the bits that I ingested on the spot or that I will investigate more deeply in the future.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

Harriet Scott?! Why had I only heard about Dred Scott all these decades of my life? Here is one story of Harriet Robinson Scott's adult life. In this account, we learn that Harriet Robinson was only 16 when she married Dred Scott. This suggests another story, untold. Further, because the legal status of children of enslaved persons followed the maternal line (i.e. if the mother was enslaved, then her children were also enslaved), one could argue that Harriet Scott's name should have been the more prominent one on the Supreme Court case, as the futures of their two children depended on the outcome of the case.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

It was only a few weeks before I visited the History Museum that I learned about the East St. Louis Massacre. The confounding range of estimated killed between 40 and 200 reminds me of the similar obliqueness about the Opelousas Massacre.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

 The above quote by William Wells Brown countered the mealymouthed exhibit on slavery in the state capitol's history exhibit.

An American Woman of a Certain Age: A Rite of Passage

My joy at achieving a certain American rite of passage conflicts with my reluctance to reveal my age.

Fuck.

OK, I'm going to share the glee at getting something, but let's be very unclear.

Maybe I already got it - years ago, months ago, days ago.

Maybe I haven't got it yet, but I'm going to get it - days from now, weeks from now, years from now, and I can't stand the anticipation of getting it, so I'm sharing it in advance.

Maybe I JUST GOT IT AND I AM SQUEALING INSIDE LIKE A SIX-YEAR-OLD!

The "it" is the America the Beautiful Senior Pass.

Or, as I like to call it: the LIFETIME national park pass! A lifetime! A whole life! The rest of my life!

Starting from whenever I turned or will turn 62. If that ever happened or might happen at some indeterminate date in the past or future.

Lifetime senior pass

Missouri Flash Trip, Part 3: Hellfire Revisited

On my way back to El Paso from my Missouri Flash Trip, I passed through Alamogordo (my old home!) and stopped for dinner at the Subway on the north side.

This was in the ladies' room:

Hellfire in Alamogordo. July 2017.

I had just seen a family leave Subway after eating. What looked like a youngish dad with his youngish wife and two daughters. The woman and girls were dressed in the long skirts with the long hair that bespeak one of the ultra-conservative Christian sects that put women and girls into a box of submission. No different from the ultra-conservative Jewish sects or the ultra-conservative Muslim sects.

I have no patience for that kind of thing anymore, "that kind of thing" being the denial of an individual's rights to self-determination. In this case, a girl's or woman's rights to self-determination. Some people want to call this kind of thing "culture" or "religious freedom" as a way to deflect criticism. But it's nothing more than garden-variety oppression. It's on the same continuum of oppression as female circumcision, child marriage, and so-called honor killings.

So when I saw the pamphlet sitting on the white sink of the ladies' room, I picked it up, crumpled it, and put it in the trash. Then I walked across the way to the men's room and looked inside to see if there was a pamphlet in there that I could destroy. No.

On my way, then.

The flyer looked like the one I saw in Arkansas back in 2012, driving back home from a road trip to Louisiana:

Hellfire in Arkansas. January 2012.

El Paso: Zapatista Woman

Zapatista Libertad. El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

While on a visit to a community garden in El Paso, I saw this poster laying on a couch in a building that adjoined the garden.

As I've noted before, there are many striking images of strong women in El Paso. Like here and here. These images depict women as full actors in movements for human rights.

The poster above relates to modern-day Zapatistas, a movement that is global in its championship of indigenous group rights, but which has its epicenter in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.

I don't know the original artist of this and similar posters, but Just Seeds is at least one producer of same for purchase.

Although when I think of Chiapas, I think of traditional societies with traditional (read: limiting) roles for women, there is a women's rights platform in the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation). It is called the Women's Revolutionary Law, with this bill of rights:

1. Women, regardless of their race, creed, color or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in any way that their desire and capacity determine.
2. Women have the right to work and receive a fair salary.
3. Women have the right to decide the number of children they have and care for.
4. Women have the right to participate in the matters of the community and hold office if they are free and democratically elected.
5. Women and their children have the right to Primary Attention in their health and nutrition.
6. Women have the right to an education.
7. Women have the right to choose their partner and are not obliged to enter into marriage.
8. Women have the right to be free of violence from both relatives and strangers. 
9. Women will be able to occupy positions of leadership in the organization and hold military ranks in the revolutionary armed forces.
10. Women will have all the rights and obligations elaborated in the Revolutionary Laws and regulations.

 The poster references the EZLN flag, which looks like this:

EZLN flag. Source: wikicommons

On a superficial level, I love the artistic imagery of the poster and the flag.

On a deeper, philosophical level, the Chiapas-centered bill of rights for women seems more progressive than what we've got going on in the USA.

Assuming there's substance behind the words.

Juarez: Fourth Date: Adelita!

Adelita, Museum of the Revolution on the Border, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. February 2017.

On my 4th date with Juarez, I visited the El Museo de la Revolucion en La Frontera aka the Museum of the Revolution on the Border.

That's where I met Adelita.

Adelita is armed and can jump on a horse while wearing stilettos and a very tight dress.

Adelita is a blend of real life, fantasy, and the romanticized archetype of hundreds (thousands?) of women who fought in the Mexican Revolution.

There are stories and songs of Adelita. A movie. Art.

The video below, Adelitas: The Unknown Heroes of the Mexican Revolution, is a quirky, yet informative telling of history, produced by students in El Paso:

Here's the famous song about Adelita, performed in Spanish but with English subtitles:

But below are two soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution, more tied to reality, photographed by Agustin Victor Casasola.

Soldaderas, Mexican Revolution. Photo by: Agustin Victor Casasola.

Shep Lenchek wrote an instructive piece about women soldiers in Mexico, not only during the Mexican Revolution, but during the Spanish Conquest, in Soldaderas - Mexican Women at War. An excerpt: 

While there may be some lingering doubt about the exact role of women in the Conquest, their participation in the Mexican revolution is well documented. However, now they were oft times classified simply as camp followers or prostitutes. Perhaps here too male chauvinism played a part in denying or minimizing the truth that female Soldaderas often stood shoulder to shoulder with male soldiers and fought to the death. ....

.... While it is true that the vast majority of the Mexican women who were involved with the military were non-combatants, it is also factual that thousands of these women lost their lives while performing their very necessary tasks [in the front lines]. Because many of them did become involved sexually with the soldiers they served, either for love or for money, it has become too easy to dismiss all of them as simply prostitutes or else simply ignore their existence.

Mr. Lenchek introduces his readers to a book that examine the real soldaderas in Mexico:Soldaderas in the Mexican Military, by Elizabeth Salas.

Movie poster of 1958 movie Si Adelita se fuera con otro. Source: Stanford University.

This article gives me an excuse to post - again - this painting by Carlos Flores:

Carlos Flores painting, El Paso, Texas.

Viva la Revolución, hermanas Adelitas.

El Paso: Women's March

Women's March, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

Windy, wet, shivery - not a day I wanted to pile on the layers and trudge downtown for the Women's March. But I did it anyway.

Women's March, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

I did it anyway because it was important to my self-respect that I be able to look back and know that I took actions that publicly affirmed my belief in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution - that all of us, not just some of us, have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That we have fundamental rights of self-determination.

Women's March, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

I liked where the march began; I liked where it wound through, and where it ended.

Women's March, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

It began at the Armijo Branch Library in Segundo Barrio and worked its way through that historic neighborhood - where so many El Pasoans or their parents or grandparents first settled in the United States - the "other Ellis Island." The march ended at San Jacinto Plaza downtown.

.

Women's March, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

When I see quotes, such as above, from Malala, it is a call to action for me because if a 16 year-old girl could speak out for girls' and womens' rights in Pakistan, what am I ready to do?

Goddamn, it was cold, though.

Women's March, El Paso, Texas. January 2017.

To get an idea of how many women, girls, men, and boys participated in the march, the video below shows it getting underway from Armijo:




A slide show of the march below:

And a little Mexican pop to march by in this video:

It felt good.

It felt very, very good.

El Paso: Standing Up: Men for Choice?!

Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

I was dumbfounded.


An upcoming event in November had popped up on my social radar screen. An event called Men for Choice.

Maria y Yahvi at Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

Holy pissaroni! Back in Missouri and Louisiana, one barely whispered the word abortion, looking from side to side in the process to see who was in earshot, said states having been hijacked by ultra-conservatives trapped in the Three Bs paradigm (babies, bullets, and the Bible) drawn by the political grandparents of our current power structure. (This was NOT the case in Missouri in the 80s and early 90s, when there were multitudes of Republican and Democratic women who publicly espoused reproductive rights.)

In El Paso, not only are there women talking LOUDLY and OFTEN about reproductive rights, there's even enough traction for there to be an event called Men for Choice!

El Paso! Who'd have thought!?

Maria y Yahvi at Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

Folk musicians, Maria y Yahvi, shared new, old, traditional, and regional songs in English and Spanish, using a range of instruments.

Below, they sing a bilingual version of Woody Guthrie's This is Your Land:

This land was made for you and me. 

It felt good to be here.

And I got this:

West Fund was the organization behind the event. I had no idea there was an organization that helped people so directly with their reproductive needs.

El Paso: A Movie With a Blast of Sexism

At the Fountain Theater, Mesilla, New Mexico. November 2016.

Actually, the movie happened in The Fountain Theater in Mesilla, New Mexico. But because I came up to see the movie from El Paso and my movie seat neighbors also lived in El Paso, I'm claiming this post for El Paso.


The movie, The Lamb, took me back to Ethiopia. I can't look at the trailer without sighing. In nostalgia at my time there; in sadness for the movie's protagonist, the beauty of the country, the tenderness of the boy toward his lamb, the little shepherdess; the pathos of the young woman.

I didn't think about it til just now re-watching the trailer and considering the blast of sexism that blew my way in the theater, that the movie's themes include sexism contra women and men. Not to mention the interconnectedness of Ethiopia's Orthodox Christian, Muslim, and Jewish populations.

So about the movie: I recommend it.

Fountain Theater, Mesilla, New Mexico. November 2016.

The theater is an historic one, lovingly tended to by volunteers, screening films that the mainstream movie theaters might not offer.

Fountain Theater, Mesilla, New Mexico. November 2016.

My seat neighbors were a husband and wife who live in El Paso. Congenial, engaging to chat with. The husband is an attorney. Not relevant under normal circumstances, but ....

I shared with them my recent visit to the Kentucky Club in Juárez, how back in the day, only men (per my understanding) were allowed in.

Mr. Husband allowed as how Mexican law now requires that women be admitted to bars, even to private clubs that used to be the sacrosanct dens for those with affluence and influence of the male persuasion.

The Mrs and I chuckled mildly about the bad old days when women were shut out of back-room and golf-course business deals, and then Mr. Husband said something like: "Oh, but we made sure that women who came to our club wouldn't stay long. We would say things and do things that would intimidate them into leaving. We showed them what was what." Hohohohoho.

The Mrs. allowed as how men needed their space and how there was never anything interesting going on in those men's clubs anyway.

I'd like to say that I whipped out my

bumper sticker ... but I didn't. I took the easy way out and just smiled weakly.

And wrote about it here.

Louisiana: About a Girl

Image: “Plaque from a Casket with a Dancing Woman” by Coptic via The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC0 1.0

A phone was stolen from a child by a child. A couple of videos created by the young thief. Unbeknownst to this child-director-actor, they were automatically uploaded. Seen by the owner of the phone, someone I know. Reported, same day as the discovery, to four child-protection or law enforcement agencies in two states. Persevered over several days to push an investigation. Not about the theft - who cared about that? - no, about the obviousness of child abuse, both current and, inferentially, the recent past.

The videos: Graphic, disturbing, alarming, no ambiguity at what occurred.

Responses by the agencies: Indecisive, vague, incomplete. Dismissive, even.

I think about this young girl, age unclear. Ten? Twelve? Fourteen? She is a girl of color. There is zero doubt that she has been exposed to things that no child should be exposed to, and the same holds true for at least one young child in her circle. When I say zero doubt, I mean that. The videos make that clear.

The sheriff's office referred the caller to the city police although the video was filmed in the parish. The city police tried to refer the caller to the sheriff. The child protection agency in Louisiana determined insufficient cause - without even looking at the videos - for investigation. The child protection agency in the reporter's state referred the reporter to Louisiana. The city police assented to look into things, but there was a delay until the appropriate detective could talk to the caller about it. There was a further delay while the city detective decided how to accept or view the videos.

It all ended up so ambiguously. The child would get counseling, apparently. Or maybe the family. Or both. For what, one wonders. Unknown.

Everybody seemed to have missed the point.

This girl, albeit the actor on a superficial level, was clearly in an environment of abuse, present or past.

One person, among the numerous consulted during the reporting chronology, made a throw-away comment about the sexual precociousness of girls these days. Like them being the aggressor with the boys, etc. This, despite the fact that I had described graphically what was on the video. That this girl is a child.

Here are some perspectives about the vulnerability of young girls of color: 

Sex Crimes Against Black Girls Exhibit Uses Art to Confront Incest

Why Are Black Women Less Likely to Report Rape?

Sent Home From Middle School for Reporting a Rape

Sexual Abuse and the Code of Silence in the Black Community

Why Does Our Culture Sexualize Young Black Girls?

Marvel Pulls Sexualized Riri Williams Cover After Backlash

The Onion Tweets That [a Nine-Year Old Girl of Color] is the C-Word


Updated information

The Truth About How People View Young Black Girls is Disturbing

How Black Women's Bodies Are Violated as Soon as They Enter School

Texas: Video of Invasive Search Shows "Rape by Cop" ....

"This same officer body slammed Ms Corley, stuck her head underneath the vehicle and completely pulled her pants off, leaving her naked and exposed in that Texaco parking lot," he added, saying that her treatment amounted to "rape by cop".

"They then took Ms Corley and placed both ankles behind her ears spread eagle position and started to search for something in Ms Corley's cavity in her vaginal area."

This young girl in South Louisiana, whose life intersected with mine, briefly. What is she doing today?


A song from one of my favorite artists, Rhiannon Giddens, At the Purchaser's Option:

Antigua, Guatemala: The Apron

An apron from Guatemala. Credit: Ixchel Textiles

Before I left Antigua, I shopped for gifts. For Kate, I found a second-hand apron. The apron had a deep pocket on one side, where I imagined Kate would place the tissue she always has on hand. I believed Kate would like to touch the beauty in the worn and mended places of the apron, perhaps feeling a connection to the woman who wore the apron when it was new.

When I brought the apron home to my airbnb home, my hostess told me about the importance of aprons to traditional Guatemalan girls and women. Aprons represented growing up and responsibility. The number of pockets in an apron signified the level of responsibility a woman had to her family.

From the autobiography, I, Rigoberta Menchu, an Indian Woman in Guatemala:

.... my mother told me she is only respected if she's wearing her full costume. If she forgets her shawl, her community starts losing respect for her and a woman needs their respect. 'Never forget to wear your apron, my child,' my mother used to say. 

Our tenth year actually marks the stage when we enter womanhood. It's when parents buy their daughters everything they need: two aprons, two cortes, two perrajes .... My mother used to scold us when we ran off without our aprons: 'You must dress as you're always going to dress. You mustn't change the way you dress because you're the same person and you're not going to change from now on.'  .... Our aprons are .. something very important: women use them all the time, in the market, in the street, in all her work. It's something sacred for a woman and she must always have it with her.

Rigoberta Menchú is a Guatemalan Mayan woman who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her human rights work on behalf of Mayans. 

Guatemala: The Love Motels

In some countries, they are "love motels." In Guatemala, they're "auto hotels."

In my trip between Antigua and Lake Atitlan, I saw plenty. Ditto for the trek to the airport between Antigua and Guatemala City.

I asked my airbnb hostess about the bounty of these love hotels in Guatemala. Again, I had this assumption of Guatemala as a socially conservative culture, yet there is very little subtlety about the nature of these hotel when you pass them by on the road.

She said, oh yes, they are very common. One of the busiest days of the year is Secretary's Day, she reported. This is when bosses take their secretaries out to .... lunch.


Some articles:

• Auto Hotels and Love Hotels, from Taken By the Wind
• The Creeptastic Auto Hotel, from La Aventura Project
• Passions in Secret, or The Explosion of "Auto-Hotels," from GuateBuena, GuateMaya

Here is the website for the Omni auto hotel. You can even book a reservation at this hotel via booking.com. One happy client, "David," reports:

La habitación tan lujosa, es un buen lugar para compartir con la pareja momentos intimos, es hasta el momento el mejor love hotel al que e ido. 

The very luxurious room is a good place to share intimate moments with a partner; so far it's the best love hotel I've been to. 

And here's the website for another auto hotel: Auto Hotel Chocolate. And the Happy Day Auto Hotel's Facebook page here.

The bottom line in any culture is that people are gonna do what people are gonna do. There are work-arounds for every rule.

I don't have a photo of a Guatemalan love hotel. But that's OK. It gives me a chance to revisit the sign from a hotel in Nazret (Adama) in Ethiopia.

Antigua, Guatemala: Girls: PDAs and Promises

 

School kids in uniforms abound in Antigua. White blouses and plaid pleated skirts for girls. White shirts and dark trousers for boys.

In the mornings on the way to school, on the way home during the lunch hour, or in the afternoon after school had let out, a common scene on the sidewalk: An adolescent boy and an adolescent girl together, up close. Sometimes kisses exchanged. Sometimes just long, meaningful looks. Sometimes caresses. Quite a lot of PDA, in fact.

I could just imagine what the boys were whispering into the girls' ears - the same thing boys have whispered into their desired targets for millennia, right?  Promises of love eternal, assurances of beauty, and all that.

All this PDA on the Antiguan streets surprised me because of two assumptions I held:

• Guatemala's social culture is very traditional; i.e. very conservative in regards to dating between boys and girls, especially the public comportment of girls and women; and
• Antigua is a small town, so observations-judgment-gossip spreads quickly. 

I asked both my Spanish teacher and my airbnb hostess about the prevalence of these public mating rituals.

In a nutshell, said both women, it's the same old story that spans current and past cultural mores. It's the boys' job to hunt and conquest. It's the girls' job to keep their legs closed. If a girl succumbs to a boy's advances, all judgment falls on her. After all, the boy was just doing what a boy is supposed to do.

Well, I asked, are condoms at least readily available?

Sure, but again, same old story. Boys don't want to wear them. Boys won't go to the pharmacy to buy them. Girls won't either because ... what "good girl" would buy condoms?

Although the adolescent romantic theater playing on Antigua's charming cobblestone streets might appear sweet - ahhh, young love! - it is a fanciful mist that masks the reality of disturbing cultural realities in Guatemala:

• Fathers Rape With Impunity, Fueling Guatemala's Teen Pregnancy
• Why is Guatemala's Teen Pregnancy Rate So High? 
• Being a Teenage Mother in Guatemala ("... Guatemala is the only country in Central America where teenage pregnancy is actually on the rise.") 
• Children Having Children in Guatemala
• Child, Bride, Mother: Guatemala
• 2016 Trafficking ... Guatemala (US State Dept)
• Guatemala Closes Its Eyes to Rampant Child Sex Trafficking
• Nearly 20 Years After Peace Pact, Guatemalan Women Relive Violence

The dysfunctions are tied to these and other variables: 

• Machismo culture that discounts girls and women, and where violence against girls and women is acceptable
• Egregious gender inequality, where girls don't have the access boys do to education, health care, reproductive rights, or self-determination
• Decades-long civil war that employed rape and other violence as a method of control 
• Corrupt or ineffective government systems that ignore or don't have the capacity to effect positive changes or protect girls and women
• Faith leaders who are complicit in maintaining the status quo for girls and women in Guatemala by failing to stand up for the physical and emotional safety and health of girls and women

Here are a couple of stories from two Peace Corps volunteers in Guatemala, and their experiences with sexual harassment in-country:

• I Don't Want You to Make Me Feel Like I'm the Only Girl in the World (Kelley)
• The Language of Empowerment (Jessica)

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala: A Candelight Dinner

Just up a little bit on the steep road from La Iguana Perdido is a second-floor café of the mom and pop variety. I drew an arrow to point it out in the photo below:

Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

A Santa Cruz travel buddy - Jane -  and I entered to have dinner there. It was getting dark and we weren't sure the restaurant would be open, but it was.

The señora we'd spoken to earlier in the day wasn't at the café, but a young girl, maybe between 10 and 12, was present. Another little girl appeared. They took Jane's and my order, then hustled into the tiny kitchen on the other side of the ordering counter, which was behind our table.

Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

There was no electricity in the cafe, and one of the girls lit the candles on our table. I don't remember what either of us ordered, but it did require cooking. We could hear the young girls talking and moving around in the petite kitchen, and working with a gas oven.

I expected the café matron to appear, but no, these little girls were both our servers and cooks. Well, some of the food had been prepared previously, so some of the work involved heating it up.

Nevertheless, the level of responsibility at play here --> Greeting us, seating us, setting the table, lighting the candles, taking our orders, preparing our dinners, serving them, accepting payment. The quiet discussions and occasional giggling behind the counter.

The señora arrived as we were preparing to leave the restaurant. She explained that one of the girls was her granddaughter. If I remember correctly, the other little girl was the señora's hired helper.

The food was tasty - neither superior nor inferior to the food I ate at La Iguana Perdida.

When encountering children who work - and who maybe go to school and maybe not - it sets up debates in my mind.

My Spanish teacher and I had a conversation about the young kids who worked at the market in Antigua. I wondered if they weren't required to attend school? Theoretically, education is mandatory between ages 7 and 14. But setting aside the theoretical requirement, my Spanish teacher countered my indirect judgmentalism with this argument: By working every day in the market, don't the children gain an education? Such as learning about real-world math in their money-handling transactions? Communication skills via salesmanship, networking, and negotiations?

On one level, sure. And there are centuries of history in many cultures, in which children have matured into educated, skilled adult artisans and merchants who live very well by dint of apprenticeship.

And it is not intrinsically bad or harmful for children to work, assuming the work is safe and does not compromise other quality of life issues.

On another level - well, my Spanish teacher's daughter is going to school. Private school. With an expectation, I believe, of going on to university after she completes high school.

And speaking of girls: Research shows a strong correlation between girls' number of years in school and girls' age at first pregnancy. In other words, the longer a girl stays in school, the older she is before she becomes pregnant the first time. Education also has ramifications for the girls' lifetime health, the health of their children, and by extension the overall economic welfare of the girls'-to-women's families.

When it comes to questions in which it is difficult for me to see the line that divides mere cultural differences and cultural dysfunctions, I ask myself if the tradition supports or denies an individual's right to self-determination. Some definitions of self-determination below: 

• The free choice of one's acts without compulsion. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
• The individual’s right to live his life as he chooses, as long as he does not violate any other person’s right to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. (Foundation for Economic Education)
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  (Declaration of Independence)

So. These two young girls in the mom-and-pop restaurant in Santa Cruz. And for that matter, the señora.

What are their stories?

Antigua, Guatemala: Breasts

Mermaid fountain, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

There is a fountain in Antigua's Central Park in which there are stone women who hold their breasts aloft so that the fountain's water can soar forth through their nipples.

Mermaid fountain, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

When I look at this statue's facial expression, I imagine her thoughts: "There is no dignity here. And I have a bird on my head."

Mermaid fountain, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Evidently, the women are mermaids.

Antigua, Guatemala: Tortilla Servitude

 

Blue tortillas, San Felipe de Jesus, near Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

The sight of girls and women making and selling tortillas all day, every day, in Antigua, is ubiquitous.

My airbnb hostess explained that some - many? - of the girls are lured from the countryside to the cities, such as Antigua, with promises of a better life than can be had in their impoverished rural villages. Often, the girls' parents willingly send their daughters off with the tortilla head hunters, so to speak, believing the promises.

Too often, the girls end up working for miserable earnings, living in miserable, crowded quarters, making and selling tortillas. All day, every day.

The making of tortillas all day, every day results in:

• The girls' and womens' skin permanently damaged from chronic exposure to the lime in the masa, the corn dough that is the basis for the tortilla. 
• Tendon injuries due to the repetitive hand and wrist movement involved in shaping and flattening the tortilla. 

It looks picturesque, it looks quaint, it looks "cultural." 

Is that girl on that corner, selling tortillas, a girl trapped in servitude? Or is she an entrepreneur, or the daughter of an entrepreneur, with a promising future?

I barely glance at her when I walk by; she barely glances at me while she sits by her cloth-covered basket of tortillas. She's an extra in my movie as I am in hers.

What's her story?

Antigua, Guatemala: Girls: Quinceañeras

Quinceañera, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

In Salt Lake City, you can hang out on Temple Square and watch brides and grooms go in and come out of the temple for their "sealing."

Quinceañera, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

In Caucasus Georgia, you frequently come across couples just before, in the midst of, or immediately following their wedding ceremonies.

Ditto for Istanbul and Playa del Carmen.

In Antigua, Guatemala, I see quinceañeras, 15-year old girls being debuted to the world as making the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Antigua parks are good photographic backdrops for creating memories of a sweet rite of passage.

Below is a picture from my year in Alamogordo, New Mexico, of a store that carries the accoutrement for quinceañeras.

Quinceañeras and bridal store, New York Avenue, Alamogordo, New Mexico. October 2012.

Quinceañeras are big business in the Americas and the Caribbean. There are Quinceañeras Expos and all of the ancillary business folk who thrive on the tradition.

Quinceañera, Central Park, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Notice the girl's pink tennis shoes? My understanding is that she would wear these before the party, but at a certain point, change into heels to signify her passage from childhood into womanhood.

Discussions of quinceañeras:

• Mexico
• United States in 2013 and in 1996
• Guatemala

On this same day, I encountered a future quinceañera, celebrating her First Communion:

First Communion, La Merced, Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

I'm guessing that's her kid brother next to her. I bet he gets annoying sometimes. If no one were looking, I wonder if she'd pop him over the head with the holy candle. Maybe when they got home.

Mississippi: The Baptists Not There

Mississippi Baptist Beginnings, Highway 61, Mississippi. February 2016.

Right before I left South Louisiana, I read the memoir by Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi. This woman was bold. Bold in life and bold in her writing. 

She's the 23 year-old woman in this iconic photo from the soda fountain counter here:

From right to left at counter: Anne Moody, Joan Trumpauer, and John Salter. 1963 at Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi. Credit: Fred Blackwell.

Ms. Moody grew up in Centreville and Woodville, Mississippi. I routed my departure from Louisiana through Mississippi's Highway 61 so I could pass close by these towns of her youth.

What I really would have liked to have done was find her and meet her. But Anne Moody died in February 2015. She was afflicted with dementia in her last years. Her younger sister, Ms. Adline, oversaw her care. When I read this, about her sister caring for her, I thought, holy damn, after what Ms. Moody was wont to write about her younger siblings back in the day, well, I wonder if the sisters had to walk on some prickly paths to get to a good place. In an excerpt from one of Ms. Moody's obituaries:

Adline Moody said Saturday that she admired the courage of her sister, who was two years her senior.

"We came from a very poor family, and when she joined the movement, she did it because it was something that needed to be done. She wasn't out there just to be there," Adline Moody said. "I'm very proud of her for what she did. She made it better for me."

So.

On this day, I was driving on Highway 61, having left my Louisiana nest behind, and I saw signage indicating a historical site on my right as I flashed by. Oh. Did I want to stop? I'd have to turn around and go back, if yes. ... Probably something boring, but you never know, maybe it had something tangential to what I read in Ms. Moody's book. So I turned around and went back.

Right away I was impressed. The very first sign told me that the Baptist church has been in Mississippi since 1791. Wow, that long? 

Being raised a Roman Catholic, I don't know that much about Baptists except they generally feel confident that my kind of people are on the fast track to Hell, not being born again and all. I had thought Baptists came relatively late to the Christian buffet.

The Mississippi Baptist Beginnings historic site is a series of large signs arranged along a semi-circle turnabout, so it's very easy to take in the info while in your car.  When I entered the circle drive, I noticed a car parked up toward one end of the far bend. A woman inside, maybe having a picnic meal or just contemplating life. It's a pretty place.

I moseyed by each sign with my car, taking in about as much history as my brain allows in one sitting. When I got to the end, I thought, wait, something's missing. Did I overlook it? Let me go through it again. So I swung around for another turn through the exhibits.

I glanced over to the woman in the car. Opened my passenger seat window.

"Excuse me. Ma'am?" I asked.

"Yes?" she said, an African-American woman in her 30s or so.

"Is it my imagination or is there an important part of the Baptist history missing here?"

The woman looked at me without expression and without hesitation, and in a matter-of-fact voice, replied: "Yes, ma'am, there is."

In a location so close to where a woman of courage grew up, in the year 2016, was a monument to a history in which it would appear that only white people were Baptists, and only they who effected change in the society.

This is unfortunate. Not just because it fails to acknowledge the African-American contributions to Baptist history in Mississippi, but because it reinforces the stereotype of Mississippi as a backward stanchion of white rule. The historic memorial's blindness to the fuller history would seem to reflect the despair of Ms. Moody's closing passage in her 1960s Civil Rights memoir:

"I sat there listening to 'We Shall Overcome,' looking out of the window at the passing Mississippi landscape. Images of all that had happened kept crossing my mind: the Taplin burning, the Birmingham church bombing, Medgar Evers' murder, the blood gushing out of McKinley's head, and all the other murders. ...I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

"'Moody...'" it was little Gene again interrupting his singing.

"'Moody, we're gonna git things straight in Washington, huh?'" 

I didn't answer him. I knew I didn't have to. He looked as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. 

"'I wonder. I wonder.'" ...