The lack of money caused problems because whenever my brothers or sisters got sick, my father didn’t have pesos for a doctor.

I was born into a very poor family in a small town, Charloco, half an hour from the larger town, Putla, in Oaxaca, Mexico. There are mountains, woods, and rivers. 
 
My father was an el campesino and would plant the traditional three sisters, Milpa—corn, beans, and squash—and harvest the quelites, the wild herbs that would sprout in between. Sometimes, he hunted armadillos, deer, rabbits, iguanas. He would borrow a horse from my uncle to plow. He had three cows for milk. My mother had chickens and pigs. 
 
There were seven siblings, three brothers, and four sisters. I am the eldest brother. For every birthday, my mother made tamales or pozole, and sacrificed a chicken. We lived in a small adobe house. We didn’t have beds. We had petates (mats)that we’d just put on the ground and sleep together.
 
Every time there was an earthquake, we’d sleep outside because the house was cracked in the corners. There were many quakes. Each year, we had a big quake and the aftershocks. Because my father didn’t have money we wore guaraches, sandals made from car tires. In winter, my feet would get cold. Every weekday, we had to shower outside before school. There was no boiler, only cold water.
 
Each one of us had a task. My older sister had to help my mom with the cooking. I had to help my father in the field. Before school, I had to feed the pigs. They were 15 or 20 minutes away in a field. Then after school, I would take them out of the corral and let them go to the forest. I was herding them for a couple of hours, and then I’d go back home and begin my homework before eating and bed.
 
There were ten or twelve pigs and they would like to go to the river and make a mess. I had to make sure they didn’t damage any neighbor’s properties. They kept me very busy.

The lack of money caused problems because whenever my brothers or sisters got sick, my father didn’t have pesos for a doctor. My little brother at age seven, got really sick and nearly died. My father looked for people to help him pay for a doctor. Then my mom got really sick and we had the same problem with no money.

I was11 or 12 when I decided to look for a job and leave the house. At 12 or 13, I looked for work in the town. I weeded the Milpa and got paid 20 pesos per day. I went to school until 6th grade. After 6th grade, they charge money, and I would have had to move to the city. When I turned 14, I decided to go to La Paya, Baja California. Someone came to recruit workers in my town for Big Ag. I lived on a ranch and worked 8 hours a day for 120 pesos, planting lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. There were hundreds of workers.

I then found work at Cabo San Lucas with a gravel company. They would go to the mountains and dynamite them. It was dangerous work. I was helping, some days collecting large stones, some days moving pipes or connecting them. I was paid 200 pesos a day but one day, one of the managers told me that I was a minor and if I got killed in an accident, they would bury me in the ground so no one would know. That scared me. I was only 14. There were big machines running around. I went back to Oaxaca.

I was happy for the first month when I saw my family! I had saved money to start building a new house. I didn’t have quite enough money to finish it, and then at 15, I decided to come to the USA.

My father had come to the States in 1987, worked the fields, and returned home. He did that every year. He liked to drink. I looked for people to join me, and finally found two guys from Charloco. I asked to come with them in 1999. We flew to Sonora, then crossed the border walking. I just walked for three hours. It was like a corral fence. It wasn’t high. We paid a “coyote” who knew the route $1,000. We paid a deposit of $350 and when we got there the rest. There were six of us when we crossed at night.

A small car met us. Five guys were sandwiched in the back seat and I was in the front. It took us somewhere in Arizona. We were put in an apartment where all the windows were covered. Food was brought in for three days. I was then brought to Windsor in a van, and people were dropped off in different places.

I met my father, who was living in Salinas. I discovered that his brother lived in Windsor. So, my father came here and we shared a room at my uncle’s place. There were ten of us living in the same house. I started work gardening, raking, and collecting leaves for my first day’s work in the US. I went to Hopland to pick pears. That lasted a month. I then found work in a vineyard in Sonoma with my father. We spent six months together and then he went back to Mexico. He came here again for six months the following year and after that decided to stay in Mexico.

My older sister came. It had become more dangerous to cross the border. Her van was in a big accident. She got really sick. I took her to the hospital. One of her vertebrae was fractured and she had to wear a cast. I took care of her for six months. I paid for her food. It was a hard time. I also had to send money to Mexico and look after her until she was well.

My sister started cleaning houses. Then she worked at McDonald’s. After she got married and had children, she took care of the household. Her husband is a landscaper. Now she does just a little housecleaning work.

In 2013, my father passed. He had swallowed poison. By the time he got to a doctor, he was drunk and the doctor couldn’t do much. They called me at 3 pm and again at 10 pm when he had passed. He was 50 years old. It was too difficult at that time for me to go to Mexico. That was the first big tragedy. I didn’t have a chance to talk to him at the end.

In 2021, during Covid, my youngest brother, Fausto, who was a teacher got sick. He had moved to the city for work and was planning to get married that year and was very busy with work. He thought it was Covid because there were many cases in his city. He said he was taking medicine. I believed him and didn’t worry about it because I knew people here in their 30s who’d had Covid and told me it was just like having ’flu. I was talking with him three weeks later and he said, I’m still sick. And then I started worrying about him. He told me, I feel okay. I said It’s not okay, you need to go to a doctor. One week later, I got a call from Mexico that he was very, very ill. One of my sisters and an uncle went to see him in bed and it was too late to move him.

A day later Fausto passed. He had plans and he didn’t make it. It’s life. There’s nothing we can do. Saul weeps and I’m moved to tears, too.

I’ll go to Mexico maybe in three to four years. It all depends on my mother’s situation. I don’t feel the immigration situation will be better. 

My mother can walk and is getting treatment. Before, she couldn’t walk due to the pain of her arthritis. I can work in Charloco, Mexico. I plan to get a farm. My brother built another house. My home is a two-story building. My mother lives downstairs. I have two houses thanks to my brother.

I have inherited lots of hectares and plan to have cows and vegetables, and I’ll try to be self-sufficient.

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Middle East Peace

The moon waxes and wanes. There are times we are pulled back and times when we brim.
My brother, my only sibling, passed on April 5th.

I’d like to share friends’ responses to April’s newsletter.

Holly, who is familiar with Islamic practices dreamed this in 2007.

There is a “Quibla nama” (a compass that shows the direction for Muslim prayer) that points in the direction of Jerusalem, and I know that the believers of all the Abrahamic religions (now) face that way to pray. I begin to prostrate myself and pray in Hebrew, something simple like a profession of faith, or “There is no god but God”. Somehow, I know this ritual and see myself as a Hasidic Jew with black side curls and wearing a long white robe. I sense Muslim and Christian people around me praying their own prayers. I feel an amazing sense of light and oneness, performing this Jewish prayer.

A friend in England, Sabera, wrote in response to my question if there was a backstory to her painting of Earth.

Interesting you ask. It’s a multi-faceted answer. I was brought up within orthodox Islam. Through this path (a Sufi path) and the grace of it, over the years I have discovered a deepening closeness with the Earth. Actually, I think it is the transmission that somehow works with the Earth on a deep level, beyond any conceptual understanding. And because this transmission is something we are deeply connected with and have been graced to have reflected into our hearts, it brings us in greater kinship with the Earth in a mysterious way, that cannot be understood with the mind. I wanted to paint the Earth myself because it is such a beautiful planet and this particular aspect/angle of it shows Palestine and Israel which represents such a troubled area of our world. The extent of violence, hatred, and bloodshed within this tiny part of our planet is significant and terrible, and beyond understanding. For me, it represents a microcosm of how fractured and troubled we have become as a people and how we have forgotten that we are brethren and kin, before all religions.

We are here in service to the Earth at a time of great crisis, and we are one with the Earth, more than we fully understand, because we have forgotten that. By painting the Earth, I wanted to become more conscious of this deep relationship that I have discovered exists within my heart. Painting is a way in which I find deeper connection and meaning and that brings clarity to me.

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A friend in California responded: 

I did read your April issue of Earth-Love, and perhaps what you wrote there lingered in my subconscious mind, for I had a dream three nights ago about Gaza, quite surprising me because I do not watch news of any sort and am not current on what is transpiring there. I dreamt of a serpentine, sine-wave wall between Israel and Palestine, thin and supple as a skin, on either side of which white-robed countrymen lined themselves at dawn, with literally their “backs to the wall,” yet also back-to-back with their purported enemies, feeling the invisible warmth of another human being just on the other side—for one moment, released from their enmity by this daily ritual truce-of-peace, allowed to be as they desired: brothers. Feeling not separate but as onebody.

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Amid continuing crisis and tragedy in the region, last week was a big one for ALLMEP and our efforts to platform the voices of Israeli and Palestinian peacebuilders here in Europe. ALLMEP hosted a delegation of Palestinian and Israeli civil society peacebuilders in Brussels to address the European Parliament in partnership with the Greens/EFA Party. The event gave peacebuilders the opportunity to raise the most pressing issues and challenges facing the field to key policymakers in Brussels, where we also held meetings with key European Union officials. Read more about their efforts, and see video highlights here.

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At the same time, ALLMEP’s Regional Chief of Staff, Nivine Sandouka traveled from Jerusalem to Italy for the International Journalism Festival, the largest annual media event in Europe. Nivine was joined by Yael Braudo-Bahat of Women Wage Peace, journalist Melina Huet, and Annette Young, host of France24’s 51 Percent, for a panel that highlighted feminist perspectives and the importance of inclusive peace processes. Watch the full recording of the panel here.

Thanks to supporters such as you, ALLMEP now has offices in Berlin, London, and Paris, and can champion the voices of peace activists and civil society across Europe, at a moment when their voices and values have never been more necessary.

As key stakeholders and communities as well as politicians at the highest level think about the horrific realities on the ground and the ongoing war in Gaza, it is vital that civil society be a key component of any lasting solution to the conflict

In peace,

Luisa Siemens
European Policy Coordinator

Support ALLMEP Today!

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How We Heal

This is how we heal, one cell
at a time, drawing in the nutrients
and air offered to the body,
which rejoices in stillness
as the maple celebrates a pummeling
rain in spring, even the patchesof lichen on its branches and trunk
glowing greener in the meager light
of dusk. We heal by asking
for what we need from the ground
we stand on, roots reaching out—
calling, speaking to others moving
in their own slow-motion way
toward the wholeness that is this
leafing out from tight red buds
whose blush you can barely see
at first, like color rising up,
returning to the face.

James Crews

Editor of poetry anthologies How to Love the World, The Path to Kindness, and The Wonder of Small Things.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

In this interview, Earth as Koan, Earth as Self, Roshi Susan Murphy from Australia, and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee weave a beautiful dance strewn with generous nuggets of ancient Chinese wisdom and dollops of Aboriginal teachings that make it rich, profound, and moving.

https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/earth-as-koan-earth-as-self

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Kincentricleadership present

Our Body – an Earth Being
with Mira Weinrich

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 
10:30 am – 1:00 pm PST, 6.30 pm – 9 pm BST, 17:30 – 20.00 UTC

An online introduction to an exciting new way of working with our bodies and with Earth
 

Our bodies belong to the living Earth. They are guided by ancient planetary principles and intelligence.

 
If we grow up in the modern world paradigm, humans are separated from the overall context of life and this can lead to a feeling of non-belonging.  But every single body speaks the Earth’s mother tongue.  Earth and our body, they belong to each other. Therefore, we can participate in their conversation and have relationships with the non-human world through our bodies. 

To learn more and register please go to https://www.kincentricleadership.org/our-body-an-earth-being

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For those of us who are local, the Acorn MusEcology Project is offering a free concert,In Common Silence

• Friday, May 3, 2024
• 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm
• Redwood Forest Theater, Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve (map)

More info a thttps://www.acornsings.com/incommonsilence

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The Hidden Forest Nursery may close soon. I’ve just visited it for the first time, having heard about its enchantments for years. The rhododendrons are in full bloom, there’s a bog garden, a pond, perhaps the only silver fern tree in northern California, and a multitude of flowering shrubs, trees, and flowers tucked away on 7 acres.

See it while you can! https://hiddenforestnursery.com/visit/