More Soldiers (Troops) On the Ground Is a Threat to Nde' Way of Life

(Photo: PBS)

(Film still: Kieren Fitzgerald)

(Photo: Margo Tamez)

(Photo: Austin American Statesman)

Yuma, Arizona News Reveals Suspicion, Napolitano Could Send More Troops to Border

Indigneous Nde' people of the Lower Rio Grande Valley are threatened by increased militarization of our home communities, rancherias, farmlands, stock areas, water, riparian wetlands, and sacred sites.

Nde' and other indigenous communities of the rancherias along the Rio Grande, who uphold traditional indigneous teachings of sacred lifeways which respect and honor Life, stand firm on denouncing further hostile encroachments upon our traditional ways of life and cultures.

Nde' teachings come from our foreparents and our contemporary elders who are leading the resistance against a Berlin-style steel-concrete wall through indigenous traditional sacred lands. We ask all Nde' people and our friends and allies throughout the region to stand firm against further militarization of our region. Peace cannot come through armed force and aggression. Local Nde' elders, children, women and men, indigenous workers, and our communities will be first impacted by increased armed uniformed soldiering in our communities.

The elders and families of the Lower Rio Grande Valley currently endure one of the harshest, violating and lawbreaking militarized operations in North America, as evidenced in the numerous layers of armed guards policing the unarmed, noncombatant civilian population. These layers of soldiering are comprised of the U.S. Customs Border Patrol, U.S. Army National Guard, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. D.H.S., local police, Texas Highway Patrol, Texas Rangers, paramilitaries, and private security personnel, among others. The U.S. Department of Defense, North Command (NorthCom) Task Force directs the training of all armed units in the region, as part of the tripartite U.S. global military campaigns: 'war on terror', 'war on drugs', and 'war on illegal immigration.'

NEWS KSWT, YUMA, ARIZONA reports early warnings that Janet Napolitano, if confirmed as Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, may initiate a secondary "Operation Jump Start."

The following is excerpted from a news report from Yuma, Arizona

"Would Napolitano Send Troops Back to the Border?

Governor Janet Napolitano is gearing up for confirmation to the post of Homeland Security Chief. If approved, would she send troops back to the U.S.- Mexico border? A job with the Obama administration would come six months after the Bush adminstration denied Napolitano's request for further help at the border.

The governor's office refused to comment on any decisions that may come after Napolitano's confirmation, but in a June 12th interview, Napolitano expressed concerns over the National Guard's departure from the border.

"We've made progress at the border," she said in that interview. "But things that were supposed to happen while the National Guard was here: the completion of some of the fencing, the staffing up of the Border Patrol, the virtual fence, the technology, you know, has been slower than you said."

The Yuma Sector Border Patrol says the Guard was very helpful. During the deployment, the agency nearly doubled its staff, adding about 400 agents.

"Our recruitment team has been very active holding job fairs throughout our area of operation which includes eastern Arizona, parts of Nevada and Kansas. So we've gone out there and attended colleges. We've gone to job fairs," says Agent Laura Boston. "We now have fencing covering almost all 125 linear miles of Yuma Sector. It's not always fencing but some type of tactical infrastructure."

The proposed virtual fence remains at a stand-still as officials struggle to optimize the technology. It's hard to tell right now whether Arizona could see a second Operation Jump Start."

THE BORDER WALL, A film by Wayne Ewing Premiering in Brownsville, Texas

Border Fence Documentary to be Shown This Week At Two Locations in the Lower Rio Grande Valley

Details

Date?: Thursday 12/4/8
Where?: Galleria 409 ( 409 E. 13th St. ) in Brownsville
Time?: 6 pm

Date?:Friday 12/5/8
Where?: South Texas College mid- Valley campus in Weslaco, (Auditorium, Bldg G190)
Tiime?: 6pm

12 Methods Used to Deny 'Lipan Apache' Genocide in Texas and to Regulate Nde' Struggles to the Normative Discourse of 'the Past' & 'Extinction'

REVIEW the 12 Methods of Denying Genocide

Read; Read; Read;

Consider critical analysis for further consideration of indigenous self-determination movements, settler colonialism, Nde' struggles for self-recognition, self-governance and self-determination.

Nde' Mothers' Voices Against the Wall ~~ A Prayer

(These photos are from the Naiiees Ceremony. Tamez Family and Nde' Photos and are Not for Distribution Without Express Consent from the Family Members, Thank you!).


Dear Friends;
I send you all a prayer and a wish for your unending grace, growth, empowerment, loving paths, kindnesses, and safety today. I suddenly felt a huge wave of inspiration, which I think came from seeing the immense power of the will of human beings coming together to dismantle the wall in Berlin. Suddenly, quite fast, this feeling rose to the top of me, literally from my toes to the top of my head! And, then, this poured out of me. I hope this will explain a little of how I feel about the wall, and why I work everyday, in some way, to stop the wall's construction in our lands, the Nde' people aboriginal to the Lower Rio Grande. Thank you for letting me share with you. Be blessed today in all you do.



Nde' Mothers Voices Against the Wall

Ussn, Bringer of Life, I thank you,
Creator, please hear the prayers of our mothers and grandmothers,
our fathers and grandfathers,
our children and grandchildren at this time...

Ussn, please hear the voices of the ancestors ...
whose footprints, handprints, prayers, struggles and love
spread across the lands like morning mist


I ask you Ussn, for your help,
in a serious way, I ask for your help

The mothers tell us in their words, worries, and sadness
We must destroy this wall of death

Ussn, I believe the voices and the wisdom of the mothers
for their severe worries show me that the taproot of this wall
brings to pass upon our people immeasurable destruction

and that this wall of steel and cement
is against the very core of the teachings
of my ancestors of
the Garcia, Cavazos, Esparza, Montalvo, Galvan, Rodriguez, Tamez... clans
who taught us that we are here for the community, not self, and
we are to simply honor all forms of Life, provided to us as a sacred gift.

Ussn, Bringer of Life,
Hear my prayer...
the wall encroaches upon my soul and displaces light
leaving only shadow and misery inside my heart,
and this is the illness of the wall...
spreading bad thoughts, bad words, bad actions, fear, distrust, anger
like projectiles of destruction deployed upon our people's minds, bodies and spirits

I see everyday the shadow and misery of this wall
already pressing down, like a soldier's boot, upon the necks of our children
extinguishing the children's breaths, extinguishing any possible future
as free, and indigenous and humans
what we call Nde' ~ the Real People.

This is the wall,
and here is what the elders say
came before the wall.

Hear the voice of resistance
bitter wails of ancestors engulfing my lungs
their impatient howls bursting out my throat
rattling the chains of trauma & memory and the old ones say
"Enough!!", their cries
blasting through the numbness
like tiny shrapnels of lightning
the ancestors come out like that---hard, real, no more time for waiting.

The wall's path
follows other paths of hate upon our ancestors...
whose mangled and mutilated bodies
lay un recognized and un eulogized and under grounded
in Starr county, Hidalgo conty, Cameron county...

We remember, we remember
We are the daughters who our mothers
nursed and teethed on the daily rations
of witnessing our elders as survivors of war in our own lands

The elders of these lands say...
in the Lower Rio Grande,
the wall is being built

upon

the indigenous children of the 19th century
hunted down by soldiers and militias
the small children and women
who could not escape the blunt end of the rifle
cracking their skulls
and the ones who got away
their minds incised with the terror of those screams

the indigenous mothers in 1910-1916
forcibly removed from their huts, gardens and medicines
who begged for mercy from the settlers before they starved
in a land abundant with wildlife, mesquite, mescal---they were starved
their gasping voices laid over by farmlands, cotton, cement ...
the newer forms of slavery

the indigenous grandmothers of 1935
who fought the soldiers against the construction of the levee
on the day my mother was born
and who screamed to the soldiers
to stop the impending deaths of their sisters and children
who would be flooded out on the other side
the destruciton of women's collective corn fields
the destruction of fertile topsoils tended carefully over generations

the indigenous youth and adults in 1937-1965 sent off to wars, and to labor camps
in the fields of the new lords
to blend and to bend among the multitudes of imported 'laborers'
under the guns and barbwire open-air fortress of South Texas
'the machine'
human bodies reduced to mere 'energy'
as if calculating batteries

the indigenous grandparents from these lands
enduring and enduring
from 1752-2008
toiling like mere 'units' not 'People' or 'Humans'
in their own lands
for food, for shelter, for wages...

the indigenous of the Lower Rio Grande in 2008
our memories, histories, languages, experiences---resilience!
refusing to be buried and the evidence of the violence
once again hidden beneath a wall of death

Hear me! Ussn! Hear me! An Nde' Woman,
Let this voice be heard for the People!

I won't surrender our history
I won't surrender our ancestors
I won't surrender our language
I won't surrender our territories
I won't surrender the medicine
I won't surrender the children
I won't surrender the parents
I won't surrender the elders
I won't surrender the memories
I won't give up the traditions
I won't give up the songs
I won't give up the future

Because I am the daughter of Life
Because I am the daughter of Naiiees Isdzaneklesh
Because I am the daughter of the Lightning People
Because I am the daughter of the Nde'

I am a daughter of the resurging Nde' Nation
My roots are in El Calaboz Rancheria
the place of my mother's birth
Where the elders gave her lightning ceremony
Where she went into the world to Slay the Monsters
With the Elders Smiling Behind Her
With the Elders Smiling Behind Her

Where the Wall of Death
Stopped in the Path
of the Bringer of Life
El Calaboz!
The place where the People Fight for Life from the Belly of Mother
From small holes in the ground
the indigenous fight the monsters
From small holes in the ground
the indigenous cannot be seen, and yet can see and feel
the rumblings of the enemies from far away...

Ahe'he'e Ussn --thank you Bringer of Life
Ahe'he'e Diyin --thank you Holy People
Ahe'he'e Shimaa Lepaiie --thank you mother clan
Ahe'he'e Shitaa Lepaiie --thank you father clan

Margo Tamez
November 7, 2008

Evictions and Condemnations for the Poor and Brown, Special Status for Historical Slave Owner Property Owners

My mother, Eloisa Garcia Tamez,  is sending this message.  She does not have access to the internet in El Calaboz, and so sends this message to supporters.  I add my own comments at the end.

Eloisa G. Tamez (EGT)

Margo Tamez (MT)

 

(MT): Following up on the story this morning about the plantation owner who went to D.C. to deal directly with DHS and got a different deal (at: http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/border_38183___article.html/fence_irwin.html) :

 

(EGT): There were 5-6 Poor Hispanic, Land Grant descent families, who were forcibly removed, given a 90 day eviction order, when the U.S. condemned their lands which abutted right up against the levee.

 

(EGT): Their condemned properties are West of La Paloma Rancheria, off Cantu Rd, which is right off Military Hwy. 

 

(MT): My mother went to visit them personally months ago when she heard about the U.S. condemnation order, and she was deeply agitated and angered at the desperate condition in which the families were living, and that the U.S. DHS had the gall to forcibly relocate these poor families, to where, we do not know. These are farmers on U.S. land which their families have worked for centuries.  They are poor farmers, and had no access to basic communication technology in the area due to low income. 

 

(MT): My mother is extremely frustrated that this white land owner, Irwin,  in the above referenced story, is being given special status by the U.S. DHS, especially given the fact that this 'waiver' is yet again for a white land owner.  Irwin is being selected for a special deal, and the article insinuates that her deal is somehow connected to the historical significance of her position as the owner of a former slave plantation.  Are we to understand that white land owners in the Lower Rio Grande, with 'historical' slave quarters and buildings, --a place of human rights abuses on multiple levels-- will be held up as a special condition, and given a green pass?

 

This is the way Michael Chertoff, the son of immigrant Jewish Holocaust survivors, will mete out his personal injustice and his own unresolved historical trauma on South Texas 'ethnic' 'refusers'.    

 

 

Valley Morning Star: U.S. DHS Makes Unusual Single Concession on Border Wall for Old Nye Plantation Property

 

http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/border_38183___article.html/fence_irwin.html

Border fence OK, but not in my house

| Recommend 0

November 1, 2008 - 10:01AM

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN/The Associated Press

BROWNSVILLE - Dorothy Irwin is one of the Border Patrol's staunchest local supporters and was a fan of the proposed border fence - until she found out it would run right through her house.
But on Friday, the federal government made a major concession to help Irwin save her land.
It has been an awkward situation for Irwin, 68, as she balances her belief that a fence is needed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border with her need to protect the 19th-century plantation that her grandparents moved onto more than 80 years ago.
She says the government is right to build the fence, but wrong to seize private property as much as two miles inland from the Rio Grande, destroying the homes of the very people it set out to protect.
The case of the Old Nye Plantation has been discussed at levels as high as Washington, D.C., among U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, but is now back in the hands of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville.
"This is the first situation we've had where someone said, 'Hey, this fence is coming through my house,"' Hanen said two weeks ago when he ordered Irwin and the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a compromise.
On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Hu told Hanen they might have a plan.
In a major concession to a single landowner, the federal government has proposed building a massive concrete retaining wall into the river side of the levee that skirts the south side of Irwin's singlestory white wooden house and several brick buildings that date back to 1885 on the 600-acre farm. The design will allow Irwin to still see the distant tree lines and the hundreds of acres that run down to the Rio Grande.
Without the compromise, an 18-foot fence would have been built on the north side of the levee, nearly abutting Irwin's house, and the patrol road would have run right through the middle of Irwin's home. Two-thirds of her farm will be behind the fence, accessible only through locked gates from the United States, but open to those crossing the river from Mexico.
"Obviously we don't want a fence there at all," said Irwin's attorney Kimberli Loessin, but she conceded the government was accommodating her client's primary concern.
While the cost has not been set for the compromise plan, similar barriers under construction in neighboring Hidalgo County have run upward of $8 million per mile, or about four times the cost of regular fence sections.
Cameron County, whose leaders have vocally opposed the fence, has sought a similar concession unsuccessfully for months. After Friday's hearing, Irwin hugged three Border Patrol agents.
"It's important for residents and the Border Patrol to work together," Irwin said later. "If Border Patrol has to fight the residents and the bad guys all the time, how's it going to protect us?"
At a gathering of similarly affected neighbors earlier this summer, Irwin began her prepared remarks by stating her strong support for Border Patrol and its mission.
"We have done our best to work with the Border Patrol, we think very highly of all our agents and our continual desire is to fully support to the best of our ability these men and women who protect our front line and the communities along the border," Irwin said.
But while saying she believed in the need for the fence - a structure widely opposed along the 1,900-mile Texas-Mexico border - she questioned the need to build it as far as two miles from the border. Irwin said the federal government was "thoughtlessly handing land from the levee to the river over to Mexico, illegals and/or wildlife."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is overseeing the project, had said the fence had to be built on the north side of the levee to avoid diverting the flow of floodwaters and breaking international treaties with Mexico. The agency has stuck to this argument in many cases, but in others, has made concessions like a removable fence in the floodplain.
Some details remain for Irwin to hammer out with the government on their compromise, but Hu said the International Boundary and Water Commission has given an expedited technical approval for the plan.
Both sides are scheduled to return to court Nov. 20.
As of Oct. 22, the government had built 216 miles of pedestrian fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and 154 miles of vehicle barriers. Congress had called for 670 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border to be completed by the end of the year. More recently Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said having all the fence sections under contract by the end of the year is more likely.
Of the 110 miles of fence planned for Texas, only 3.3 miles are complete, according to Customs and Border Protection.

Brownsville, Texas: Feds deliver domain notices

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/government_91307___article.html/lawsuits_cases.html

--


Feds deliver domain notices
Comments 4 | Recommend 1
October 30, 2008 - 10:35 PM
By Kevin Sieff, The Brownsville Herald
Moving forward with its plans to construct a border fence in the Rio Grande Valley, the federal government has filed land condemnation lawsuits involving nine Cameron County properties whose owners are unknown, deceased or unresponsive.

In South Texas, where land deeds are often convoluted or outdated, it's a vital formality before construction on the barrier can begin.

"We're moving forward with our real estate proceedings," said Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for the U.S Department of Homeland Security.

In cases of unknown ownership, the government must run an advertisement in local newspapers, informing the public of pending lawsuits. The two-page advertisement ran in Thursday's Brownsville Herald, detailing several swaths of property throughout the county.

As of Sept. 10, 97 landowners in the Valley had refused to sell their property to the federal government, according to a Government Accountability Office report. DHS officials say they've continued resolving cases, but they've encountered a number of convoluted deeds.

Judge Andrew Hanen will hear seven land condemnation lawsuits this morning - a fraction of the remaining cases.

After receiving its appropriation request from Congress, the DHS is continuing with its plans to complete the fence in the coming months. But with so many pending condemnation lawsuits - and no sign of construction in Cameron County - the government's initial Dec. 31 deadline appears increasingly unrealistic.

Notes on Border Walls and Cultural Exchange: From conversations with Wendy Kenin - by Clare Kinberg, Editor, Bridges Journal, A Jewish Feminist Journal

Attached article:

 

Interesting perspective on the inter-cultural between Jewish and Native American, via borders, walls, militarism, forced removals, genocide. 

Also interesting comparative analysis of 'historical trauma', 'historical memory' and Michael Chertoff, Peter Schey, and indigenous women of the Mexico-U.S. border... 

Note:  error!  There are two federally recognized tribes in Texas.  The Kickapoo and Tiguas are recognized.  Texas, in a blanket policy, does not officially recognize the Aboriginal and First Peoples of Texas, which includes several Apache groups, who have specific historical, ancient presence in Texas and other Mexico-U.S.border states.  (There are 10 border states).

 

--Margo Tamez

Inter-American Commission press statement re: Texas-Mexico Border Wall

Dear friends:

 

We have just received great news that the Inter-American Commission's press release issued at the end of its period of sessions includes an explicit statement of concern about the Texas/Mexico border wall!  

 

Here's the link to the press release–

 (In English) http://www.iachr.org/Comunicados/English/2008/46.08eng.htm

(In Spanish) http://www.cidh.org/Comunicados/Spanish/2008/46.08sp.htm

It says:

" During another hearing, the Commission received troubling information about the impact that the construction of a wall in Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, has on the human rights of area residents, in particular its discriminatory effects. The information received indicates that its construction would disproportionally affect people who are poor, with a low level of education, and generally of Mexican descent, as well as indigenous communities on both sides of the border."

 Dice:

"

En otra audiencia la Comisión recibió información preocupante sobre el impacto que la construcción de un muro en Texas a lo largo de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México tiene sobre los derechos humanos de los habitantes de la zona y, en particular, su efecto discriminatorio. La información recibida indica que su construcción afectará desproporcionadamente a personas pobres, con menor nivel educativo y generalmente de origen mexicano, así como a las comunidades indígenas que viven en ambos lados de la frontera."

 

--Margo Tamez

 

 

TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER WALL HEARING: INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION--ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER WALL HEARING AT THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION--ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS WORKING GROUP AND RAPOPORT CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE (SEE BRIEFING PAPERS).

Gun Culture--South Texas: Columbus' Legacy of Violence & Indigenous People--October 12, 2008

On the Cavazos-Garcia land in El Calaboz Rancheria, the ground is frequently rifled with bullets and shotgun shells. One need not walk but a few feet from the levee to see the shells and casings in plain site. There are more of these along my mother's land and her portion of the levee than on the lands on either side of her's. She has been the most vocal and publically outspoken against oppression, racism, and violence. The border wall is but one of the numerous 'events' which the people of El Calaboz have endured.

Since the arrival of the Europeans, our families have lived for centuries propelled into conflicts and tension with settler societies. Settler immigrant groups from other continents arrived in several waves since the late 1400's. They have contributed many harsh memories to the indigenous people's oral history of life, and death, along the Lower Rio Grande.

In addition to deprivations and depredations the indigenous suffered under Jose Escandon and Spanish-Basque settler hacendado regimes, Cameron County would continue to be an epi-center for pogroms, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Between 1910-1915 nearly 5,000 indigenous people were lynched, burned alive, dismembered, decapitated, and sexually assaulted by the "South Texas Machine." Many of our ancestors--men, women and children--lost their lives at the hands of para-military forces mechanized and supported by the regions' elites--the white-ethnic ranching families, whose colonizing ancestors had dispossessed earlier generations of Apaches and other indigneous peoples. History repeated itself with a new immigrant-white group of Southern Creed cotton industrial capitalists. In South Texas, the system's prey are our ancestors, and our living and breathing and very much alive families-- the indigneous people of this region.


The unexamined 'customary' privilege of the mainstream culture of South Texas, which glorifies the use of armed violence also sustains the myth of "Texas" masculinity as a celebrated icon of white settler identity. This social construct empowers a system of structural violence, privileging an elite few, and has bloody consequences for Native American people of the Lower Rio Grande. Like our foremothers and forefathers who were victims of white xenophobia and the ranching class systems--we have not 'vanished', nor have we been 'conquered.' However, those of us who have stayed on our lands--under Texas private property laws--have done so with increasing threats to our lives and livelihoods. The border wall is yet one more pogrom, ethnic cleansing and genocidal policy against Native American people on both sides of its proposed perimeter.

Removing the cobwebs and rust off of the so-call buried histories of the genocidal past gives us opportunities to see reflections and understandings of the current situations we face under the threat of tyrannical government. Uncovering the bloody histories upon which the wealthy agriculture and ranching elites in South Texas is founded allows a critical space for Native American survivor communities to speak, be heard and claim political and social spaces.

Tragically, indigenous communities along the Lower Rio Grande have become enmeshed in numerous forms of colonial violence used as tools to keep subordinated groups under the control of colonial systems and in perpetual dependency. De-Colonial history recover is necessary in order to publically confront the ghosts and demons of our collective histories, and to recover public spaces for commitments to truth and healing.

These bullet casings pepper the ground and levee, in El Calaboz all the way up to Redford, Texas, where I filled yet another ziplock bag full.

I fill gallon-size, zip-lock bags of shot-gun shells and bullets all along my grandfathers', great grandmothers', great aunts', and great great grandfathers, and great great great grandfathers...... and on and on and on and on... our home, our lands.

This is the archaeology of contemporary Lipan Apache women, the archaeology that documents and archives the negative impacts and consequences of the gun culture. The current generations confronting these issues sometimes must take on the past terror and its evidences in order to re-fuel and re-mobilize productive work of dismantling structural oppression --for all people in South Texas, where we live, and where we will live on and on.

October 12, 2008
Margo Tamez

Eloisa Garcia Tamez to Receive Civil Rights Award on Friday, October 3, 2008