HERE IT IS.

HERE IS THE AMENDMENT.

HERE IS THE GOVERNOR’S  EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING.

HERE IS VIDEO OF AUTHOR OF LAW INSTRUCTING POLICE ON “REASONABLE SUSPICION.”

You’ll note in the text that the law does not address border security.

At taxpayer expense.

What effect does this have on Arizona schools, where Spanish speakers drop their kids off every day? Will the police officers be forced to ask the parents for papers?

School officials are grappling with this problem right now.

A week after Arizona’s governor signed the toughest immigration law in the nation, SB 1070, a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy claimed he was shot with an AK-47 type weapon in an ambush with five drug traffickers. Bullets whizzed, he said. The ambushers disappeared, even after a massive search by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies and other law-enforcement groups, like the Border Patrol. The suspects: drug traffickers from Sinaloa, Mexico.

The deputy, Louie Puroll,  was released from the hospital a few hours after he was admitted. He’d been grazed by either one or two bullets.  He’s not talking to the press.

Now at least one journalist, and a very good one at that, is calling the shooting into question.

And here’s  the latest update, from a rival newspaper, in response to the story questioning the shooting.

You be the judge.

Until I finish in the next ten days or so,  I won’t be able to write much here.

The object below is a toilet paper rose.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

If  you can guess, via the comments section below, who generally makes these roses, and where, and why,  you are a very smart person. I dare you!

The store had closed. I was disappointed, because I  had wanted to write about people who eat chapulines for my book. Grasshoppers are eaten by indigenous Mexicans, and they’re a great source of protein.

I swear I’m not making this up,  but the very next day I met a source for an interview. As he walked in the room, he carried a little plastic tub full of fried, salted chapulines.  His dad had brought them up to Arizona from the Mexican state of Guerrero.  Here is a picture I took of the tub of grasshoppers.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The man told me that female grasshoppers taste  better than male grasshoppers because female grasshoppers are fattier. This is a picture of a male and female grasshopper he picked out of the tub.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

“Eat one,” the man told me,  ”but first pull off the legs because they are like splinters and get caught in the throat.”

“OK,” I said.

I chose the guy grasshopper.

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got the little fellow  in my mouth.

I forced myself to chew. The chapulín tasted clean, salty and crispy.

God, I love writing this book.

But if he and his advisors gambled that rounding up hotel maids and landscapers would gain him more voter approval, they gambled wrong.

In part due to his “hard-nosed and sometimes perceived heavy handed tactics against illegal aliens” as well as an ongoing federal grand jury inquiry over alleged abuses of power, Sheriff Joe’s  support is tanking in the Phoenix metro area, according to a recent poll of Maricopa County voters.

The details: Well-respected local pollster Earl de Berge, who has taken the pulse of Phoenix for many years,  found that only 39 percent of registered voters now  approve of Sheriff Joe. That’s down from an astonishing 64 percent approval rating in 2007.  According to the poll, Sheriff Joe’s still got most of the county’s GOP voters in his camp, but he’s lost the support of those free-thinking Independents. And in a state where one-third of the voters are Republicans, one-third of the voters are Democrats (they never cottoned to Joe) and one-third of the voters are Independents, Joe might well lose his next election.

Which might explain why Sheriff Joe sent out a  fund-raising letter to voters who live outside of Maricopa County. A friend of mine who lives in heavily conservative Yavapai County forwarded me  a copy of Sheriff Joe’s fundraising letter. It references a January 16 human rights march in Phoenix that I happened to cover for my book, which comes out in August and is called ILLEGAL: Life and Death in the Undocumented Underground.

Before I get into the letter, here’s a picture of the march  by  photographer Kathy McCraine. (I’m the female journalist in jeans covering the march.) Do you see nasty signs? Do you see masked marchers? Do you see hooligans?

Photo by Kathy McCraine

See, the reason I ask all these questions is because Sheriff Joe, in a fundraising letter that he sent to  those conservative prospective donors in Yavapai County, writes this about the march documented in the picture above:

“On January 16, 2010, more than 10,000 protestors marched on my jails to oppose my enforcement of state and federal immigration laws.

Protestors brawled with and assaulted police. Demonstrators dressed in all black and wearing hoods to conceal their identity threw bottles filled with rocks and attacked officers including a mounted officer and her horse. The mob then surrounded her and hit the horse with sticks.

The masked protestors screamed profanities and called for my assassination carrying signs that read “Assassinate Arpaio” and other violent messages some so profane, I won’t bother repeating them here.”

Sheriff Joe says in the letter to send money fast, so he can continue to enforce the law even in the face of mounting attacks from the Leftist media, the Leftist presidency, the Leftist U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now, from this most recent demonstration he infers  a mob of 10,000 masked izquierdistas  threw bottles and beat horses with sticks.

Here’s the truth: Of 10,000 marchers, 9,997 were peaceful.

That’s according to public documents.

Only three marchers were singled out by county prosecutors for causing trouble at the January 16 march. That’s right. Three people. The first, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah Matthew Henry, allegedly used a wooden stick to whack a mounted Phoenix police officer  who was “working crowd control.” Twenty-seven-year-old Issa Emadi is accused of throwing one water bottle at the cops.  And twenty-four-year-old Sarah Grace Daniels is accused of striking a cop with the handle of a banner she had been carrying in the march.

I’m not saying Henry, Emadi and  Daniels were in the right if they did what they are accused of doing. They face serious criminal charges for their actions, and if they’re guilty, they’ll pay.

But isn’t it also a sin to scare donors into sending you money by  painting  an entire group of peaceful marchers (mostly Latino families) as radicals?

I have covered several of these marches against the Sheriff’s alleged violations of human rights, and I can tell you I have never seen any violence. I didn’t see violence on January 16.

However, a mom, dad and their two children  saw part of the melee that allegedly involved Henry, Daniels and Emadi. The parents told me they saw a female mounted cop ride into the crowd and squirt  people with pepper spray. Of course, the cop was probably trying to subdue the three protestors.

Unfortunately, the Phoenix mountie also sprayed this immigrant couple’s  five-year-old son.

The child was treated at a hospital emergency room for breathing difficulties.

I took this picture of him a week later. I slanted  my iPhone camera in order to take advantage of the natural light. 

You can see the child is  physically okay now, and he doesn’t like to talk about the pepper spray. Scroll back up and take a look at his eyes. You’ve  got to wonder what goes on inside his five-year-old heart whenever he sees a uniformed cop or a horse.

Ask yourself: Who is the true victim?

The boy?

Or the sheriff?

But I have to.

First, though, here’s her picture.

Molly Molloy's photo by Richard Barron

You can see she’s standing next to border trash. She understands that just like everything else on the US-Mexico border, it means many things. It says many things.  It provokes  outrage, sorrow, curiosity.

It is part of an undocumented region.

Which brings us back to Molly Molloy,  a fifty-four year-old-librarian, historian,  journalist and writer.   She grew up in the American South, graduated from college, worked odd jobs, and then lived for almost two years in Latin America, where she became fluent in Spanish. (She’s really good at Spanish, so good that she’s served as a translator for a guy I think is one of the most clear thinking, talented, and honest writers in the Southwest– Charles Bowden.) In 1992, Molly Molloy became a librarian at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Las Cruces sits close to the Mexican border, near the Rio Grande River.  And it’s less than an hour’s drive from El Paso, Texas, which is just across the river from Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Where, according to Molly Molloy’s most recent dispatch, thirteen high school kids were massacred early this morning.

You see, Molly opens our eyes to such things via her Google group. It is called “Frontera List.”   If you join this group,  you will know what is happening at the U.S. Mexican Border from multiple perspectives. In  English.  In Spanish. From journalists, scholars, writers, victims, activists, migrants, Americans, Mexicans, and citizens of the world. Here’s the link:   http://groups.google.com/group/frontera-list?hl=en

Here’s a dispatch that Molly sent today. First she writes:

These stories were posted this morning at about 10 am, but I was on my way out toplay music at a church in Las Cruces.  The sermon and scripture today was all about LOVE–St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, verses 1-13…  Look it up. Many of you probably know it by heart like I do. I am certain I was the only person in the room to feel the power of the irony here.  It took the El Paso Times till about noon to post a link to the Reuters article.  See below. The massacre happened just after midnight, according to El Diario and Lapolaka.  I encourage you to look at the photos. Rivers of blood in the street outside of the house where the events took place. Follows my translation of the Diario article, the original, Reuters in English, and Lapolaka…  The photos are at the links. Also below, two other killings reported from late last night that are not included in the total for yesterday.  So, if it was 205 this morning, then it is now at least 220.  Note that of the injured in this automatic weapons fire, more will probably not survive and their deaths will probably not be reported.  molly

[Next, Molly translates some of the story from the Mexican newspaper of record, El Diario.]

http://www.diario.com.mx/nota.php?notaid=3eefbef53ec9362ca0516f9081ddf6a1
Students massacred in Villas de Salvarcar
Thirteen were killed and 8 injured in an armed attack carried out by a
group of individuals who arrived in 7 vehicles in the Villas de
Salvarcar neighborhood.
The majority of the victims are minors, students at two different
schools.
The attack occurred in the early hours of Sunday at the intersection
of Vista del Portal and Portal de Salvarcar, where a party was being
held.
Two other people died at the scene who were not part of the group and
had arrived on a motorcycle to buy sodas at a store next door to the
house where the massacre took place.
The injured were taken in private vehicles to social security clinic
66 located a few minutes from the scene. Of the 11 injured in all, 2
died inside the hospital and another outside–the last was semi-nude
as he had gone outside of the house when he heard the first shots.
Among the victims also is an adolescent who, it is said, was a witness
to a multiple homicide that occurred in the El Campanario neighborhood
a few days ago.
It is worth mentioning that the residents of the area nearly lynched
the soldiers and police who arrived at the scene of the crimes, as
they seemed to only hold up the investigations and also trampled on
the evidence at the crime scene.
The informants said that the attackers arrived in 7 vehicles, that
they used the vehicles to block the street, others kept guard while
others carried out the attack.

[Then Molly  posts links to the stories that document this horror.]

http://www.diario.com.mx/nota.php?notaid=3eefbef53ec9362ca0516f9081ddf6a1
Masacran a estudiantes en Villas de Salvárcar

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60U1CQ20100131
Gunmen kill 13 students at party in Mexico

http://lapolaka.com/2010/01/31/aberrante-masacre-estudiantil/
ABERRANTE MASACRE ESTUDIANTIL..!
http://lapolaka.com/2010/01/31/aberrante-masacre-estudiantil/
Descargado de Lapolaka.com © 2010

http://www.diario.com.mx/nota.php?notaid=7e327d360fdee704e8ad877ece1e0704
Asesinan a dos en distintos hechos

OK, now you see why I didn’t want to write about Molly  and her work. She is a treasure trove of story ideas for journalists covering the border.

But her work should be shared with the world, because many more than just selfish journalists yearn to know about the border – the deaths, the boondoggles, the drug cartels, the politics, the economics, the personal stories.

The varied experiences of life and death on the border are being erased faster than they can become known, studied and understood.

Molly wrote this on behalf of New Mexico State University Library to see if in this ongoing recession someone, somehow, someplace, can fund an archive at the library where a record of what is happening on the border  can be preserved, studied, and perhaps understood.

Because I can’t understand it now.

I can’t understand why thirteen high schoolers were gunned down in Juárez, right across the river from El Paso.

And if it weren’t for Molly Molloy, I wouldn’t even know it happened.

It’s a happy plate.

The young woman was not happy. She and her husband, who had a fatal disease, were about to make a life-and-death gamble.

They were going to deport themselves to Mexico to maybe save his life.

Emphasis on the word “maybe.”

They didn’t have room in their baggage for the plate, one of their most prized possessions.

They wanted me to have it.

“I’ll keep it for you until you return,” I chirped.

Of course, we both knew we might not ever see each other again.

I can’t tell you more about the woman right now, because she and her husband take up an entire chapter in  my nonfiction book, ILLEGAL, which will be published later this year by Lyons Press, which is a division of Globe Pequot Press.  I can’t tell you a lot about the real-life characters in the book until the book comes out.  What I can tell you is that most of my book characters are undocumented immigrants.  I’ve recorded some of their stories on video and in photos and I’ll post all that when the book debuts.

Until then, I’ll blog about the  news events that impact the lives of undocumented immigrants.

Or I’ll blog about leavings, treasures, artifacts, recuerdos of the year I’ve spent getting to know the people in the shadows.

Like  the happy dolphin plate.  It couldn’t have cost more than a few bucks.

To the immigrant family that owned it, though, it was a treasure.

As the temporary steward of this recuerdo, I  put it on my office shelf.

Every now and then I pick it up and stare at it. Cavorting dolphins notwithstanding, it reminds me of the sorrows and struggles of undocumented immigrants toughing it out in Ground Zero for the Immigration Debate–Phoenix–in 2010.

And she’ll listen, and do all she can for them, because she loves them that much.

During the time of the rosarios, the Virgen is taken from home to home. She stays for one  night at each home, and the people in the shadows say a rosary to her. The next day, she’s taken to another home. Another rosary is said in her honor in the new home. And so it goes.  In Phoenix, a lot of  the homes the Virgen visits belong to people on the edge. The recession, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the harshest laws in the nation against undocumented people have all taken their toll. But the  Virgen loves the people in the shadows, and they love her, and sometimes honestly that’s all they need. Here is a picture of the Virgen at one of the homes in Phoenix. She stands on an altar  outside a house trailer. The people inside don’t have money to buy food. But they give thanks to their  Virgencita anyway.

La Virgencita in Phoenix -- Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The feast day of the  Virgin of Guadalupe is December 12, and that is the last day of the rosario. As the feast day approaches, many of the people in the shadows take joy in the matachine dancers. You can read historical context of the matachines here. These dancers dance in gratitude to the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And the dancers aren’t professionals, but the people in the shadows themselves.

Sometimes, they dance in the day. And sometimes, they dance in the night.

Matachine Dancers in Phoenix Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

On December 6, the matachine dancers assembled at the Immaculate Heart Catholic Church in Phoenix. (This was a church built many years ago because Mexicans weren’t all that welcome in white Catholic churches. Hey, it’s Phoenix. What did you expect?) The matachine dancers danced all the way to the headquarters of the  Diocese of Phoenix, where they were blessed by the bishop. I think this was about mile or so of dancing. I videotaped it on my iPhone, and made a movie out of it, which you will see below. It reminded me how privileged I am to write a book and tell the untold stories of the people in the shadows. For me, it is such an honor to write a book for a non-Spanish speaking audience, a book that  conveys how undocumented immigrants live, love, sin, hope and pray. And one of the lessons I’ve come away with is this: You don’t need a lot of stuff  to celebrate and give thanks.  You just need to sing and dance.

So now, from the hidden worlds of the undocumented immigrant to you–an iPhone video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZab6PeGL9c

Merry Christmas from Terry Greene Sterling. Merry Christmas! Sing! Dance! Be grateful!