Month: March 2017

Austin Annie Reads Books: The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

On By annecostilla2 Comments

With this review, please keep this in mind: I am fighting a cold and feeling scattered. I just wanted to get this one out there because it was very provocative for my mind and my emotions.

I have read eight books this year so far. Of the eight, I have deemed five worthy of my mention and reflection. The only problem is, as my loving husband had brought to my attention, I start forgetting little details within just a few days of reading these books. I have total mom brain. With that in mind (for at least a moment), I either plan to re-read or at least re-browse the other books I’ve wanted to review but didn’t get to in time. Like I said, I don’t want to just review books on here. Should I used the word review? It’s more like telling you how it made me feel and the one I finished yesterday brought out all the feels. It wasn’t pretty, right husband?

The Devil’s Highway is a very blunt, straight forward recounting of what happened in the Arizona desert in May of 2001. It. Was. Horrible. As usual, if you want the specifics, you’ll have to read it yourself, but I will tell you that an inexperienced “guia” or “guide” was placed in charge of crossing 26 men and boys from Mexico into the United States, took them into a desert, got lost, wouldn’t admit to the men that he was lost, marched them during triple digit heat while running them out of water, took money from them and left to find help leaving them to die while he neared death himself and survived to go to prison for the deaths of 14 that had trusted him. There were so many mistakes, near saves and tragedies at play in this situation that it would have been easy for the author to become so passionate in defense or accusation of one side or the other but he maintained a pretty straight forward explanation.

That’s what you’ll get for me as far as summing up the topic. Now on to the meat of this. I’d rather talk about how this book made me feel. Fair warning: I am a “bleeding heart Liberal” so I tend to believe that all should be treated with dignity. These people who cross our borders aren’t all criminals as certain “presidents” not elected by me would have you believe. It’s just easier to shove them around like cattle if you don’t know they belong to families who have just as much a claim to humanity as we do. I know, I know. Pinche snowflake. That is me.

I’ve decided that I don’t ever want to be nice to a company executive for a large company. I’ve done the corporate ass kissing stuff before, but I think I’m done. They are as responsible for ruining people’s lives as cancer. Maybe worse. Let me explain. I once worked for a company that had a lot of money. The top person in Marketing owned an island in Belize. An island. The scary part? She probably thought she deserved it and earned it! When I met her, I was on a business trip and making somewhere around $12 per hour. Each year of hard work and dedication I was given a 3-5% raise. That was all my immediate boss was allowed to offer me. I walked out of my yearly review able to afford…wait for it….a brand new tank of gas! (that’s spread over 4 weeks each month) I know I shouldn’t have, but I looked up bonuses for the people at the corporate level and stumbled upon her bonus that year. It was a million dollars. That’s on top of whatever her ridiculous salary was already. Did she earn that? Really? The worst part was us at the ground level of the company scrambling to make ends meet and being told constantly to cut expenses. I can only imagine that’s what made companies move factories that were people’s livelihoods in Mexico to China because it was cheaper. These families that already survived on very little now had less. I am guessing the companies that left Mexico due to “overhead cost cutting” still paid their top people these absolutely disgusting bonuses. I want to know who really needs to own eight cars, two planes, five houses and an island. A flippin’ island…it kills me to this day. But I digress…

Did you know that most of the people in Mexico that cross the border aren’t from the border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, etc..? They are from further in where there are limited resources and the north is a romantic idea to them like an old western movie. There are entire crime businesses set up to feed on these poor souls. They want a better life for their families and being paid $4 per hour under the table in the US will afford them those improvements. The crime bosses send someone to sell them on the American “dream” and even dole out loans to make it easier for them to say yes. Think of a used car salesmen who knows that many who buy his cars will die a horrible death because the product he’s selling is total crap. The salesman could care less if you live or die once you drive off the lot- you gave him your last dime already.

This book makes me panic. When I was in high school, I drove a truck that often had a giant water tank in the back to haul water to my horse. I want my truck and my tank right f-ing now. I want to drive to the desert and search for dying people who were treated like shit, lied to and are now dying without seeing the family they are trying to help ever again.

I want to get involved. I don’t know where yet, but I want to help. I feel like the people who see this horror of people dying trying to cross the border every day become hard to it. They don’t mean to but wouldn’t you? I can see it happening because, as my hubby pointed out, it’s a job. We all get tired of our jobs sometimes. We all get so deep in that we become complacent with the little details. If you work in a museum, do you really appreciate the exhibits every day? Do you get tired of the same things getting people’s ooooohhhs and aaaahhhhs every single day? I bet border patrol gets tired of people like me who read a book and demand that something be done. I guess I don’t care if they are tired of it though because I’m talking about human life not museum exhibits. I need to be involved in a solution. Figuring out where is the issue.

My favorite person in this book is the lady who works at the Mexican consul. She is the one who turns these “bodies” back into people. She returns them to citizens, gives them names and faces and families. She makes sure they are treated with some dignity whether they are alive or dead. She’s my favorite and I want to shake her hand. Ok, who am I kidding? I’m a hugger and she’s probably earned millions of hugs by now.

I am moving to the border in 10 weeks. My immediate plans are to make myself start using the Spanish I already know and brush up on my conversational skills. I have a feeling I’ll need them down the road. I also want to talk to as many people as possible about how to get involved. I want to research jobs and groups that are making a difference. I don’t doubt that it will get political for me. It already is! I will find my role. Until then, I’ll keep learning.

As a country, we’re experiencing this new wave of acceptance for racists. We have people so jacked up on anti-immigration B.S. that they probably don’t even understand it- immigration is just bad now so why bother educating myself? How did we become so tolerant of intolerance? We should be ashamed. Some of us are. What are the anti-immigration war mongers really afraid of? The author of this book makes some excellent observations from way back around 2003. Illegal immigrants don’t exactly hurt the economy. The definitely aren’t “taking all our jobs”. Would you work for $4 per hour picking oranges? Probably not. But they are using their pay to buy our products, rent our apartments and houses and even pay our taxes. Do they get a tax return? They even pay a fee to send money back home to their families. How are we losing? True, they may cost us in unpaid healthcare and such, but I would be curious to see how the numbers actually stacked up. Not curious enough to stack them myself, but I would definitely pay attention to that report if it came from anyone but Fox News.

I know this one was choppy and strayed off course a lot, but that’s what happened to me as I read this book too. I went between trying to solve the problems of the world and thinking about politics and pinche Donald Trump to thinking about my own family and the sadness that this tragedy must have put in the hearts of the families who had to go to the airport and watch their loved ones caskets arrive on a plane from el norte. I got sick reading about a father holding his young son and watching him literally cook to death before dying himself. And that whole trip was just to come up and pick some oranges to afford cement and aluminum to expand his house a bit as a gift to his wife. That is tragic. Being lead on what you were told would be a two-day hike at night and then being forced to walk for days in the middle of the day and heat and sun basically in a giant zig zag with no hope at the end of it is tragic. And yet, more come. Why? Many reasons. I know it’s hard for us in our larger than necessary houses with all our unnecessary creature comforts to comprehend this: sometimes it’s just worth the risk for these people- they don’t know our definition of comfort. I would venture to guess most of those reasons don’t include wanting to inconvenience Americans, either. Having crops harvested for half of minimum wage doesn’t benefit Americans…right?

Was it worth it? I’ll leave you with this. This is written on a sign facing south for those crossing north into the desert with their guias:

For the Coyotes Your Needs

Are Only A Business And

They Don’t Care About Your Safety

Or the Safety of Your Family

Don’t Pay Them Off With Your Lives!!!

 

But these men did…and their Coyote lived. Tragic. This stuff happens all the time.

Austin Annie is a Fraud to God

On By annecostilla3 Comments

Here we go. I’ve been waiting to figure out what it was I want to write about next because I don’t want to only offer book reviews. I have a few to give but I want to space them out. Tonight, I want to talk to the great wide out there about God. After all, it’s Lent, right? Put on your tall boots, folks, ’cause we’re about to get deep up in here! Pardon my need to be long-winded. I’m not even drinking- I just feel like spilling these particular guts tonight.

Maria said the beginning was a “very good place to start” so why change a good thing, right? I grew up Catholic. I went to church on the weekends with my family, did CCD after school, signed up for the Christmas nativity and so on… I think as a younger child I just knew I was expected to believe so I did. Fast forward to middle school and I found myself at St. Francis Catholic school. I wasn’t forced. It was offered, I wanted desperately to be more interesting than I felt, and I agreed.

Catholic school was actually pretty great for me. My faith grew and my knowledge and love of God AND the Catholic church were at an all-time high by graduation. One small problem had bubbled up though. My dad was sick. I prayed like crazy- and when I say like crazy I mean all the way to a mountain top in Bosnia- for God to make it go away and make everything ok again. He didn’t. Dad died exactly five months after I graduated from high school. I held his hand, witnessed his final breath and was the one who had to give the visiting nurse his time of death. The entire time he was dying, it was me leading my mom, brother and sister in prayers and telling my dad it was ok for him to leave us. I was strong for all of them and for me…but I was devastated. I was betrayed. I was mad and I was through trying to be good. Operation self-destruct was firmly in place within about maybe two weeks of Dad dying. Take that, God!

The next 8-10 years are a series of triumphs and failures that never gave any blame or credit to God, really. I did end up knowing some great people during my self-destructive escapades (ok not all of you were strictly drinking buddies, but were we always sober?) and one of my proudest accomplishments, seriously, was being a “regular” at my favorite bar. I was, at least in my head, a little like Norm on cheers. It may sound sad but I truly care for some of the people I came to know during those days. One in particular is my favorite. That’s right! I met my husband, soul mate and best friend at the bar! To be fair, at that point in my life that would be the only way anyone could get me. He was just in the right place at the right time…he’ll agree with that most days.

My husband and I eventually calmed down on our partying ways a bit…pregnancy (followed by marriage) tends to do that, hopefully. Slowly but surely, the little miracle that came into our life got us thinking about faith and God again. We started going to church with my mom. At first is was kind of just about a set time to see my mom and for her to snuggle our little one. Week by week we came to look forward to it more. By the time baby number two was on the way, we were kind of “all in” at church. We showed up each week, sat in the same spot and visited with the same sweet people. It felt like a safe space to cautiously start believing again. Then, five days after Easter, someone reached into my chest and ripped my heart out again. This time it wasn’t cancer that was taking someone I loved slowly away from me. This time it was a phone call and a car upside down in a ditch that ripped my sister away. I couldn’t blame God for this one. He didn’t ignore my prayers because I didn’t know I was supposed to be praying for my sister to not get drunk and drive in someone’s back yard and flip her car into a ditch killing herself and her friend. I really dropped the ball on that one, not God. And so, in a way I can’t explain, my faith grew from the hurt this one caused. I really leaned on my faith to get me through (or to this point in) my grief. Being haunted by every single thing around you reminding you of someone you don’t get to have anymore can make a person want to change their surroundings. That was the birth of the plan to move from Montana to Texas and become Austin Anne.

Moving to Texas wasn’t such a crazy plan. I love the family I married into and being near them was something our little family was really looking forward to. So we settled in and started the process of making Austin our home. Time to find a Catholic church that gives us the warm fuzzies and/or kindness that our last church had spoiled us with. Three churches later we found one near home that played some of the same music from back home and instantly we got the fuzzies. The priest was fantastic! Who cares if no one smiles or talks to us if we get a great message on Sundays? We do. We care. It started to feel uncomfortable so we went to a ministry fair to find out about groups we could maybe join to meet a few people. It felt a little sterile but maybe we just needed to dig deeper. Between my husband working and me staying at home we didn’t really have time to meet people outside of the church so this was our chance and we really wanted to find “our people”.

Our first and only attempt at one of these ministry options was a “date night” put on by the church for married couples. We jumped at it because they had childcare we could use. I dressed up and even wore heels and the hubs was looking mighty fine too. We were going to charm the pants off these people! I guess it didn’t occur to me that it would be equally important that these people charm us right back….so… an hour and a half later we had spent an hour listening to a lady at our table complain about her son’s school allowing a child to switch gender over the summer and not checking (or notifying?) all of the other parents at the school that this was happening so they could prepare their children by telling them all about this abomination. She was pissed that this family had made it necessary for her to explain to her son that what this other child had done wasn’t part of “God’s plan” for him/her.  We excused ourselves fairly quickly when the program was over. These were not our people. We also stopped going to that church full of people who would sit and listen to that fucking bullshit and not tell her to fuck off. Hag!

We have spent the last five months away from church and slowly I have slipped away from feeling God in me and keeping my open dialogue with Him. I stopped and now I am struggling with how to get it back. I didn’t bother with church during the elections because I do NOT see eye to eye with most Catholics about politics. Hubs and I aren’t sure what’s next. We’ve considered the option of “Catholic Light” meaning the Episcopal church. I know very little about what that actually means or the differences or anything so I immediately feel like even more of an outsider.

A little more soul-searching brought us to the decision to give the church an honest chance again for Lent. Ash Wednesday we decided that meant “Sundays” we would go. I really didn’t want to go today. I dreaded it all day and when the time came I felt so self-conscious it was silly. We got to church and our youngest was an absolute shit. She ended up out in the lobby with her dad. I thought maybe with her gone I could reconnect and have a “come to Jesus” (get it?) prayer and reflection session with just my better behaved oldest next to me. We made it through the sign of peace and I thought we were home free. No I hadn’t heard the readings due to our littlest monster. I was distracted through the homily but surely this could be redeemed with a great ending, right? But wait. Why is no one around us smiling at us? Why when our terror was making a scene did no one offer the obligatory “I’ve been there, sister. Stay strong!”look?  Then I heard “Mommy! I have to go pee!” right as we’re about to go up for eucharist. That is where my patience ended. I gave my husband the look and we got the hell out of there. Was it really giving it an honest retry if we went into it dreading it? Not sure. I guess we can find out next Sunday when we give it a go with no kids. That alone is a religious experience so it may make us lighten up. Seriously, though. These people need to smile…and if they could vote correctly that would be nice too.