July 11, 2005
Phoenix Community Resource Showcases Dead Criminal Aliens
Jesus wept. --John 11:35.
by Jerome du Bois and Catherine King
This piece is sure to make some people angry. Too bad, citizen. When you're done with your anger, maybe then will be the time for your tears, for the sake of the law, the land, and the law of the land --all of which serve and promote civilized life.
How can we characterize a Mexican infant, who has no control over her life and who dies of thirst in the Arizona desert, as a dead criminal alien? How heartless can we be?
Let us begin our answer indirectly.
We are at war against radical Muslim jihadists, and their apologists and enablers. We live our lives during wartime, with truck-sized holes in our national security. And we don't trust those who deny this reality. Now:
Imagine a man, a well-fed, upper-middle class white American man. He's in late middle age, hair white, a bit pudgy but solid, with a full-face but short-cropped white beard. Blue jeans and white short-sleeved button-down shirt. Plain trucker's cap. He's a pastor, don't you know, of a Tucson, Arizona church, the Rev. Robin Hoover by name. Desert boots on the feet. Self-righteousness glances off of him in the summer sun like the irritating glare from cheap brass.
He's reaching out with both hands to the thousands of desperate Mexican Indians and mestizos from Southern Mexico that the coyotes, and officials of the Mexican government, persuaded into coming to the Golden Land. He beckons this baby's mother and father with his hands. His hands declare that he has life-saving water for them if they brave the trek north. And the coyote has the photographs to prove it: blue barrels of water, even on the Mexican side of the border!
Behind them, looming in the broiling sky, imagine the giant visage of Vincente Fox, wide white smile under the wide black mustache, floating up there serenely, his hidalgo oligarchies lounging on clouds all around him, all of them laughing and laughing, flicking their fingers as if casting off excessive water, watching the success of their policy of subtraction as the little brown people trudge northward, rank upon rank, shrinking like raisins from dehydration; no longer a threat to the established Mexican order, they retreat on up into the golden glow of the preacher's justification, and that of his whole liberal-vanity project, www.humaneborders.org --that's right, the water-station people.
Water nourishes, to be sure.
But water corrodes.
Water erodes.
Water makes holes.
Water drowns.
Even though they have been working the stations for five years, we were only peripherally aware of these border underminers until we cruised by the Stop'N'Look window on Grand Avenue a couple of days ago, and saw this:
You're looking at a large red vinyl tarp tacked to stained and dirty drywall, with 1,954 cheap tin boot / foot milagros attached. Large yellow plastic flowers festoon the top rank. The captions read:
1,954 PEOPLE
DIED ALONG THE US/MEXICO Borders
Support Humane Borders
www.humaneborders.org
That's all. No names. Not a single name. We have a lot to say about this piece, aesthetically and politically. And, ironically, we will probably bring a little more attention to these self-righteous jerks than they had before, since you won't find the above image, or anything about this piece, anywhere else on the internet, as far as we know. (We don't know when it was made.) The Stop'N'Look people --Beatrice Moore and Tony Zahn-- haven't even announced the existence of this new corrosive propaganda. (Not even a note on the artlink forum. Can you spell duhhhmb?) And Rev. Hoover and his crew show nothing at all about it on their website. (But you can buy mugs, t-shirts, jackets and lapel pins there: "Great for Christmas shopping!" No water-bottle carriers --yet.)
Before the jump, let us be clear: we believe these people are dead because they decided it was easier to exploit the forgiving generosity of a developed, lawful country than to stand and fight to make those two latter conditions true in their own native land. They ran away, just as Vincente wants them to. The less Indians and mestizos there are in Mexico, the less they can organize for real change and make real trouble.
Let us be even clearer: because we respect these people as human beings, with all of their reasoning intact, we condemn them for their reckless behavior which resulted in their deaths, and the deaths of the young in their care. The law is the law for a reason. We do not patronizingly consider them to be stupid little brown ants mindlessly nodding and handing over money to coyotes, dollar signs dancing in their brains, their eyes hypnotized by Hoover the Wizard's beckoning hands. These are adult people. They have made it that far in life. They have brains. They calculate. And they calculate that they can make some easy money by entering through the soft underbelly of the USA, no matter the law, and get away from both Vincente, who hates them, oppresses them, and wants them to vanish, and Subcommandante Marcos, who needs their warm-bodied slavery for his egotistical cause.
Still, we respect the dead, even if they are damned fools and, by definition, criminal aliens. In what follows, we will show how this billboard, and the people behind both the billboard and Stop'N'Look, show nothing but contempt for them.
Now, what is this billboard, this simplistic guilt trip, this purely political statement, doing in a window which is supposed to be dedicated to art?
We have some answers, of course. On September 4, 2004, Catherine wrote:
I saw the Stop'n'Look Window for the first time just over a week ago. I confess to being amazed by the long, deep display area. It's astounding potential was obvious even with the blazing eastern sun illuminating the grand scale of its naked grime and neglect.
It seemed so wrong, that incredible space just sitting there all dirty. Couldn't the Arts & Culture Office (Phil Jones, wake up!) and the owner of the building and the people of the neighborhood see how badly this sign of blind wastefulness reflected on the ludicrous lack of imagination in this so-called 'Arts District'?
"So this is the Stop'n'Look window!" I marveled to Jerome. "I can't believe local artists aren't vying with each other right and left to procure this peerless space. Because, I admit, I can hardly imagine a more glorious venue. If it had the mandatory window to curb awning, that is. In fact, if I were Stale Cake [Beatrice Moore], I'd have it all shiny and cleaned and filled with my own new installations every month. I'd keep this window for my own work and people would come from far and wide to see unforgettable tableaux!"
Surely in New York City, many kinds of artists would be clamoring for the exciting privilege to install their best-crafted, most well-thought-out displays in a magnificent window like the one that languishes in front of Stale Cake's cheesy dive. In New York City, artists would be trying way harder and doing their best. But in Phoenix, sloppy, slovenly amateurism passes for the best we've got.
But obviously Stale Cake is setting the tone here: This is good enough for Phoenix. Zero expectations of the arts slumlords and even less delivered. In Phoenix, for reasons they need to explain to me, the culture hustler creative class alpha bitches don't need to take care of their property -- they just need to own it -- in multiples, preferably.
The reader will notice that the proud owner doesn't even keep the windows clean. This slummy community benefactor obviously holds with the No Maintenance Required belief system. Stale Cake, you ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you have thirteen buildings and you can't be bothered to take care of even one. The jewel in your crown of real estate looks like shit.
Yes, there have been times since the end of last October, when we had to stop renting our gallery, that I almost choked with longing to have another window display again. Aren't any other artists inspired by the Stop'n'Look space? Because it doesn't look like it. Reading the signs here, I'm picking up that the space is too big and beautiful for the local wannabe artists. They don't have anything strong enough to say. Their 'work' won't hold up. I'm picking up that it would be a bigger problem for any of the so-called 'artists' to rise to the challenge than it would be to simply ignore the awesome potential of the Stop'n'Look Window. And so, following their Stale leader, they choose the path of least resistance. Always.
The artists are out of ideas, so the activists filled the vacuum. The last artist to make a political statement there --Jeff Falk-- glorified a filthy murderer (Che) and denigrated a great President (Lincoln).
How did this new thing get here? Who solicited who? Who made it? Who paid for it? Who installed it (badly)? It looks like something this self-righteous church would create as a stationary or traveling exhibit; Fits anywhere, just pop it right up in any sanctuary foyer or meeting hall.
Which is not to say that it fits the window. As an artistic display, it's a failure, since it doesn't exploit the three-dimensional possibilities afforded by the long, deep space. It was tacked up to just get the job done, to get something in the window.
As an artistic / political conception, the vinyl wall is an insult and a disaster. Mr. Hoover and his church people have created at least two earlier installations, both of which had more information than this flatfooted mute. (Both included names, for example --which didn't make them any less ghoulish or exploitative.) Perhaps this thing was created without his knowledge.
Look at it. 1,954 people have died along the US / Mexico border. But from when to when? They could be talking about twenty years or longer. And how did they die? Did they all die of thirst, the main meme behind Hoover's group? (They even gratuitously use the abolitionist's Big Dipper symbol.) Were they all just innocent people breaking the law to try to make a so-called better life, or are we including drug and human smugglers, petty border criminals, and escapees from Mexican justice? There is no way to know, and, as we mentioned, the website carefully, levelly, pinned to the wall, is ignorant of this window piece.
"Support Humane Borders" assumes that closed borders, or the present borders, are inhumane. But with closed borders, not one of these 1,954 people would have died (at least, on the desert). So who's inhumane? As for the present border condition, if the illegal immigrants had more self-control and respect for law they wouldn't take advantage of its weaknesses. That they do --that they sneak in with no moral problem-- does not bode well for their future law-abiiding proclivities, does it? You want to let them in and slick them up as guest workers?
I wouldn't refuse a dying illegal a drink of water. I'd feed him, clothe him, and bind his wounds; but then I'd make sure he got his ass hauled back to where he came from pronto even if I had to drive him there myself. We clear?
Now examine the lettering in the line HAVE DIED ALONG THE US / MEXICO Borders. Those last five letters are different from the typeface in the rest of the line. Is this a minor thing? Well, it's supposed to be a tribute to the dead, a whole lot of them. Do you think the persons who put this together could have afforded the time and money to locate the correct letters? It's lazy, careless and disrespectful, especially considering the surrounding careful rows of cheap milagros.
Look at them. Cheap, stamped tin, from a worn old mold. No names. There's a Vietnam Veterans memorial somewhere that reproduced all the dog tags and hung them from the ceiling. No, you can't read them all, but you know each one is individual and the information is right there if you need it. Here, nothing. These people are cheap stamped tin, fungible, interchangeable ciphers, for whoever made this atrocity. Look at the big cheap yellow flowers above the words. Are these supposed to stand in for marigolds, the sacred flower of death? If so, they are poor substitutes.
These people shouldn't have died on our soil, but not because of anything about the United States, no matter how many greedy, subversive, asshole employers may have beckoned them. They shouldn't have been here, and they wouldn't have died (of thirst, those that did) if they hadn't been crossing the desert illegally. They should have respected the bright line separating the rule of law from the rule of powerful people. They were wrong to cross that line and break that law.
Which brings us closer to the political aspect of this piece, and who it points to: the Rev. Robin Hoover and his First Christian Church in Tucson. It is our contention that these people are affluent, self-loathing Americans who basically believe that we had it coming on 9/11. The "We're Sorry" sorry lot.
They are also members of the Disciples of Christ, affiliated with the United Church of Christ, which is actively seeking to officially divest any of its finances from Israel. That's right, let's erase Israel's borders, too, while we're at it. (Sonsofbitches! How stupid can educated people be!) So we have reasons for this contention of anti-Americanism. Mr. Hoover --I hesitate to honor his honorific-- said this about violating the United States border:
"The law that they are talking about is Entry Without Inspection," he said. "Non-prosecutable, non-fineable, you get your fingerprints, you get your Happy Meal, you get your trip back to Mexico. It's not much of a law; it's an administrative violation and not a crime under the U.S. statutes. It's not even a damn $2 parking ticket!"
The key phrase: "you get your trip back to Mexico." (On the American taxpayers' dime, too. You can thank us later.) Maybe we just want to turn them around and send them back without a bunch of backlogging rigarmarole. But look closer. On one side of the border we find the rule of law, paid for in righteous blood and thousands of deliberations and votes under the rule of law. On the other side of the border, oligarchies, gangsters, and kleptocracy. Mr. Hoover makes no discernible distinction between the two, and he wouldn't mind if the whole damn thing got blurry (as long as he still got his cushy, congregation-supported three hots and a cot, of course. I've known a lot of preachers). You see how he denigrates and minimizes a bright, solid line with over two hundred years of hard-won justification, only to encourage, enable, and enlarge the ambitions of Mexican political criminals like Vincente Fox.
But as far as we're concerned, without the law, it's all darkness.
Today, July 11, 2005, a local illegal alien named Rodrigo Cervantes-Zavala, 34, is being sought by authorities in the murders of
Saul Lopez Acosta, 63; Trinidad Castro Acosta, 51; and Jesus Manuel Acosta, 17. The three victims were born in Mexico and were the parents and brother of the children's mother.
He also stole his own kids.
The missing children are 3 1/2-year-old Jennifer Cervantes and 18-month-old Bryan Cervantes. At noon, the sheriff's office was still referring to Cervantes-Zavala as an investigative lead. Investigators are following leads in the United States and Mexico. Cervantes-Zavala is from the Mexican state of Michoacan.
Cervantes-Zavala had a criminal record before he entered this country. If he had tried to enter the US legally, he might well have been refused entry, and with good reason.
But perhaps Mr. Hoover or one of his do-gooders gave this man succor, or a ride, or even money.
Whether they did or they didn't, they would, and they will, to the likes of him. They don't ask questions because they are too busy thinking they are Jesus.
Maybe he'll be back; after all, he left his wife and her boyfriend alive. Then Mr. Hoover and his crew will have a second chance at enabling a murderous criminal.
Yes, I know, it's unfair to pick such an apparently extreme example. If only it was such a thing. One name: Jason Schecterle. I do not wish to exploit this brave man's pain, and point a glaring light at him. I only wish to remind everyone that the intersection between legals and illegals is becoming increasingly lethal.
Meanwhile, with the present Governor, all we can say is:
Welcome to Mexizona. Wipe your feet on the Constitution before entering.
Posted by Jerome at July 11, 2005 10:00 PM | TrackBack