ustxtxb_obs_1989_02_24_50_00020-00000_000.pdf

attract 125,000 people to march with him in Detroit while JFK was delivering his famous “eich bein ein Berliner” speech at the wall that divides Germany. Parting the Waters is a “who’s who” of movement leaders \(some of whom have the suspicions, petty jealousies, and the heights to which each could soar when events required it. Branch recognizes the solidarity of African-American entertainers like Harry Belafonte, who had succeeded in the white world, yet risked careers to post jail bonds and defray the costs of the litigation and defense against criminal prosecutions intended to paralyze the movement. Equally impressive was the commitment to non-violent confrontation by thousands of Southern black women and men, who, like the heroic youth of Birmingham, suffered jail, ridicule, and physical harm for the cause. Branch’s work serves as a reminder that the pilgrimage toward racial justice is longer and more painful than we had anticipated when segregation’s walls first came tumbling down. Although much of our overt racism has fallen into history’s dustbin, the same discriminatory structures still ravage the heart and soul of America. Schools are resegregated under the guise of quality, neighborhood education. Community housing patterns are red-lined because of race and ethnicity. And federal judges have beaten a retreat from protecting equal rights in the very courts that once were the only beacon of hope to people yearning for freedom. Two hundred years of economic exploitation and oppression, it seems, no longer justify affirmative economic assistance, even in the most racist and exclusionary of communities. Too many church leaders temporize the kind of counsel of moderation over which Dr. King anguished in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Too few act prophetically, in the way that Bishop John Fitzpatrick of Brownsville does when he supports the Oscar Romero safehouse for Central American refugees. And too many political leaders measure each step only in terms how it will serve them in the next election. \(Exceptions, like Jesse Jackson and Dr. King’s deeper and more visionary message is that economic justice is the handmaiden of human rights, that moral principles must guide our life, that, unless we provide justice at home and use all the tools at our command to oppose, rather than assist repressive regimes abroad like those in South Africa and Chile, we are as another Nobel laureate from the South once said, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As Dr. King said over the caskets of three of the Birmingham girls, “Life is hard, as hard as crucible steel.” We need not shrink from the challenge, but rather embrace it with passion. BY BRYCE MILLIGAN SABELOTODO ENTIENDELONADA AND OTHER STORIES By Jim Sagel Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Review/Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 1988 NORTHERN NEW MEXICO has held a special attraction for writers and artists. Whether it was owing to the artistry and depth of culture of the indigenous peoples of the region, or the piquant Spanish colonial lifestyle of the ruling class relatively untouched by the revolutions of Mexico or simply to the majesty of the Sangre de Cristo peaks, nineteenth century settlers on their way to the West Coast recalled Santa Fe and its environs as a civilized yet exotic oasis. Early this century, the Santa Fe Railway embarked upon one of the most successful advertising campaigns of all time with its hand-tinted postcards of the region, creating a flow of tourists to the area that has never ceased. Many of the tourists never left. The residual effects of this primarily AngloAmerican invasion can be seen in the literature produced in northern New Mexico over the last couple of decades. John Nichols, author of The Milagro Bean field War, among other works, is only the best known of many Anglo novelists, poets, songwriters, and dramatists who make their home in and around Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque. I have yet to encounter one who does not roundly condemn both the fact and effects of the Anglo-American invasion. Despite their political leanings, however, most of these writers are still just informed observers few have imbibed so deeply of the culture that their work . is indistinguishable from that of a native. An exception is Jim Sagel. What Nichols is to the novel in northern New Mexico, Jim Sagel is to the short story. Both writers are Anglo imports, of sorts, whose careers have depended to a considerable degree upon describing the confrontation between the traditional manito culture and the land-grabbing developers, low-profile but h’gh-impact scientific and military installations, leftover hippies, Bryce Milligan is a San Antonio poet, novelist, and critic. religious cults, and other would-be dropouts from mainstream urban America. Sagel, born on the high plains of northern Colorado, has lived in Espanola, near Santa Fe, since 1970 the heyday of La Raza politics, when Espanola was headquarters to one of the best journals produced by the movimiento, Betita Martinez’s El Grito del Norte. Captured by the land, by the politics, by the language, by the culture, Sagel settled in to become more than just another writer in residence; he is now perhaps the keenest observer and most passionate defender of northern New Mexico’s Hispanic culture. Though all of his books are either bilingual to begin with or are available in translation, Sagel’s stories draw much of their original strength from the region’s language a variety of Spanish which, due to its long isolation, hews closer to high Castilian in some ways than it does to that spoken in Mexico, yet at the same time has developed a plethora of unique idioms and forms. Sagel’s mastery of this dialect, together with his ability to make it accessible to a non-New Mexican audience, was recognized in 1981 when his short story collection, Tunomas Honey, received the Premio Casa de las Americas \(Havana, cuento short story. ALL OF WHICH brings us to Sagel’s latest collection of stories, Sabelotodo Entiendelonada and Other Stories, published in a facing-page bilingual edition by Bilingual Review at Arizona State University. The title, which translates roughly “Know-it-all Understandnothing,” is the name borne by one Frankie Stone, the main character of the title story. Sabelotodo is a blond half-Chicano with sentimental roots in New Mexico, having spent several summers there as a boy with his grandmother. A feeling for the land his abuelita provided; a practical knowledge of living there she did not. Thus law school graduate Sabelotodo, reared mainly in Chicago, is a complete imbecile when it comes to things like slaughtering a goat for cabrito. In fact, most of this story takes place as a flashback while the goat is struggling between Sabelotodo’s legs. Sabelotodo cannot shoot a rifle, gets lost in the woods, cannot even change the sparkplugs in his car. His neighbor, Eloy, is totally uneducated and totally competent in all such practical matters. Sabelotodo sees Life and Art in New Mexico 20 FEBRUARY 24, 1989