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Today's
Stories
November
6, 2004
Carl
G. Estabrook
Who Killed Cock Robin?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Green Out
Rahul
Mahajan
Fallujah and the Reality of War
November
5, 2004
David
Vest
The Not-Bush Brothers: a Fond Farewell
Elizabeth
Boylan
The Dems and Faith-Based Politics
Conn
Hallinan
War Crimes and Iraq
David
Zonsheine
Poetry and the Courage to Refuse
Cynthia
McKinney
It's a New Day!
Elaine
Cassel
Running from the Religious Right
Chris
Geovanis
First Protect Your Vote: Lessons for Democrats on Fixing Elections
from Chicago
Rob
Ritchie
Election 2004 by the Numbers
Jo
Guldi
The Beast of History is In
November
4, 2004
Sharon
Smith
The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Lesser-Evilism
CounterPunch
Wire
Bush Voters: 2000 v. 2004
Ben
Tripp
My Fellow Americans...Get Stuffed!
Michael
Donnelly
Why Not Blame Rosie?
Vijay
Prashad
An Election of Homophobia and Misogyny
Jules
Rabin
De Profundis: the Morning After
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Professions of Faith:
"Your Rich Men are Full of Violence"
Zoltan
Grossman
Blue State Secession: the Only Solution?
Jonah
Birch
1968 and Today
Dave
Lindorff
What Went Wrong?
Jack
McCarthy
I Knew It Was Over When Michael Moore Showed Up: He Was For Nader...Before
He Was Against Him
Donna
J. Volatile
Ahoy Kerrycrats! Welcome to Our Nightmare
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bright Side of Black Tuesday
November
3, 2004
James
Hodge / Linda Cooper
The CIA and Abu Ghraib: 50 Years of
Training Torturers
Ann
Harrison
The Ghost Votes in the Machine: Voting Snafus Across the Nation
Greg
Moses
Blues for Fallujah
Anis
Memon
The Moral (Values) of This Election
Mickey
Z.
Post Mortem
Josh
Frank
The Dems Should be Ashamed
Chris
Floyd
No Ways Tired: Defeat, Dissent and the Bush Machine
spArk
Smoke Signals from Portland: Karmic Blowback and the Democrats
Friedrich
von Schiller
Folly, Thou Conquerest
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Democrats in End Time: Who to Blame
Now?
November
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Democratic Elections in Historical
Perspective: The Wrong Side Wins
Lance
Selfa
Selling the War on Terror
Laura
Carlsen
The US Elections and Latin America: Can the US Ever be a Good
Neighbor?
James
Davis
To Control the Event: Attention Bicyclists
Richard
Oxman
Getting Up with Osama
Dr.
Ira Kay
A Mental Map of the Bush Presidency
Jesse
Walker
Frankenstein v. Chucky: the Halloween Election
Thomas
C. Mountain
Election '24, Deja Vu?: LaFollette, Nader, & the "Most
Important Election of Our Lifetimes"
November
1, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and
Blew It
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate Confirmed; Press Yawns
Greg
Bates
Nader Voter Survey Results
Roger
Morris
Novel Politics: Only Fiction Can Do
This Election Justice
Diane
Christian
Death Tolls
Lenni
Brenner
Secularists Be Warned: Christlike Kerry Roams Spiritual Universe
Christopher
C. Conway
Can the Left Sink Any Lower?
Francis
Boyle
Legal Elites and the Iraq War: the Nazis Had Their Law Professors,
Too
Jason
Leopold
Rummy's Failed War Plan
Website
of the Day
Dylan Resurrects "Masters of War"
October
30 / 31, 2004
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The Long March and the Million Worker
March
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Spartacus Tells All
Bruce
Anderson
Notes from the Big Empty: When the Hippies Invaded NoCal
Vicente
Navarro
They Worked for Franco: How Sec. of State Cordell Hull and Nobel
Laureate Camilo Jose Cela Collaborated with the Fascist Regime
Robin
Blackburn
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security
Greg
Bates
A Question of Character: What Makes Nader Tick?
Nancy
Welch
The American Health Care Crisis: an Interview with Dr. David
Himmelstein
William
Lind
Election Day: Which Menendez Brother Will You Vote For?
Brian
Cloughley
Uzbekistan and Bush Hypocrisies
Suzan
Mazur
Oops They Did It Again: the NYTs the Paper of Record and Rip-Offs
Greg
Moses
Standing at the Graves of Iraq
John
Chuckman
Osama's Endorsement
Richard
Oxman
Why Not Accept Osama's Offer?
Ken
Avidor
Landscape of Fear: When Ugly is Suspicious
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Bush, Ba'ath and Beyond
Hope
Bastian
Strangling Cuba's Economy
P.
Sainath
Tower of Gabble: Toward a Sustainable Rhetoric
Dave
Zirin
Bush League: Why MLB Owners Support the Prez
Jon
Swift
The Dry Drunk Thang: Put a Cork in It
Ron
Jacobs
The Joke's on Me: a Review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1
Alexander
Billet
Taking Theatre Back: Are the States Ready for "Stuff Happens"?
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Laymon, Norris, Ford and Albert
Website
of the Weekend
The Origins of Halloween
October
29, 2004
Harry
Browne
No Justice for Peace Activist in County
Clare
October
28, 2004
Forrest Hylton
"The Gas is Ours:" Bolivia's
Ghosts of October
Col. Dan Smith
Rebellion
in the Ranks
Alan Maass
Jon Stewart v. the Pundits
Ron Jacobs
Ecstasy
in Red Sox Nation
Alexander
Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October
27, 2004
Jules
Rabin
Crammed with Distressful Politics
Dave
Lindorff
Bulgegate: the Lies Continue
Katherine
Van Tassel
On the Home Front: Both Parties
Ignore Working Parents
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil
October 26,
2004
Brian Cloughley
Three
Weddings and Lots of Funerals: Atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan
William Blum
Fear
Factors
Lenni Brenner
The
1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Lessons for 2004
Ben Tripp
The
Chicken Salad Election
Fidel Castro
After the Fall
Greg Bates
The Nation's Flawed Calculus
Walter Brasch
Gag the Public: the War on Dissent
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Open Letter to Pat Buchanan
Mickey Z.
Rumble in the Jungle at 30: Ali, Foreman and the Congo
Amir Taheri
The Boom in Conspiracy Theories
Alexander Billet
Say It Ain't So, Bruce!: the Boss Endorses Kerry
Doug Giebel
The Religion of G.W. Bush
Kathleen Christison
Why
I Liked Thomas Friedman's Latest Column Before I Didn't
October 25,
2004
Ralph Nader
Letter
from a Minnesota Highway
Werther
West
Texas Wahabbism
Dave Zirin
Boston's Killer Cops: Death of a Fan
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Oregon Revokes Dr. Leveque's License
Omar Barghouti
Executing Another Child in Rafah
William J. Nottingham
Lori Berenson's Story
John Chuckman
A Foolish Consistency
Uri Avnery
On
the Road to Civil War
October 22
/ 24, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
You
Can't Blame Nader for This
Rev. William Alberts
On Bended Knee: Faith-Based Deceptions
Willliam A.
Cook
Killing for Christ
Saul Landau
George W. Bush: a Man of His Words?
Bill Quigley
I Held the Bullet in My Palm: Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children
While Arresting Priest
Christopher Brauchli
Seal It With a Frown: What Compassionate Conservativism Really
Means
William S.
Lind
Fallujah and the Moral Level of War
Sharon Smith
Guilt Trippers for Kerry
Greg Bates
Kerrynomics: "Hurt the Ones Who Vote for Us"
Justin E.H. Smith
Is Lesser Evilism a Compromise with Evil?
Rebecca Evans
Tarnished Legacy: Pinochet and the Chilean Military
Mike Whitney
Al Hurra TV: the Second Invasion
M. Junaid Alam
Purchasing Individuality in America
David Krieger
Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and
Kerry
David J. Ledermann
The Emperor's New Crumbs
Lawrence Reichard
Same Old FBI Story
Website of
the Weekend
Lie Girls: the Real Coalition of the Willling
October 21,
2004
Ben Tripp
The
Undecided Voter Examined
Joshua Frank
Kerry
and the Environment:
It's Not Easy Pretending to be Green
Stan Cox
What
the Left Doesn't Get About Small Businesses
Bill Martinez
State
Depart and Cuban Visas: Only Anti-Castro Agitators Need Apply
Mark Engler
The War and Globalization
Lina Britto
and Lucia Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
Website of the Day
Two Pampered Children of Wealth
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
November 6 / 7, 2004
Here You Learn
to Keep Secrets
Heroin,
Cocaine and Española, New Mexico
By
JORDAN GREEN
Sister Emmanuel: Maria,
have you been visited by the souls who "self-destructed"
by drugs, overdosing, for example?
Maria Simma: Yes, they are
not lost. It all depends on the cause of their drug-taking; but
they must suffer in Purgatory.
- The Amazing Secret of the Souls in Purgatory:
An Interview with Maria Simma by Sister Emmanuel of Medjugorge
ESPAÑOLA, New Mexico.
Addiction to heroin and cocaine is a
fact of life in the remote villages of Northern New Mexico's
Rio Arriba County as certain and yet as inscrutable as the thin,
mountain air that blankets the ancient valleys, and the jagged
heights of the Jemez and Sangre de Christo mountains that bracket
the upper Rio Grande.
Two factors account for Rio
Arriba having the highest per capita heroin overdose rate in
the country: entrenched generational poverty and proximity to
the Interstate-25 pipeline from El Paso, Texas to Denver. It
doesn't take much imagination to conclude that a sparsely-populated
county roughly the size of Connecticut with a history of lawlessness
would serve as a natural transit point for overland shipping
to major markets such as Denver and Chicago.
But the story of heroin addiction
in Northern New Mexico begins long before Americans developed
a mass appetite for cocaine and heroin. The story can be traced
back to the first foray of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate
into Northern New Mexico.
The Catholic faith was established
in the upper Rio Grande Valley in 1598 with the arrival of Oñate,
who was accompanied by Spanish settlers, and converted Jews fleeing
religious persecution in Spain. There they found a long-established
Pueblo Indian culture. The Pueblos carried out a violent revolt
in reaction to harsh Spanish rule, and later acquiesced to the
protection of the Spanish crown against raiding bands of Apaches
and Comanches. The Spanish settlers cultivated the high desert
ground and eked a living in the harsh frontiers of three succeeding
nations: Spain, Mexico and the United States.
"Heroin addiction is
the involution of the trauma of being the conqueror and the conquered,"
said Hakim Archuletta, a Hispanic counselor from Chimayó
who is a convert to Islam. "The perpetrator-victim cycle
gets repeated. It's in the family. It's in the streets with the
children. It's in the institutions. The whole history of trauma
in New Mexico is that the women end up carrying the babies of
the conquerors. It comes in another way with white people who
come and take away the jobs."
The Spanish settlers formed
organizations of hermanos penitentes in the eighteenth
century to perform the rites of the faith when the Spanish crown
periodically recalled priests. Later, when New Mexico came into
the possession of the United States, the penitentes dispensed
vigilante justice against Anglo settlers who threatened Hispanic
land ownership. Over the centuries, the penitentes have
nurtured a cult of suffering, binding themselves to crosses and
scourging themselves to prove their fraternal membership and
commemorate their people's gradual loss of land and power.
"There's this long history
of social trauma that has involuted in the individuals,"
Archuletta said. "How many heroin addicts have not lived
in a home as a child where there was extreme violence? Probably
none."
Five addicts fatally overdosed
in the Española area in the space of six days during September,
reports the Rio Grande Sun, the local weekly newspaper.
For a city of 9,688 people that is the commercial hub of the
county, it's a staggering number. The newspaper's pages are regularly
filled with death notices for young people lost to drug overdoses,
car accidents, illness or other catastrophes.
In one written for 23-year
old Marty Jimmy Trujillo, whose death was reported as a suspected
overdose, the voice of the deceased is channeled as a request
of God to comfort the living: "Though I live with you in
heaven, there's something you must know. I never got to say good-bye
before I had to go. For I was much too busy and Lord how could
I know "
Cheap black-tar heroin poured
into the Española Valley from the Mexican state of Sinaloa
in the years following World War II. The heroin epidemic has
become an intergenerational problem, with children often following
the example set by addicted parents rather than steering clear
of the misery to which they've been exposed. The Santa Fe
New Mexican reports that in 1999 a visiting Department of
Justice team concluded that Northern New Mexico's exceptionally
strong families tend to undermine recovering addicts' efforts
to get clean rather than help them because drug use is so prevalent
in families.
While heroin is the cross the
community must bear in unwelcome media attention, crack cocaine,
crystal meth and prescription painkillers have also made major
inroads among young drug users. Where 35 years ago users gradually
developed their addictions over a period of decades, young people
today are taking heroin in higher quantities, and in deadly combination
with prescription drugs such as Oxycontin and Lortab, according
to one recovering addict.
The Sun and The
New Mexican have chronicled the abject failure of a revolving
cast of drug treatment agencies to put a dent in the problem
of addiction, but no one has yet been able to explain the supply
side of the equation.
Who might be organizing the
import of heroin and cocaine from Mexico, and what connections
might they have to the drug cartels that control the trade? The
valleys of the Rio Grande and the Rio Chama reveal no ostentatious
displays of wealth among the adobe homes and trailers. No family
names are ever mentioned, even in rumor or innuendo, as possibly
being responsible for the plague. Addicts and small-time dealers
say they don't know who is making the money, even as they insist
there is some larger malevolent force of profit, political collusion,
and corrupt law enforcement setting events in motion.
Taking up residence in the
barrios around Espanola -- as I did when I started working for
the Sun as an education reporter -- it's impossible to
not become aware of the pervasiveness of addiction even as you
learn the habit of discretion. You know and you do not tell.
About the undocumented Mexican immigrant who presents the small
tool kit displaying two neatly-cut lines of coke. About the neighbors
in the house at the head of the driveway who are selling coke.
About the friend who is in and out of rehab in Albuquerque.
You help a neighbor get a car
started, you get invited to a barbecue, you drink a beer in the
driveway, and you learn to keep the secrets. Tenants come and
go by the month as the instability of poverty deals out electricity
shut-off notices, eviction letters, and restraining orders.
You sit at a kitchen table
at a party with a group of young people in their early twenties.
Some of them have young children whose fathers are already absent.
Some are couples. Others are women unattached by children or
romantic partners who tell stories of drinking to the point of
alcohol poisoning and beating each other senseless. An older
man, a known dealer from the neighborhood, pulls up and your
neighbor, a 24-year old single mother, gets in the car and sits
with him in the driveway for 45 minutes.
Addiction among Rio Arriba's
young is almost without exception part of the region's legacy
of conquest and subjugation, played out in episodes of domestic
and sexual violence, Archuletta said.
"It almost always begins
with a traumatized childhood," he said. "They don't
feel secure in themselves. Life is difficult and impossible to
face. So one strategy is to be out of yourself. It can be the
road that takes them into failure over and over again."
At the party, a young woman
I will call Kim -- a brawler in a skateboarding sweatshirt whose
handsome Aztec face is framed by short brown hair -- tells a
boasting tale of riotous living in a crack house in Cuba, 76
miles distant across the Jemez Mountains.
A male friend sold crack out
of her bedroom, she said, which was fine because no one was sleeping.
The front room was always full of people getting high.
The glee in Kim's voice is
deeply unsettling as she tells one of her many yarns.
There was a pregnant woman
who brought her husband with her to the house to get drugs. She
had sex with the dealer in the bedroom, while her husband waited
in the front. When she came out, she proudly showed off the rock
she'd won for her favors.
"We all went, 'Alright!
You scored a crack rock,'" Kim said. "We all smoked
it together."
Later, Kim erupted in fury
when her dealer friend told her he needed to take a shower because
he'd had sex on her bed. The tragedy of a pregnant woman prostituting
herself for her addiction seemed lost on her; it was the grossness
of the fact that it was her bed that had been used for the transaction
that upset her.
"People begin to live
their lives without feeling," Archuletta said. "If
you read these old medical manuals, one of the symptoms of opium
addiction is amorality. Robbing your grandmother of her TV is
easy to do because you're not there."
We must do a great deal
for the souls in Purgatory, for they help us in their turn. We
must have much humility; this is the greatest weapon against
evil.
- Maria Simma
Other addicts, more often
those who have managed to survive into their forties and fifties,
express regret about the harm caused by their addictions and
the dealing they've done to support their own habits.
>From the mid-1980s to the
mid-1990s, an older friend of mine received heroin and cocaine
shipments from Mexico, and supplied dealers across Northern New
Mexico from Chama to Taos. When I met him, he had quit dealing.
He was haunted by the fact that much of his clientele was dead
from overdoses. He was attending services at an evangelical Protestant
church in Española, and trying to mentor young men in
similar trouble with drugs and criminal behavior.
I would learn that the lives
of penitence and addiction are really two sides of the same coin.
My friend would be called on by his minister to talk to young
men in juvenile detention about the moral dangers of the drug
life. He would also disappear for weeks at a time on cocaine
binges. He would complain about his tenants selling drugs, and
yet periodically old drug partners would turn up at the apartments
he managed to look for him.
All his old friends in the
life still trusted him, he said, because he never snitched; he
had always done his time in prison quietly. But he wanted to
tell his story to a newspaper so it could serve as a warning
to those who might follow in his footsteps. He didn't care about
his personal safety. It was what he needed to do to get right
with God.
Then, he went on a binge and
ended up in rehab again.
Contrition is very important.
The sins are forgiven, in any case, but there remain the consequences
of sins. If one wishes to receive a full indulgence at the time
of death -- that means going straight to Heaven -- the soul has
to be free of all attachment.
- Maria Simma
Being exposed to drug addiction
always comes back to knowing the secrets, but having to surrender
to the reality that none of it is really on the table. The facts
are not necessarily the facts because no one will own the information
that floats on the wind. And no one will have to answer for the
injustice that has been done.
Family relationships are the
web of familiarity that enforces the code of silence. Family
ties are strong in Northern New Mexico. If you talk, you risk
incriminating a niece or a cousin. Or one of your family members
might be harmed in retaliation for your candor. The shame that
someone in your family is mixed up in drugs also reinforces the
silence. You can't understand how the addiction has happened,
and you don't know how to help the son or brother who is caught
in the cage of addiction. So you pretend it's not happening.
"When you have trauma,
this charge in the nervous system builds up, and it has to be
released," Archuletta said. "It goes out on others
with violence, or inward with alcohol or drugs. It's self-hatred.
Trauma begets trauma."
The facts of how colonial oppression
and the historical underdevelopment of Northern New Mexico as
a reserve labor market have contributed to the hopelessness of
the Española Valley are easily available, but those Marxist
truths give little comfort.
It's easy to succumb to the
Catholic fatalism that hangs over this bleak valley, to feel
the heavy blanket of despair and give in to the sense that a
malevolent force beyond your reckoning has laid siege to everything
you hold dear.
We should not always consider
suffering as punishment. It can be accepted as expiation not
only for ourselves but above all for others. Christ was innocence
itself and he suffered the most for the expiation of our sins.
- Sister Emmanuel
Jordan Green is a freelance reporter who splits
his time between New Mexico and North Carolina.
Weekend
Edition Features for October 30 / 31, 2004
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Spartacus Tells All
Bruce
Anderson
Notes from the Big Empty: When the Hippies Invaded NoCal
Vicente
Navarro
They Worked for Franco: How Sec. of State Cordell Hull and Nobel
Laureate Camilo Jose Cela Collaborated with the Fascist Regime
Robin
Blackburn
How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security
Greg
Bates
A Question of Character: What Makes Nader Tick?
Nancy
Welch
The American Health Care Crisis: an Interview with Dr. David
Himmelstein
William
Lind
Election Day: Which Menendez Brother Will You Vote For?
Brian
Cloughley
Uzbekistan and Bush Hypocrisies
Suzan
Mazur
Oops They Did It Again: the NYTs the Paper of Record and Rip-Offs
Greg
Moses
Standing at the Graves of Iraq
John
Chuckman
Osama's Endorsement
Richard
Oxman
Why Not Accept Osama's Offer?
Ken
Avidor
Landscape of Fear: When Ugly is Suspicious
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Bush, Ba'ath and Beyond
Hope
Bastian
Strangling Cuba's Economy
P.
Sainath
Tower of Gabble: Toward a Sustainable Rhetoric
Dave
Zirin
Bush League: Why MLB Owners Support the Prez
Jon
Swift
The Dry Drunk Thang: Put a Cork in It
Ron
Jacobs
The Joke's on Me: a Review of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1
Alexander
Billet
Taking Theatre Back: Are the States Ready for "Stuff Happens"?
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Laymon, Norris, Ford and Albert
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