Columns

As prehistorical time in the Western Hemisphere spun silently toward 1,000 B.C. approximately a thousand years after man in the Americas had planted the foundation of the first permanent village site (in Mexico), a wave of fierce, misshapened strangers appeared.

Suddenly a couple of weeks ago, in a single evening, the rainy season was behind us and October became fall.

This damp morning, 16-year-old Beto Cisneros strode briskly to the covered hay mow.  Behind him one of his sisters, 15-year-old Rosita, was walking swiftly to catch up. 

President-elect Herbert Hoover glowingly declared the United States was “nearer the final triumph over poverty than in the history of any land.”   In office in 1931, he gave Congress what he called a “Corporation” to aid business.  Things got brutally worse.  And Hoover was soundly defeated by Franklin Roosevelt. 

October 31, the Washington Post began a series of emotionally crushing photographs, “Portrait  of Child Laborers in the Great Depression.”

“Today you have to get deep into the countryside, get out of your car and walk awhile before you can find a real Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebration,” 72-year-old Palomon Jurado Vazquez complains, spitting in the mud of a pueblo street.