We believe in cooperatives but not in central planning. We do not want to repeat the disastrous mistakes of the Soviet Union and create a repressive and counterproductive bureaucracy. So we are not a rigidly planned community. Our socialism is strictly voluntary. If you join, you get the benefits of cooperative living. If not, then you go it alone, but nobody interferes with you. And the coops compete with one another in a free macromarket. Each co-op is autonomous. In soy farming, for example, there are sixty co-ops and fifty-one private farms, some owned by big international agricultural corporations, one by Central Soya, and eight by Japanese firms. The co-ops have an association that sets prices and provides a system of mutual assistance. Thus they are much more efficient than the private farms.
We have our own currency. The Far Eastern Bank Note Company in Hong Kong makes the notes. They are backed by an equivalent amount in Japanese yen. Of course, this makes the currency very valuable, as it is exchangeable at any bank in the world for yen. Ten Aztlan pesos to a thousand yen. Better than the dollar!
Our economy enjoys a balanced current account, which means that our exports pay for our imports. We have no inflation, as all prices are controlled. There is no hunger in Aztlan. And there is racial equality. Even Anglos, if they want to stay, are welcomed into the community of the Aztlan people!
Our Indian population is free to live and worship as it pleases.
We have Hopi, Apache, Pueblo, and Navajo tribes living in Aztlan.
Their tribal areas are self-governing. We do not keep records of their activities, nor do we have any sort of Bureau of Indian Affairs. We just let them do as they please in their own territories.
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But, unfortunately, we cannot grant you safe conduct into the Indian lands. Among the Indians there is, frankly, a good deal of hostility toward Anglos.
Now I suppose I ought to talk about what happened at Roswell, because you've probably heard about it from others. You must understand that we view the Mescalero Apaches as a separate, sovereign nation within Aztlan, and Roswell is within the boundaries of their tribal state. They took over the town about six months after the war, as soon as it became clear that the central government had collapsed. When we declared Aztlan in 1989, we went to the Mescalero, they did not come to us. All I can tell you is that the incident was overblown. Those Anglos who were killed had formed an armed resistance movement. People were not tortured or burned. And nothing like a thousand were killed. It was no more than half or at most two-thirds of that number. And there were trials, you understand. The whole process took months. All of it was before Aztlan. If it happened now, we would try hard to persuade the Indians to let the Anglos leave Indian lands peacefully.
I am glad you suggest that this book will be distributed in England. We have to get an awareness among the British people that Aztlan exists. British recognition would confirm us as a permanent nation, and a British guarantee of sovereignty would mean that our chief worry of war with California or Texas would never come true. If we had such a guarantee, even a reconstructed United States would have to think very carefully about invading us or destroying this serene and happy nation.
The territory we call Aztlan was originally part of the Spanish Empire and the Republic of Mexico. You must remember that Mexico was then a perfectly ordinary nineteenth-century republic, no more or less violent or repressive than the United States.
But the United States first encouraged Anglo colonization of Texas and California, then supported internal insurgencies. When the Anglos won the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, less than one-third of the population of Texas was Anglo. And California was simply stolen. Mexico was forced to accede to the Treaty of Guada-lupe Hidalgo in 1848 and give California to the United States. It was theft!
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As a result of the loss of its territory north of the Rio Grande, Mexico was emasculated and her people lost their sense of personal pride. The image of the lazy "Meskin" and the "Frito Bandido"
was born, but it was not laziness, it was sorrow. We Hispanics are
not lazy and we are not bandidos and we are not stupid. If we are so stupid, how come we have the only happy, safe, and well-orga-nized nation north of the Rio Grande? While the Anglos fight bitterly among themselves for the rancid bits of the old United States, we Hispanics have quietly created this beautiful country, this beloved Aztlan!
We even have our own poets, our own writers, our own film stars. Chito Hernandez, "El Nino," Gabriela Jaime Nunez, all names of which you know nothing. But they are our stars! We make ten films a year in Aztlan, and when you combine those with the ten made in Mexico and the twenty in Spain, you have a new Hispanic movie almost every week. And we have a television and radio industry. The Japanese sell us more radios than we can possibly use. They put up a new station right here in El Paso. Radio
"A," it is called.
We also have Japanese cars and a new Japanese train running on the Santa Fe tracks from Monahans all the way to Tucson, where it connects not only with the Sunset Limited but with the
El Costero, which provides super-express service down the Pacific coast of Mexico. We are on the world map, I assure you. People want our soybeans and other farm goods, not to mention our oil and gas and uranium, even coal.
For many people in the old United States, the confusion that resulted from the obliteration of Washington was unbelievably destructive. But for us, the people of Aztlan, it was really almost a blessing. Of course, we are very sorry for all the death and suffering. But Warday also brought some good—our Aztlan.
I do not want to lie to you, though, nor seem too bombastic. I suppose I can't help it. I'm a natural enthusiast, and I'm excited by what we're accomplishing here. Still, the way has not been as easy as all that And Aztlan is far from perfect. You might find things wrong here. But you will also find love and a powerful sense of community. This is the great Chicano state, this Aztlan, and I love THE WEST 91
it so much that sometimes it hurts my heart, you know, when things are not as I would wish.
We have to rely a great deal on the Japanese, and they are certainly exploiting us. But we have the brotherhood and sisterhood of our nation, and our great heritage. I trust our isolated little country to survive. Anyway, I hope it will.
El Paso
Hector Espinoza is afraid for his infant state, and so tries to hide its weakness behind bold words. But Espinoza does not know his own people. Whatever happens to Aztlan, the eager confidence of its citizens will not be utterly lost. They have created something new here, and it will have its effect. Obviously there have been ex-cesses. There are no Anglo faces in the streets. The Mobil refinery that one sees on the way into town is closed. There are many Japanese soldiers about. Although we were not allowed to visit Fort Bliss, Jim and I both had the impression that it is now a Japanese enclave. No doubt they intend to protect the vast soya plantations that have sprung up in the desert, which must be providing essential foodstuffs to their homeland.
But these facts tell nothing of the feeling of this new El P&so.
The streets are no more full of cars than Dallas or Austin, perhaps even less so. Yellow schoolbuses have been dragooned for street service. Each bus is apparently a small cooperative venture between its drivers and mechanics. At least, all are decorated differently, painted with flowers and slogans, loudspeakers blaring the music of Radio "A" from their roofs.
We have been billeted at the Granada Royale on MO, newly named Paseo de la Revoluci6n. The hotel is a delight. Its large rooms surround an atrium garden full of flowers. There is an in-
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door-outdoor pool. The atmosphere is quiet and unhurried. Most of the other guests are Japanese, some of them obviously long-term residents. It is strange to hear somebody speaking Spanish with a thick Japanese accent. We were served breakfast in our suite and spent the next hour trying to arrange a tour of the city. First we used the old Yellow Pages to call Hertz, Avis, and the local
car rental agencies. Hertz, now called Autocars Liberidad, was open.
They were taking reservations for November. As this was August, we decided to give up on car rental.
There are no longer conventional taxis in El Paso. By law, they have all become "pesetas," traveling fixed routes on the smaller thoroughfares, essentially supplementing the buses.
Our last option was to take a bus tour, but we soon found that both Gray Line and Golden Tours were booked for the day, or claimed to be.
Perhaps somebody didn't want us to tour the city.
We ended up spending the morning in the hotel. I observed the city from the rooftop restaurant, which commands a fine view of the whole area. I saw no planes take off from the airport, which is not far away. Here and there I could see sooty scars on a building, but beyond that there were no obvious signs of the revolution. Se-fior Espinoza appeared just before noon, his thin body swallowed by a seersucker suit. He was full of brightness and what I can only describe as punch. As soon as we saw him, we requested a tour of El Paso. He said that he would suggest something even better: we should have lunch with him. We could always see the town later, he assured us. He added that he had, by the liberal application of governmental authority, gotten us precious tickets on a "Super Express" bus that left for Las Cruces at three. Tickets on another could not be guaranteed for weeks.
It was becoming clear that we were not intended to make any detailed reconnaissance of this community. Senior Espinoza was, in effect, throwing us out of his country. Given his position of power, we decided to let him do exactly as he pleased.
We were left to swallow our questions about such things as the condition of hospitals and prisons, and what was happening to the homes and property of the Anglos.
The Isabella penthouse restaurant in the Granada is now called 94 WARDAY
Casa del Sol Norte. The food is Tex-Mex, what Senior Espinoza described as "superb Aztlan cuisine.1' Actually, his hyperbole was in this case not far from the truth. I used to enjoy Mi Tierra and La Fonda in San Antonio, and Casa Rio on the river. I can also recall going to this restaurant's namesake, the Casa del Sol in Juarez.
When I lived in New York, I sought good Mexican food constantly, but what I found only increased my hunger for flavors like these.
I will repeat the menu in detail. We had cheese enchiladas, ca-brito chili, chicken tacos, rice, and refried beans. The tacos were generously garnished with tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, and the seasonings were uniformly excellent. We drank Carta Blanca beer from Mexico. The menu showed that the meal was five pesos "A"
to privates, two pesos to comunistas.
After lunch, we were not too surprised to find we had barely enough time to get to the bus. Senior Espinoza claimed to have forgotten the time and left, pleading an urgent appointment. We soon found out the reason for the abrupt departure. Without the use of a private car, we were going to have to struggle to get to the station on time. Neither of us wanted to find out what would happen if we missed our connection.
Jim stood beside me outside the hotel as we waited for a bus.
He was silent and withdrawn. Aztlan had saddened him, because it seemed to him a failure of the racial harmony that had been growing in Texas before the war, and yet another doomed ideological attempt to alter blood and land with words.
I felt much better about it. There was energy and optimism there, and the powerful spirit of cooperation was something that we would do well to import into the United States. I suspected that Aztlan was going to work, though not in the way foreseen by Senior Espinoza, nor in the way feared by Governor Parker. That bee-hive of little cooperative enterprises was going to grow, spreading its new economic ideas in all directions.
I also suspected that Senior Espinoza's caution was not based so much on a desire to hide his problems as it was on a fear that we might be spies for Governor Parker. After all, a letter from Parker preceded us here, probably by just a few hours. Espinoza was terrified of Parker, and probably also of us.
Before I went to Aztlan, the word cooperative suggested to me T H E W E S T 9 5
rural electric power on the one hand and vast, spiritless Soviet communes on the other. I was not prepared to meet such a strange new economy as the one we found: thousands of tiny co-ops, each dependent solely upon its own success to pay its members, none larger than the smallest economic unit necessary to perform its particular function.
This means that the motel where we stayed, for example, was run by two separate co-ops, the restaurant workers and the hotel staff. The state does not pay them, nor does it plan for them. They keep their own books and split their profits weekly. If there are no profits, nobody gets paid that week.
A brightly painted schoolbus jammed with people finally came down Paseo de la Revoluci6n. Radio "A" got louder as the bus got closer. Buses are supposed to stop whenever somebody hails them—there are no fixed stops in El Paso. But this one passed us by. It was full.
As we watched one jammed bus after another pass us by, we began to get nervous. The big purple Super Express tickets Senior Espinoza had given us were valueless if we couldn't make it to the bus station.
Finally a half-full peseta came along. We were almost surprised to see it stop when we hailed it. The fare is ten centavos "A" for holders of yellow co-op cards, which most people wear pinned to their shirts and blouses. These cards identify their bearers as part of Aztlan's network of cooperatives. Capitalists must pay one peso
"A" to ride. We paid our pesos happily.
I got in the front seat of the massive old Buick station wagon, repainted many times, now the bright red of the flag of Aztlan. In fact, Aztlan's red flag with the gold radiant sun in the center snapped from both front fenders and the radio antenna. Jim was jammed in the back with three other people, all wearing yellow cards. "Estacion de la autobuses del norte, por favor, " I said. My Spanish is less than minimal.
As we traveled into the center of town, I collected these impressions of El Paso:
The cemetery beneath the complex tangle of the Spaghetti Bowl where 1-10 intersects the Expressway is in prewar condition.
Unlike the situation common in Dallas, new graves have not been 96 WARDAY
dug in among the old. But there are many empty buildings, empty houses, and abandoned cars. Just before we turned onto Piedras, we saw along the side of MO the glittering aluminum ruins of a jet, cracked plastic windows in the few bits of intact fuselage, the plane's markings no longer readable.
Japanese soldiers passed us in squat Toyota military vehicles.
Their light khaki uniforms were spotless, the Rising Sun on their shoulders. As they rode along they shot pictures of the distant Franklin Mountains with Minoltas as small and thin as credit cards. Earlier we had noticed a restaurant with the odd name
"Gunther's Lotus Blossom." A closer look revealed that the sign had once read "Gunther's Edelweiss." Before Warday, the U.S.
Army used to train soldiers of the German Federal Republic at Fort Bliss, which is just up the road from here. We wondered if Gunther was still around, or if he had left only his name behind.
Japanese military planes flew low overhead. They were odd-looking things, with their wings canted forward instead of swept back, so that they appeared to be flying backwards. Instead of a jet's familiar scream, they made a low drumming noise that seemed almost to thump your chest. I recall the strange cant of the wings from NASA designs for future hypersonic aircraft.
We had ridden in silence for some time when the driver decided to try striking up a conversation.
"Hey, gringo," he said with a big smile. "Let's talk norteamer-
icano! See if I can still do it!"
His name was Carlos Le6n, and he was from San Antonio. "I'm from there too," I said. "So is he." I nodded toward Jim.
"Hey! Compadres! I grew up there. Left in '86 to get a job out here. Once the Mexican economy started to recover, there were lots of jobs here again. I was managing a McDonald's. Kept at it, too, unt
il the meat stopped getting delivered. Then I said the hell with the franchise, sold the equipment, and signed up as a coopera-tor. They assigned me to pesetas and gave me a permit to buy a station wagon Our co-op consists of me, my wife the bookkeeper, and my cousin the mechanic."
"Where did you live in San Antonio?"
"West Side! I lived on South Zarzamora. My dad was a garbage man—but not in his own neighborhood! We had to take our gar-
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bage to the dump ourselves until the fifties. My mom and dad died in San Antonio."
"I lived in Terrell Hills," I said.
"Rich, eh?"
"My dad was an oilman."
"Oh boy! You're poor now, eh? I see you work with your hands!" J
"I'm poor now."
From one of the passengers: "Good for you! Join the rest of the world."
I laugh. "No more oilmen."
"Hey, that's good. No more oilmen! Just British and Israeli oil import agents, right?"
I did not mention that Texas oil was flowing again, and that refineries were opening up all over the United States. There was a razor edge of anger among these people. This was their place, their time at last, and these their days of sunshine.
Walls pockmarked with bullet holes were a common sight as we neared the center of town.
"Jim and I went to Central," I said, hoping Carlos might also be an alumnus. This is not as unlikely as it sounds: Central Catholic had a substantial Hispanic population when we attended.
The sudden silence tells me that my suspicion is correct. Carlos stops the car. "Well, goddamn."
"Brother Halaby?"
"Shit, yeah!"
"Brother Arafia?"
"The Spider! I haven't thought about him in years!"
The Spider taught world history and his real name was Brother Gordon, but his thin, six-foot-four frame gained him the nickname Brother Arana. So total was his identification with us that he was known to get mean when freshmen called him Brother Gordon.
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