LIBERATION RADIO BROADCASTS
CLINTON NO LONGER FELT HIMSELF choking on anguish-on the rage and pain he had felt every day of his life, even in the army. What had made the difference were the spirits, and the army he and Rambo were putting together. Clinton was happy Rambo was in no hurry; Clinton had wanted to travel around a little to see which way the wind was blowing in such places as L.A., Houston, and Miami where recent rioting had been worst. Clinton wanted to do a little scouting work, that was all.
He reminded himself to be realistic. He wasn’t going to find many poor blacks in L.A. or Miami who would waste time listening to him. The poor were tired and sick. They would rather watch TV. A few were making big money from the others who bought a few minutes of forgetfulness from a pipe or a needle. Illness, dope, and hunger were the white man’s allies; only dope stopped young black men from burning white America to the ground. Clinton felt an obligation to try to locate recruits because numbers were not as important as loyalty or determination. Small groups had been changing the history of the world from the beginning. Clinton had seen the bloodshed in the black and brown neighborhoods—all the ammunition and guns, all the energy young people used up every night in L.A., San Jose, Oakland—never mind Washington, D.C. and New York City. For now, Clinton would settle for recruiting a few of the best men, and women too, who wanted to fight a real war, instead of selling crack to keep white men rich and safe. If he couldn’t find young recruits, then Clinton would go after old ones like himself, Vietnam vets. There might be one or two like himself still alive.
Clinton did not expect success overnight. He knew they would call him a crazy old man. But he would just keep hammering away at the young ones—he knew someday they would find out money alone wasn’t enough, because money didn’t buy respect. Sure, they could make money off one another; they could bleed on the street while white men got richer and richer selling them dope, and future warriors were killed by booze or dope. They were free to continue with all that. Clinton did not want his radio broadcasts to sound like Hitler’s, but people had to be warned: alcohol and drugs were intended to keep them weak, to keep them from rising up—to demand justice. Black slaves had labored to make the United States rich and powerful. The United States still owed African-Americans just as the U.S. owed Native Americans.
Clinton’s Slavery Broadcast
Opening music (Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Aretha Franklin)
Voice reads: Now is the time to keep the promise you make.
Curse him as I curse him!
Spoil him as I spoil him!
May he have no peace in bed
no peace at his food
nor can he hide!
Waste him and wear him!
Rot him as these rot!
Voice-over continues:
1. Slavery is any continuing relationship between people and systems that results in human degradation and human suffering.
2. Women and children are the most frequently enslaved because slavery relies on violence and systematic terrorism to maintain control.
3. Terrorism takes many forms, but most often the violence is sexual, to convince victims suffering is part of their very identity, as unchangeable as their sex or skin color.
4. The slave is the polestar of the Master’s life. The slave will always receive the Master. The slave becomes part of the Master, and perfection becomes possible.
5. The slave has no identity but through the Master; slave identity is not a fully human identity.
6. Slaves may serve as laborers, but slaves exist primarily to satisfy sexual and ego needs of the Master.
7. The Master craves the pulse of cruelty and pleasure the slave arouses in him again and again.
8. Strike the Master’s son but never the Master’s slave; the son is a separate being, but the slave and Master are one and the same.
9. Slavery is highly productive and yields fabulous profits. Slavery makes cruelty valuable and useful.
10. Europe got fabulously wealthy off slave power in the Americas. Where does the greed of the European originate? Greed arises out of terror of death. People of snow and ice are haunted by freezing and starving. The wood on the fire never lasts for long.
11. Wealth from slavery buys storehouses of food and armies and the finest physicians. Wealth obtains more slaves and more property to barricade the Master in the world of the living.
12. The slave is offered to Death in place of the Master; thus the slave “becomes” the Master if only for an instant as the slave dies.
13. The slave accumulates power in the realm of the Master’s dreams. Gradually, the slave inhabits the Master’s idle thoughts during his waking hours. The Master’s obsession enslaves him. (End of broadcast.)
Clinton’s Radio Broadcast #2
First Successful Slave Revolution in the Americas
Slavery joined forever the histories of the tribal people of the Americas with the histories of the tribal people of Africa. On La Isla de Hispaniola escaped African slaves called maroons fled to the remote mountains where the remaining bands of Arawak Indians took them in.
In 1791 the slaves’ war for independence began with a ceremony to the spirits. Boukman, Biasson, and Jean François led the people into battle. Guerrilla army units of maroons and black Indians came down from mountain strongholds at night to leave various charms and “poisons,” and to burn barns and the mansions of the rich. In 1801, the Revolutionary Army of Slaves at Santo Domingo defeated 25,000 of Napoleon’s soldiers, commanded by Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. The French are defeated with the help of the spirits.
The spirits of Africa and the Americas are joined together in history, and on both continents by the sacred gourd rattle. Erzulie joins the Mother Earth. Damballah, great serpent of the sky and keeper of all spiritual knowledge, joins the giant plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl. When someone dies, the spirit goes to the Dead Country. Legba-Gede, Lord of the Crossroads of Life and Death, directs the traffic of the human souls.
Spirits inhabit the “thunderstones” or flint blades the Ar-awaks and Caribs once carved. The spirit inside one “thunderstone” caused the stone to sweat profusely; another famous stone named Papa Gede urinated. The spirits are the most powerful beings. That is how the outnumbered and ill-equipped people’s army had held off the French navy and army.
First Legba-Gede takes on his favorite incarnation, Lord of the Cemeteries, who gave his secret followers special power against European soldiers occupying Haiti. The Lord of the Cemeteries had given his secret followers the power to hypnotize then overpower victims along the road. The soldiers of the Lord of the Cemeteries carried nooses of dried human gut to strangle new victims after midnight. Europeans are terrified.
Gede Ge Rouge has always been a cannibal. Ge Rouge is synonymous with the Americas. The power of Gede and spirits of the dead is original to the Americas. Gede was not worshiped in Africa. Ogoun had traveled with the other spirits to the Americas, but Gede, Master of the Dead, protector of small children, tricksters, and sexual athletes, Gede, who connects the living people with distant ancestors and forward in time to descendants yet unborn, Gede belongs to the Americas.
The signatures of the spirits are outlined in ashes and cornmeal on the ground. For Legba-Gede they paint the cardinal points, the crossroads of the universe. Sometimes the old man, Legba-Gatekeeper shows up, crippled, covered with sores and maggots. He is both male and female; he is both fire and sun. Old Gede prances like a horse in his old black overcoat, jabbering away and sipping champagne. His rites are performed during the new moon. Old crippled Gede sometimes has only one foot; then they call him Congo Zandor because a snake has only one foot, which is his belly that he crawls on, and he mashes his victims between giant stones.
Sitting across from old man Legba is Petro-Mait-Carre-four, young and strong, spirit of all points in-between, spirit of the moon, spirit who regulates all demons. Gede-Brav is Lord of the Smoking Mirror, wearing dark glasses; his words and gestures are full of const
ant sexual innuendo. Gede-Brav, Keeper of the Gate, is the cosmic phallus, muttering to himself and rubbing against objects.
Gede-Brav can swallow the hottest drink.
Gede-Brav has a ravenous appetite.
Gede-Brav always shows up at the wrong moment.
Gede-Brav shows up where he is not welcome.
Gede-Brav cross-dresses.
Old bent man, Cinq-Jour Malheureux, is Gede-the-dying-sun-soon-to-be-reborn; Cinq-Jour Malheureux represents unnamed, empty, and unlucky days at the end of the Native American calendar.
In Africa, Ogoun, spirit of the warrior, statesman, and metallurgist, reigned over the villages and towns of Dahomey and Guinea; but in the Americas, Legba-Gede, Lord of the Dead Spirits, Keeper of the Crossroads of Life and Death, became more powerful because the Europeans had killed so many people in the New World, dead souls far outnumbered the living. In Africa, Ogoun did not have to share his power; in Africa, Ogoun had great armies with the best weaponry. But in the Americas, Ogoun Ge Rouge must share his power with Legba-Gede, and right here you know this military spirit hates this “political maneuver,” this “compromise” in which he must share power with the Lord of the Dead.
The rage of Ogoun is terrible. Even in Africa, Ogoun’s anger had accidentally killed his people, and in despair he had thrown himself on his sword. But in the New World, where Ogoun faces far greater outrages, his fury has no limit. Thus it is that Ogoun Ge Rouge and his followers have many times outnumbered and double-crossed Legba-Gede and the people after they’ve won their independence. Ogoun Ge Rouge Jaco is the fast-talking, crooked politician who appears from the smoke and ruin after the revolution. Jaco tells lies and spreads rumors. Jaco works to create misunderstanding and suspicion among the people. Jaco and his cronies work fast; before the people realize, Jaco and the others are long gone with all the people’s money in the national treasury.
Ogoun Ge Rouge Feraille is the spirit of a great national hero who outlasts and finally defeats the spirit and followers of Jaco. Trouble is, politicians all call themselves “followers of Ogoun Feraille” and only later reveal themselves as followers of the crooked politician Ogoun Jaco. So far, Ogoun Jaco and his followers had been busy all over the world, not just in Haiti. Others had seen their revolutions eroded and betrayed, otherwise a Chinese poet could not have written: “Before the revolution we were slaves, now we are the slaves of former slaves.”
Clinton didn’t care if his radio broadcasts sounded like lectures from a black studies class. After the riots and Vietnam War, there had been no more university funding for black studies classes. That was no accident. The powers who controlled the United States didn’t want the people to know their history. If the people knew their history, they would realize they must rise up.
BOOK THREE
EL PASO
SONNY’S SECRET SIDELINE
SONNY HAD BEEN EXPECTING a phone call from the Mexican, Menardo. Sonny hadn’t told Max anything about his contacts in Mexico. Sonny told Max he liked Mexican “beaches,” but “bitches” was more like it; Menardo’s wife, Alegría, was sensational in bed. She had been all over Sonny again and again.
Sonny was looking forward to doing business with the Mexican because Menardo’s prices were much better than what Mr. B. had offered. Sonny didn’t care if Max had worked with Mr. B. or the government; what Max did was up to Max. Sonny didn’t like B. He’d work for B. because Leah rented warehouses to him and because the job was so simple.
Sonny Blue had always thought Angelo was pathetic. Raised like an orphan by the fat uncle in a junkyard, Angelo had surprised Sonny Blue. Angelo had managed his racehorses and done his “accounting” for the family interests at both the horse and the dog tracks. Angelo had not been fooled by sob stories or excuses from the peons. Sonny liked to call white men in Tucson “peons.” Sonny used only white peons; he never used Mexicans when white men were plentiful and cheap.
Sonny Blue had been impressed when Angelo’s racehorses had won a race here and there. All the Tucson horses ran on California tracks. Angelo did not seem the type to work in the family business. Sonny Blue figured him for the type who would work for a while and then quit when he had the money he needed for legitimate business. The fat uncle who had raised Angelo had refused to take part in family business activities. Sonny Blue had heard the story of “Fatty,” and how he had never touched a penny of the family “dividends” and how he wanted to keep his fat hands clean. For what? Angelo had had to live in a small trailer crowded together with the fat uncle. Sonny Blue thanked his lucky stars he had been born who he was.
Sonny Blue saw many similarities between Angelo and his brother, Bingo. Bingo had been slow and had struggled through school. Bingo was taking care of the El Paso operations for now, but already Sonny had been thinking about sending Angelo over to assist Bingo. They needed a border toehold, and they needed someone in El Paso who would be ready to act when their “new friends” began making deliveries to them. Sonny Blue could not trust Bingo. Bingo stuffed too much coke up his snout. But the family politics were sticky; Sonny could not let Max or Leah find out how much cocaine they both used because heads would roll then. Max was old-fashioned. Cocaine was a drug the white man sold to niggers.
Max had given Sonny the vending machines and pinball games: the family organization had exclusive distributorships in Tucson and El Paso. Bingo was a poor manager, and the family organization was losing money in El Paso. Sonny Blue and Bingo had strict warnings: stay away from dope. Dope was the territory of the Mexicans. Max Blue had reminded them about the law of diminishing returns: they could start a war with the Mexican and Indian smugglers, but when the dust cleared, what would they have gained? The family had had some good lessons taught them over the years by Mexican and Indian smugglers.
Max Blue had gone on and on, preaching to Bingo and Sonny about their vending and game machine distributorships—exclusive distributorships. Distributorships such as these did not grow on trees. What more did they want? Sonny Blue had always known to be careful what he said to Max. Sonny had always felt a little uneasy, and secretly, he was afraid of his father. But it had been difficult for Sonny to hold his temper when Max had asked “what more” Sonny wanted. “Money!” Sonny wanted to scream. He wanted his share. He wanted a chance to show he was somebody besides Max Blue’s son. What did the vending and pinball machines bring in a year—$275,000 or $300,000? Exclusive distributorship? Well, Sonny had to watch constantly for “squatters” and independents who tried to go around Sonny with video games and hot-sandwich machines. The games division’s profits were shrinking because of all the home videos; but the instant-food dispensers were offsetting the games’ losses.
Sonny hated even to think about it. The stale smell of greasy lunch meats and rotting lettuce permeated Sonny’s office at the main warehouse. Sonny was sick of the pig slop. He was sick of the way things had been going for him and Bingo. He did not understand why his old man had rolled over so easy for the Mexicans, who thought they ran the town.
Sonny Blue had lived in Tucson all his adult life. In Tucson, the big thieves hanged the little thieves. It was that simple. In Tucson money talked louder than bullets. In Tucson a man might dare you to shoot him; but no man in Tucson ever refused a hundred-dollar bill. For five hundred dollars “trash” in Tucson would shoot their own brothers.
“Legitimate business”? That was the joke of the century in Tucson. Even the new Federal Building sagged dangerously because so much steel and concrete had been “diverted” by subcontractors during construction. Tucson had families of thieves going back three generations; they had been stealing from the U.S. government since the Apache Wars, so what were a few hundred thousand yards of concrete or a few dozen steel beams?
Sonny didn’t know which ones he hated worse: the white-trash “gringos,” the pigtailed biker gangs, or the filthy Mexicans. Human sewage all of them. What a relief there were only a few blacks; Sonny had counted this as Tucson’s one selling point. Sonn
y had not wanted El Paso. Tucson was bad, but El Paso was only more of the same two-bit players. Bingo had hated Tucson too. Bingo had been the smart one to jump on the El Paso deal. What difference did it make where the stinking food-vending machines were leased? Sonny had stayed in Tucson deliberately. Sonny wanted to prove a point.
Sonny Blue did not trust Mr. B. because he was a retired major. “Military” meant “police” as far as Sonny was concerned. Telephone call from the senator or no, Sonny Blue was not impressed by Leah’s half-million-dollar lease. The entire economy was shaky; the military would face huge budget cuts. Sonny Blue laughed at the expression on Leah’s face. “Snip! Snip! Off go their fat budgets!” But Leah Blue had had the last laugh. She wasn’t a bit worried about the money. The major had paid cash up front: out of his blue Samsonite suitcase. Leah pretended to fan herself with a bundle of hundreds. The warehouses that the major had rented had been vacant since their completion. Leah had used cheap government loans and development grants to finance the construction. Friends of the family had been generous in approving interest-free loans from certain banks the senator controlled in Phoenix.
Sonny Blue did not call her “Mother.” Sometimes he could more easily imagine Max was his father than he could imagine Leah as his mother. Sonny had been watching Leah with her men from the beginning when she had taken Sonny and Bingo in the car with her to show real estate. Sonny had sensed right away something was going on when she had bought them candy and pop and left them in the big Chrysler with the engine running and the air-conditioning on. Sonny had wanted to sneak into the house and spy on them. Bingo had been afraid of getting caught. Bingo had started to cry and would not shut up until Sonny had kicked and punched him.
The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Page 51
