Lancondon...

Lancondon... What keeps you so?
By: Ken La Rive 111397

You draw my heart to you with hooks, oh
Lancondon of selva, the last percent of humanity that
resists the Spanish fly of Chiapas under thatched roof and
a barking dog. Where first there was laid that maggot
parasite of twisted Catholic processes, who still feed
on the wounds of their own creation. You were scourged and
mangled into oppression, but still remained resistant. That island
of pure Mayan blood, the last five hundred, that is
the soul of Chiapus, still sing to the jaguar song.

What keeps you so?

They thought your back was broken. By the heat of
white fever virus, by the heat of countless deaths in
the name of gold, by the heat of your burned books,
codexes, and hopes, all for the exchange of dogmatic truths…
and what of the drug lord? Still you cling to what you find
was never lost inside.

What keeps you so?

Deep in la selva you drag your chains to be heard. Your
diamond patched frocks over eagle motifs still cling to the
great wheel of you ancestors. That long count calendar mark
the days by cycles of concentric spirals, repeating. You were connected
with the past, a long past, and a future they say ends in 2012…
Do you ring in the new age by example?

What keeps you so?

The rain forest echoes of La Ruta: of DDT and Aids,
of PEMEX trucks on mud rut roads, of coffee, banana, sorghum,
cocoa and chicloros, tobacco, and filtered jewels of marijuana, and coke
plantations; of alcoholism and tuberculosis, malnutrition and cattle carrying parasites. Hachakyum, help you! “Tengo mi pistola, me mota, y mis huevos. Entiendes mendez?

What keeps you so?

Trucha! Yo estoy hecha de otro arbol! Your hooks are deep in my
swelling heart… Hide, oh Lancondon. Hide in la silva! Survive
Zapatistas, and the Mexican Army. Hide from absorption, hide from
gennocide!

Thanks to the Chicano poet in the lowlands of America: Juan Felipe Herrera, (who lives it.)

ScrappleFace

Scott Ott, editor of ScrappleFace.com, is also columnist for The Washington DC Examiner. Here's an excerpt from his latest column, and a link to read more. You can access his other DC Examiner columns, or view PDF versions of the street edition of the paper, any time by clicking the 'Columns' link at the top of the ScrappleFace homepage.

Piracy spurs Obama calls for cargo-ship reductions

By Scott Ott, Washington Examiner Columnist
The rash of piracy incidents off the coast of Africa in recent years has spurred the Obama administration to reach out to the other G-20 nations to build consensus around a "gradual drawdown of cargo vessels in global sea lanes."READ THE REST AT The Washington DC Examiner...

The death of Castro, and American traitors

I wrote this over three years ago and it still applies...

The death of Castro, and American traitors
By: Ken LaRive

Information pours out of Cuba like a sieve. The attempt to keep Fidel’s sickness and eventual death a state secret borders on the ludicrous, but that is the nature of this dying regime.

It has been the topic on Capital Hill and the surrounding pubs for months now as to whether the Cuban government will survive Castro. What a joke. What is left of the low ideas set forth by dictatorial blood baths perished long ago, and all that remains is a burned out remnant. Castro’s ideological dream-regime is dead, and only the shell of a self-made maniac remains.

It is written on Cuban bathroom walls that brother Raul will take over leadership of the Cuban Communist Party, attempting to balance the military/intelligence system, appease the quagmire of nepotistic minister officials tied in red tape, and move forward with a hidden agenda all his own... What remains will be transformed by the whim of a new want-to-be dictator, and the prevailing winds that sweep the world at that time.

To this very day Castro promotes the idea that it was the American embargo and the strangled relations of an imperialist American Economic system that burned the life out of Cuba. He seemed very persuasive early on, but few believe that today. Anyone could trade with Cuba: Latin America, Europe, Canada, whomever, and Cuba wasn’t even completely locked out of North America, as third parties collected their commissions. No, it was Fidel’s myopic dreams that subdued Cuba, and a thick-fingered hand that could not rationalize the economics of free trade.

The imaginings of Fidel fell with the slow-sinking Soviet, and he seemed never to give up hope that his original vision could still ignite. His once strong words now falls on deaf ears like a broken record.

The so called embargo is a justification for failure by Cuba’s small minded politicians. It was and remains a political hand gesture toward the dogmatic-ego of a man who could not face reality, and in the process decimated a once abundant land, and enslaved the common people under the weight of his totalitarian/communistic/socialistic yoke. It was powered by a booming voice of promises: the fall of the United States by his own united front.

He leaves Cuba shoddier as the years pile on, and history will show that any North American who tries to do business with Cuba before his death, or identify with his Venezuelan lackeys, might well be thought a traitor. Fidel is our sworn enemy, and those who promote him are too.