Juarez, I Hear You Crying

Ciudad Juarez. 1.3 million souls across the Rio Grande from El Paso. The murder rate is supposedly down from a record of 30,000 in 2010.

I am waiting for the bus at a bus stop. I don’t have cash for a taxi. It is too far to walk. There are about 24 other resigned people here waiting. It’s after 6 pm, we’re tired, we all want to go home. This is routine here. When the bus comes, there may not be room for all of us. So we will push and shove and some of us will still be here waiting for the next bus. Eventually, we’ll all get home.

Since the narco wars started, going home has become more important. It’s the only real chance of being safe. Nobody goes out here in the evening. Ever. And nobody goes out for a walk. Going out is like asking to be shot or kidnapped. Going out to a bar for a drink and to watch the futbol game is like declaring that you’re a combatant on one of the four or fives sides of the War in Juarez. So getting home has some urgency. 60,000 people have already died in Mexico since the War on Drugs started. Nobody here wants to be in that statistic.

Years ago at this stop, the bus pulled in and there was a shooting. That was just at the start of the much greater wave of killings brought by the maquiladoras and the War on Drugs. When the door opened, a young man climbed up the steps to the driver to pay his fare, took out a small automatic machine gun, and shot the driver 16 times. I don’t know why. I can’t imagine why. Then as if the bullets had turned everyone to cement, the young man quickly made his getaway on foot. Later, nobody could provide any details at all about the shooter. Those shots were for me the opening fusillade in the War in Juarez.

I am waiting for the bus. I hope it comes soon. There is a small Toyota pickup parked across the street from the stop in the dark shade. There is something about it I don’t like. The driver has mirrored sunglasses. I can see that. And there is a big man, also with sunglasses, standing in the bed. I thought he might have a big gun, a machine gun of some kind, but I can’t see clearly from here what that is. What is he doing with a machine gun in daylight in Juarez? All I can see is that he’s got something big and heavy.

The bus comes. It is entirely too full of other passengers to take all of us. Those who are at the front of our disorderly, disorganized line struggle and get on, then there is no room for anyone else. There’s pushing and shoving, some cursing. The driver closes the door, and he leaves behind a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust and sweaty people, who will continue to wait for the bus.

At this, I look across the street. At the Toyota. The guy in the back clearly has a big machine gun. It is mounted on top of some kind of stand. It has long lines of bullets hanging from it. The truck pulls quickly out from the curb, makes a wide left turn so that it is now coming quickly toward the bus stop. At that, the man begins to shoot. I feel a bullet crush my right arm at the elbow. And in slow motion, I see the line of people to the right of me fall down one after the other. Blood is spattered everywhere, and there are pools of blood on the ground. And people are screaming and crying and dying.

There is nothing I can do. I have no idea why I have been shot. I sit on the corner of the bench, and I wait for an ambulance. Hopefully, it will come soon.

Pachamama, I Beg You Please Forgive Us

This is deeply troubling. And beyond sickening. AP reports:

GULF SHORES, Ala. - Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange — and troubling — phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea. We don't know how to stop the oil, and we don't know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet. Please forgive us.

A Rumor Defies My Comprehension

On Sunday morning I went into town to gas up my car. While I was pondering the blue sky and the ridiculous price of gasoline, a man I know, a one-time client of mine, approached me and asked me if I had heard the bad news. I hadn't. He told me that on Saturday, a friend of mine, another lawyer, a colleague in the public defender's office, had died of a brain aneurism. I was shocked. My friend is about 25 years younger than I. I told my former client that I hadn't read about this in the paper or heard about it. He said he was sure it was true, that he was sorry, and he called his sister on his cell phone. Yes, she said, it was true. Four people had called her to tell her the news.

I went home and called our mutual, public defender boss. I think I woke her up. She said my friend was as alive as alive could be, that nothing was the matter, but that she, too, had received several calls about his having died. To put it mildly, reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated. They were, in fact, false. I called him up. He answered the phone.

It seems that on Friday he was playing in a golf tournament. Through a bureaucratic error, no lawyer showed up to cover his cases in City Court, where he was supposed to be. The judge said in words or substance that my friend wouldn't be representing his clients, and he sent various people back to the jail or to home. Apparently, the rumor started after that.

This morning I spoke again to the dead man on the phone. He was fine. He'd received phone calls for two days about what had happened to him. He had visits from the police, the troopers and the deputies. His office had received numerous calls from his clients and friends. The funeral home next door to his office had received more than a dozen inquiries about what the arrangements were. A few people pulled into his driveway, some with tears streaming down their faces, to express their condolences. A few friends of his had called the house from as far away as Florida. A neighbor spoke to his father-- his father was leaving a child's birthday party at his home on Saturday-- to express his condolences.

Today is Monday. The rumor goes on, undeterred by the fact that the supposed dead guy is at his office, doing what he always does, and that the story is completely false.

Today I heard the story that his family was forced to pull the plug on him yesterday.

Meanwhile, he's agreed to call a few reporters he knows to see if he can stop this before somebody on a playground tells his young boys how sorry they are that their dad died.

Please Don't Worry About Me. I'm Fine. Really.

Oh boy. The New York Times has done it again. This time it's a story about how paid bloggers are, well, killing themselves:

They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

The rest of the story outlines the pajamas wearing sweat shop: writers who cannot sleep, eat, or live a life because they don't want to miss a story and have to write. Constantly.

This, my dear readers, is not my life. It's not my problem. It's not something that's happening to me. First, I don't get paid for writing the Dream Antilles. And most folks act like they're allergic to clicking the "donate" button om the right hand side of this page. Second, I'm not trying to beat anybody to anything. I post what I think when I can think about it. I'm not in a race with anyone or anything. If I don't post, well, I just don't post. Third, I have a real life, a job, a family, children, pets. Fourth, there's enough competition at dailyKos and even docuDharma for readership. I don't need to bring it here, and I won't.

So, my dear readers, please don't worry about me. I'm fine. Really. But would it kill you to donate to the Dream Antilles? That would ease my "stress." Just asking.