6 May
Ready to go to work with those muscles to release the tension. It is such an incredible experience making herbal medicina. The oil and the herbs working together! It’s so dialectical – made possible through La Madre Tierra and humans (organic Arnica blossoms, organic Lavender flowers from Mountain Rose Herbs, organic olive oil, heat & time, glass containers, funnels, care, sage, and me) working togetha!
26 Apr
At the Orchid Show at the NY Botanical Garden with my lovely friend Prita, and baby’s first ethnobotany adventure!
21 Apr
Here are some pictures with my buddies Carlos and Michael taken at the Graffiti Hall of Fame, El Barrio, NYC – who says graffiti isn’t art?
Carlos
Michael
Carlos wanted his photo in front of da yellow ones
Watchele con esa abeja!
And I will soon make some more herbal medicina!
26 Jan
Well my first semester went well and now I start the second this coming Monday. The first semester was a challenge – I took too many classes (four! which were all, well, mostly great!), and I was too busy working to get that lana to pagar esos biles, and I wasn’t able to keep up my quality of life with community organizing work, not enuf time to digest/take in and make total sense of everything, but I have no regrets. I learned tons, the readings, well, not all, were great and mind expanding, I made vibin new connections, had some nice spaces to think, articulate and write how community is at the center of it all, supported and expanded my arguments better, learned lots of connections, had great convos, got lots of perspective and traveled lots of worlds.
Now, with more breathing room this semester, I will be able to dive back in to Taking Back da Bronx! and balancing out my learning, prepare for my first exam, integrating my framework with which to do my ethnobotany project, which means I have to prep la movida, because in 2014, field & community work here I go!
I am well aware of how blessed I am, to have the opportunities I have and have had which my communities those I have earned, to learn so many things, to be in the thick of it, to be resisting every step of the way, some dance steps too, 
and to have the bestest friends and counting in the universe.
I can’t see how it can get any better than that! But, maybe it will!
Aché!
¡QUE VIVA LA VIDA!
15 Jan
It is clear that these three provide for a lethal combo for our people and I do think that it is a problem that some lives are considered more precious than others. Where is the discussion of the gun violence of the police, as they kill too many people in our neighborhoods with their gun-toting ways as the only legit carriers and users of deadly unaccountable force, not by us, because we know, but by the gun-control types who claim dictatorial powers. So, to be clear, I’m not buying the hype that traditionally seen mentally ill folks are the gun toters, I think we have to re-define mental illness to include the NRA, politicians who kill with drones or armies, and people who think capitalism is great. Just to be clear.
I personally don’t like guns, I really don’t see the use value of them, because just like with the most recent 9/11, the constant bombings of Libya, Bahrain, the South Sudan, Colombia, the disappeared from Mexico and Central America as they are lured to cross to el Norte by the very oppressive system that made conditions in their home countries unlivable, the ones who put up the dead sacrificed bodies, la carne de cañon, are neva eva the guilty.
The ones who are legitimated to buy the hardware, to pull the trigger, or release the bombs, or not-so-precisely-remotely pilot the drones are, could be ur aim, dude. So, it is always an issue of access, an issue of lana, plata quemada as the movie says, of who is legitimated as the law-and-order oppressors, as the rest of the world is considered the terrorists. As the people in Northern Mali can tell you right this very moment as the up-to-the-minute/el ultimo modelo sophisticated French war planes bomb the desert people, the colonizers can never eva give up their habits and controlling ways. And they always seem to have the latest killing hardware that is never eva precise enuf not to kill unarmed people, could be ur aim dude. Course, when you consider every one a militant in counter insurgency wars of the 21st century, as ridiculous as that thought that always pops into my head when I think about this century, Duck Rodgers in the 21st century!, not to make light of the deadly game, I guess your ass is covered by the shear veneer of legitness through which every one else smells that putrid smell that is el vacío where some semblance of a heart used to be. Or maybe never was.
How many more killings, anti-selfdetermining bombings, cahinging rings the warprofiteers’ cash registers make is it gonna take before we end the madness and realize that killing solves little, but then we already know that. We drive the killing machine in a rapacious voracious feeding frenzy through capitalism (thanks, Espe), because what, we hate ourselves and maybe if we just kill so many others, one more, one more, u swear, or 26, we can extinguish it in ourselves. And if not, u have a pile of lana to fling and gamble some where.
What is it gonna take to celebrate and live sanity, every moment, in creating a breathing, sustainable, giving, loving world that holds all of us accountable?
Some space to think and reflect (gracias Lisa!), more resistance out of delirious people who love life and each other, less teeth sucking at each other, more compassion, as we fiercely fight hate, and transform it to compost.
Que no?
Ascending Monserrate, pensando en mi Mamita
9 Dec
Just made another powerful batch!
I really enjoy making herbal medicine, or really, creating a space for it to work its powers of alchemy. More precious than gold!
I really like the folk method, gravity, natural heat and time working together. When I don’t have the luxury of time though, I heat it up and it also works just fine. It is amazing seeing the herbs release their power through gravity into soothing oil, patiently straining it to separate out the herb. Lots to meditate on about watching things work, and letting it flow in the bluish haze of clearing sage.
So, this money making thing isn’t really working, but it sure is nice to give them away as presents. It is fun to make healing medicine, and to be able to gift it, made in love and resistance, autonomy and sustainability. Not like the so-called green market.
Ifn you wanna contribute however, I won’t refuse.
17 Oct
I’m near the middle point of my first semester in the doctoral program in geography at CUNY. I have passed through the state-imposed immunization juggernaut/gauntlet, finally, as I got the results of the blood test today stating that I had indeed been immunized as a child. My bicicleta was stolen, still a little lost without it as I fork over more money to the MTA. I have dealt with the death of one of my professors, Neil Smith, rest in peace. He was a brilliant, kind gentle man who believed in constructing utopias for our peoples, rest in peace brother.
I am learning lots, improving my teaching, focusing, taking it all in, conceptualizing what I want to do with my project, grounding my budding friendships/relationships with folks, organizing in the academic world, always seeking opportunities to construct community spaces in this public university. I’m particularly thankful for the space to think concretely, for the public space to think how our communities can be free, how they have been held back, and how we can understand all that so we can continue to move towards freedom as we do. I am particularly grateful for the space we are building together in my Afro and Indigenous Latin American Geography class, porque la hacemos en español, as we flavor the academy with some sazón/ajíaco! The class with my advisor, Ruthie Wilson Gilmore is great, breaking down the Carceral state.
I am focusing more and more on my project with Afro and Indigenous folks in Colombia and their more sustainable ways of development and relationships con la Madre Tierra and the medicines she, la Madre provides for us. Learning about the resistances of the Palenques, the Herero, liberation theologists, the base communities, grounded in people of color thinkers like Stuart Hall, CLR James, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Paul Gilroy, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, A. Naomi Paik, H.L.T. Quan, AbdouMaliq Simone, Clyde Woods, Brackette Williams, Vazira Zamindar among others with good white allies, of whom Neil Smith was/is one of the best.
I’m am reading and learning furiously, applying what I learn and read to my life, putting it into the context of our peoples, to understand it well, to see how it measures up to lived reality. I’m happy to adopt the vision of generosity of my advisor, Prof Ruth Wilson Gilmore to what I read and study. The white supremacist authors are hard to be generous with, just saying, not that she means that either.
I am working on several papers/investigations/understanding & articulation projects with lots of input from my friends on the ground – one on Afro Colombians throughout the history of colonization, liberation, forming autonomous communities, surviving massacres and displacement, and now working against the ravenous capitalism called neoliberalism, information and knowledge about for which I am incredibly indebted to mi compañera Rudy Amanda for understanding the lived complexity of Afro Colombian life and history, another on how the Nasa peoples went from developing a guerrilla army – the Quintin Lame to the non violent Guardia Indígena of today, and another on the currently-in-the-news work of the Indígenous Guard kicking out the Colombian military from its ancestral lands and how the media blacked it out, and how we have tried to use those concepts here in NYC to provide for community autonomy and self determination.
These are all context for the work I want to do in a few years with these communities around respectfully documenting and recording their sustainable work in and with the land, their use of herbs as medicina, their care for the environment as their casa, one which they are not leaving, y nosotr@s tampoco, here in nyc.
These are powerful testimonies for us all, given the roving targeting to which many of us are subject by a ravenous profit machine that doesn’t stop. Our lifes and resistances don’t either, as we develop more creative and ingenious ways to resist, celebrate and live our lives in the midst of terror and oppression, carving out spaces to breathe right in there.
