The New Opiate of the Masses - the Allure of a Heaven of Riches

The social and support structure in the United States seems to be collapsing, and that collapse, that might suck into it the collapse of the economy and our democracy, is making the world more dangerous.  After the progress that was made after World War II the destruction of social support network began with the Reagan administrations and the neo conservative movement that took over the government.  It is clear that the evil in humanity began to overtly exert its negative influence when Reagan became President.  That evil was kept in check after the second world war by our strong national moral rectitude and our care and respect for the welfare of citizens,.  Over the last 35 years, however, that economic and social stability, that was won mostly by the blood of labor, has been chipped away by Republican policies that have been growing out of control since the 1980s.  Karl Marx once equated religion as the "the opium of the people."  By cultivating extreme religious positions in the 1980s and 1990s, the Republicans hid a more bizarre narcissistic ideologies based on profit.  It is those narcissistic ideologies based on profit that are the true "opiate of the masses" - and people are being recruited into this new religion by the promise a "wealth heaven" if they are true to these ideologies, a heaven that one can never reach, unless one is there already.  These bizarre ideologies have been, and are, being used by right wing politicians to misguide and keep the middle and lower economic classes off balance and used as expendable "soldiers" in their quest to control all aspects of the U.S. and world economy.

With the concentration of wealth in the small percentage of the population, the levels of inequality are returning to the corrosive levels of the "Gilded Age" and the royal system of government in Europe of the distant past.  The world economy is becoming a boom-and bust engine that enriches the "well to do" while starving everyone else.  People can no longer afford to live on the subsistence wages that are being forced on them.  This trend in the destruction of our social-economic-political system is an a downward spiral.  Through the republican controlled media, for example:  Fox News and right wing radio commentators and conservative controlled newspapers (six corporations control 90% of the U.S. media ) people have been "brain washed" and forced to retreat from anything that does not reinforce their own prejudices.  In turn they create an increasing intense or irrational dislike or fear of people that don't think like them and of people from other countries - a xenophobic population.  Right wing politicians take advantage of this to "control" the opinion of the population and advance their economic policies such as less public support for education.  Accelerating the decay of our democracy.  Indeed our democracy is deteriorating into nothing more than an ill informed electorate.

This limited education of the electorate, destruction of our social and economic support network, coupled with the promotion of these bizarre ideologies has allowed people like Trump to based his presidential candidacy on racist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic positions and find a significant portion of the electorate willing to accept his positions.  He has had the benefit of the Republican party, since Ronal Reagan, cultivating these people.  It has been this preparation of an ignorant electorate that has allowed a horrible and deplorable candidate become a real contender.  Anyone who helps him advance his racial, religious and ethnic bigotry is part of that bigotry.  I agree with Mrs. Clinton, this portion of the electorate form a deplorable group of citizens.

I also agree with her that there "… are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”  However, she is not filling the need of these people, she is not presenting the change that we need, she speaks in platitudes and theory.  The people want to see strong positions and she does not seems to have the talent, either in her or behind her to understand and put the democratic platform in these strong positions.  Bernie Sanders is able to do that, Elizabeth Warrant is able to convey those strong positions.  Unless Clinton changes her presentation and offers what people want, the electorate's  minds will be dominated by the person selling the new opiate of the masses. 

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I have not been writing too many blog entries this  year and I have tried to concentrate on travel and adventure blogs - travel with my son.  However, with this new presidential election, I can't bring myself to just stand on the sidelines and not say anything.   I need to post my views and opinions on the candidates' positions.  I hope you find them challenging for discussion and are willing to communicate your reactions and opinions to me so that we may have a intelligent exchange  on these and other topics. comments and feedback can be made through this blog or they can be directed to my email: riverarg@gmail.com.  

Putting Together a Piece of a Family History Puzzle

Searching for family and family history is like a jigsaw puzzle, you find lots of little pieces and you put them together.  Those pieces begin to fit and begin to form a picture of the history of the family.  However, with the death of older generations in the family - aunts and uncles and grandparents - putting together the puzzle of the history becomes very difficult.  We are so involved surviving the challenges of daily life:  School work; making and surviving our careers; rearing children; making friends and fitting into society; providing for the shelter, food and medical care that we all need that we spend little or no time watching and recording the evolution of our family.  Sure, we share stories and some of those stories stick and a small portion of those are sometimes passed to the next generation.  But most often they are not.  What I have noticed is that the family memory fades and disappears and the family fragments.

Unfortunately it is not until we have more time (like after retirement) that some of us begin to let our curiosity guide us into family history.  Some of us look online to sites that help organize family from a historical perspective, some of us begin to research and may be lucky to find some tidbit of information or an event of one of our ancestors that is of interest and feel pride and comfort with a link to the past.  Some of us imagine what the struggles might have been and write stories about them.  And, some of us might have the time and flexibility after retirement to do first had research and interviews of family members trying to document their stories.  Unfortunately, by the time one is of an age of retirement, we are lucky if we find living members of the previous generation, or direct stories of members of two generation ago from members of the previous generation who had managed to have put attention and remembered stories that were passed on.  Those, however, become less and less reliable if the stories are more than one generation before, or if the person remembering has some bias and want to protect that they think is the family "honor."   Most often, pieces of this family "puzzle" become distorted because a complete piece is not found and we try to fit what we know into the "family picture," often distorting the picture.

A case in point was the inconsistency of the origin of the Garza family in the village of Villa de Garcia, the town where my mother's family is from.  All my cousins have been told that the direct line of the Garza family, my grandfather's line came from San Luis Potosi when he moved his family back to Villa de Garcia.  Implicitly it is assumed (and believed) that we have no connection to the Garza family in Villa de Garcia.  But his piece of information did not fit rest of the family facts and it seems to not only be from, but form a different puzzle.  As it turns out a great grandmother had moved away when her husband died sometime in the early 1900s.  How they managed to survive the Mexican Revolution of 1915 would make for a fantastic story!  From the pictures that survive and from their historical landholdings, these were people with money and high social status - the targets of the revolution.  My grandfather and his two sisters were raised in San Luis Potosi.  My Grandfather (Serafin) married a woman from Guadalajara (Maria del Pilar Barrera) had three or four of the seven kids in San Luis Potosi (my grandmother had the oldest child from her first marriage - David Negrete) before coming back to Villa de Garcia in the early 1930s.   

Serafin's Grandfather who died (probably after 1900)

Serafin (my grandfather) about 1930

Why didn't the San Luis origin of the Garza family didn't fit the family facts?  We know that the Garza family had incredibly large land holdings in the Villa de Garcia area, most likely small remnants of land grants made by the King of Spain to the "De La Garza" family in the 1600s.  sometime in the 1700s a branch of the De La Garza family dropped the "De La" and became just Garza (there is evidence of this but I have to look for direct proof in church records).  My grandfather's cousins had large landholding, Hacienda-size houses (I remember the house of one of my mother's uncles, Raul, had 10 to 12 bedrooms, inside courtyards, large groves of fruit, avocados, oranges and pecans as part of their back yard.  He also sponsored the circus  ("Circo Osorio") that came to town every year - own by another cousin of his).   

Some of my grandfather's cousins had businesses and my grandfather had large pieces of land with up to 250 horses on his farm at one time in the early 1930s.  Some of his other relatives had businesses and controlled or managed government owned centers such as the natural caverns of Garcia.  His cousins did not come from San Luis Potosi, and he could not have acquired such wealth in such a short time?  Where did all this economic power come from?  My grandfather had to be from Garcia and had moved away on a temporary basis but came back to his holdings.  Luckily, my aunt, the only living relative of my mother's side, remembered the fact about her grandfather dying and her mother moving to San Luis Potosi when I interviewed her and questioned her about this inconsistency.  (Unfortunately, much of the Garza farms did not survive the dry years of the middle 1930s, the same dry years that caused the "dust bowl" and the devastation of the American farmland in Texas and Oklahoma and led to such books as the "Grapes of Wrath" also impacted farms in Northern Mexico and led to the sale of cattle, horses and land by Serafin and other cousins. )

With My Aunt, the Oldest Living Member of My Mother's Family

24 Hours in Parras de la Fuente

Parras de la Fuente is a small city that time forgot, except for cars and internet, the town is living in the early 1800s.  Don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful place to visit and even live if you want to live with small-town values, be very family oriented, with people who enjoy the simple things in life, like a walk to the town square to speak with friends and family, sit in one of many of the small squares and small parks to have some ice cream (or tacos) and watch the people and the world go by.  All homes (and buildings) are straight out of the Spanish colonial period with original adobe construction and painted in colorful pastel colors; it is candy to the senses.  I hope it will not be overrun by tourists and developers - although I so some evidence of cheap row-housing in the outskirts of town.  There are no Walmarts, there are no large chain stores, there is only local vendors with mostly local producers producing and selling to the locals.  There are mayor industries, and Parras is or was known for denim production, wine production (since the early 1600s - in fact the wine was so good and cheap that the King of Spain prohibited them from selling and competing with Spanish wine in the 1700s and the 1800s).  It produces a large variety of fruits and vegetables because it has been always considered the "Oasis" of the high planes desert.   Parras de la Fuente also contains the roots of the Rivera family line.

 Scenes from Parras - Stores and Business look like regular houses with few signs

My father has always spoken of his family in Parras, but since they not affect me, I never put much attention.  My last trip there, with my father, was over 45 years ago, and the only thing that I remembered was that it was not a place I wanted to be.  I was just initiating my career in the high tech area, and the last thing I needed was to "waste" time with farmers too concerned about, what I considered, were the simple things in life; growing and harvesting grapes , nuts and fruit, making and drinking wine, spending large portions of your life on family time, relaxing and enjoying the trees, the flowers, the food and the people around you.  At that time I thought all that was backward and a waste of time.  I think differently now, and I'm sorry I did not stop and listen, smell the flowers and drank the wine.

I knew that if I wanted to get more facts on the Rivera family, I had to go to Parras.  I dragged my cousin from Monterrey to go with me and made a one day trip there.  All of my father's uncles, cousins and relatives of his generation and the generation of his father were dead, and since I did not bother to keep any records, I had no idea where to start to look for this "lost" family (actually we were the ones that were lost, they had been there all the time).  The town is a little less than a 3 hour drive from Monterrey on the freeway.  We got there about three in the afternoon.  I drove into the middle of town where we knew one of my father's uncles had owned a large variety story, akin to a small K-Mart store.  I parked in the main street of the commerce center, Reforma street, and my cousin and I proceeded to look for the store - nothing!  One old security guard remembered that one of the variety stores used to be a Rivera Variety Store but that was over fifteen years before.   

Disillusioned,  we began to walk back to the car to try to plan our next move.  We passed two little old ladies (and I mean little and old - about 80 years old) sitting on a bench watching the world go by.  We decided to take a change and asked them if they remember a Rivera-owned store on this street.  They did!  In fact, they used to shop there.  But they been closed for a long time and the owner died.  "But," she said, "there are other Rivera store owners around."  My heart jumped and my disillusionment melted.  "I don't know who they are or where their store is, but I can take you to someone who might know."  She said, and proceeded to walk us to a small hardware store about a block away.  The woman at the small hardware store pointed us to a small shoe shop about half a block away.  We went there and it turned out that the lady minding the store was the wife of the owner whose name was Rivera.  The husband was not there and was not due back until later that evening.  Realizing that not all Rivera's are family, we started asking her questions on the relationship of her husband and I could tell that that was going over like a "fart in church."   Not so much that she did not want to tell us, it's just that she did not know.  She did indicate to us where another store was whose owner was a Rivera - about three or four block away. 

The other store was a small grocery stored manned by a man about 50 and had a strong resemblance to my father's father.  His reaction when I introduced myself was interesting, he said I looked like one of his uncles.  After some comparison of family history (as much as I could remember), I realized we hit the jackpot!  He sent us to his 93 year-old mother on the other side of town.  He apologized he could not leave the store unattended, gave us the address and directions to his mother's house and sent us to go and talked to her.  He also gave us the name of a cousin who is a lawyer and had his law office on the way to his mother's house.

 With Second Cousin Maria Olivia and her mother Maria de los Angeles

His mother, although she is 93, took one look at me and immediately said "you look like Juan."  Her daughter, Maria Olivia, in her late fifties, early sixties, proceeded to talk about family history, trying to determined where we fit in the family tree relation to her.  The rest of the afternoon and the morning of the next day went like clockwork, we visited more family members and by noon the next day I had a draft of the family tree with at least ten branches and over one hundred and fifty entries.  I got some addresses, some phone numbers and some e-mails, and even had some Facebook links.  Overall it was a successful 24-hour trip.  I hope to summarize all the information and return in a few months with more time and start gathering family stories.  I got some interesting tid-bits of stories dealing with of family intrigue, stories of adventurers, and businesses, and can't wait to go back.

 With other second cousins

A Day in the Quest for Family Information

Research into of the Rivera, Gaytan, Garza, the Barrera, family histories, among some of my parents family names, have uncovered some very interesting stories.  Stories of unimaginable tragedies, of sacrifice and endurance under a tremendous odds, abundant wealth and extreme poverty, romantic love and forbidden love, of intrigue and a conspiracy,  and an overwhelming desire by to keep the family together, even at the expense of locking the skeletons in the closet along with the dirty family laundry.  I wish I have had the foresight to document all I saw and heard  when I was younger, and to have interviewed or at least listen to old relatives when they were eager to tell their stories.  Now the bulk of the historical treasure is either lost or hidden in pieces in church and government records and in the minds of older relatives who remember bits and pieces of what they heard or saw.   

I am trying to collect these bits and pieces so they can be documented for our generation, and to be able is like collecting little pieces of a complex puzzle and piecing it together to form a picture of a family in its evolution over the last one hundred and fifty years.  Every conversation with relatives I find or rediscover leads to a clue of who they might have been.  They also lead to the next clue or piece of the puzzle.  Sometimes I feel like a detective trying to piece together a whole novel but only finding one letter at a time, but I have also had some lucky finds that have led me to a whole chapter.

It is difficult to research family history when one lives in Michigan and the relatives and family history are scattered all over northeastern part of Mexico.  Also, for the type of family stories I am interested in documenting, the internet has limited value.  So the only solution is hitting the pavement and knocking on doors.  Luckily, I have a cousins who are also interested in this venture and indulge me enough to help me get around, without their help, I would not be finding these lost relations as fast as I am. 

For example, one of my cousins had a notion of where a "lost" cousin's mother used to live.  So we went to her house.  That aunt, had died many years ago, her house was abandoned, but the door was unlocked and we went in to see if we could find any evidence of where her son might have moved to.  The house was in shambles and we found no information.  A young lady, who took the bus near the house every morning was standing waiting for a bus and we asked her if she knew anything about it.  She indicated that she remembered seeing some man come by a couple of times during the past year but did not know anything else.   An elderly lady a few houses down and across the street was standing in her front porch watching us so we decided to ask her about the woman who used to live there.  "Yes," she said, she used to be my friend until she died a few years ago."  She knew her son and other members of her family.  Unfortunately she did not know where her son lived but she heard she lived near the end of the Metro in the western part of the city.  We found out the name of the street of his last known address from my sister who happened to find a possible address that she had written down over 30 years ago and we set out cruising through the neighborhood for this guy.  Now that we had narrowed the search area to a few blocks, he was easy to find.  It was a great reunion full of hugs, stories, food and drink.  But most important; information I, and the rest of the family did not know, contacts to other family members and clues as to where to find other relatives in a small town one hundred miles away.  So my next stop, this small town, Parras de la Fuente, in the state of Choahuila, (officially the "Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza") at one time the hometown of the Rivera and Gaytan family.

Below are pictures of my aunt, whose abandon house we visited, the courtyard of the abandoned house and a picture of my lost cousin with his wife.  We were extremely lucky to find him in the outskirts of a city of almost 4 million, without an address and without a phone number. We are now liked up through e-mail and Facebook and phone numbers. 

Guadalupe - circa 1950

The courtyard of the abandoned house

My cousin with his wife and another cousin

All these emerging stories are extremely interesting, funny, sad and tragic, and I hope to bring them to life through a series of books so that our family can have a written version of our history to pass on to other generations.  I have completed and published the first book "Surviving the Avalanche of Life,"  and hove to have the second volume "Living on the Edge of Irrelevance," in the Fall of 2016.  Other priorities kept me from finishing the second book in 2015, but I set a schedule and hope to keep it.

If you are interested in these books, let me know and I'll send you a link.  Also if anyone is interested in providing editorial review for the second and third books, I welcome any help I can get.  You can contact me via Messenger in Facebook or send me an e-mail to my address at rafael@rivera-fam.com.  I'm a little slow in responding, but I will get back to you.