Word: campesinos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...from housing to tortillas. Reeking of oil and money, the town is attracting the usual motley con men and drifters, losers and locos. The trucks barreling between the town and the fields rarely stop when they hit a pedestrian. About one pedestrian is killed each night, often a bewildered campesino still unable to grasp the rapid changes. Whores flash their gold-toothed smiles while cruising the wide boulevards, which have been newly rebuilt with pink paving stone. Rifle-toting policemen patrol the downtown banking area because, as one shopkeeper laments, "this is the season of the rateros [thieves], and they...
...patrol of the crack "General Somoza" battalion surrounded the village of Varilla in Nicaragua's Zelaya province. With the troops were several jueces de mesta (police magistrates). The official charge that brought them there: five of Varilla's campesino families had aided antigovernment guerrillas. The soldiers shot, bayoneted or strangled four men, eleven women and 29 children. After dumping the bodies in an unmarked pit, the magistrates divided the villagers' land among themselves...
...finally got to the inside of the embassy, they told me I needed a lot of papers and a passport, which cost 800 pesos ($72). Most of the other people there were city people who had papers and money. Now I know that the only way for a campesino like me to go to the United States is as a wetback...
...cross the border and could see right through your pocket and tell how much money you had. They offered to get me to Chicago, but I had heard that these people can rob you as quick as a mosquito can bite you, so I said no. One night, a campesino from Zacatecas climbed under the fence with me, and we ran and walked and hid for three hours, with our hearts beating like drums. But we walked right into la migra [the border patrol], and the next day we were back in Mexico...
Needed Lift. What has made most of the difference is some 200 huge murals on the sides of once drab buildings. The idea of the wall paintings-which include bright abstract designs, realistic scenes of barrio life, mannered portraits of saints, Aztec warriors and campesino heroes-was conceived by the owners of a Chicano art gallery, John and Joe Gonzales, who felt that community art might give the barrio the lift it needed. They persuaded local artists to provide the inspiration, merchants the paint, fire fighters the scaffolds and residents the creativity necessary to carry out the project. The results...