Instructor Yasmine Ramirez (left) leads participants of the ForWord project at Glassbox, Crystal Acuna, Jasmine Flores and Perla Ramirez. (Yuritzy Ramos/Borderzine.com)

ForWord: A free creative writing workshop for El Paso teens

EL PASO – At noon on a recent Saturday, 16-year-old Jasmin Flores sits at a round table in a downtown storefront gallery and stares at a picture of a man wearing a tee shirt raising his two fists into the air. After thinking for a few minutes, she uses her imagination to write in longhand on a piece of paper a story about two boys playing together with a ball. These and many other activities are practiced each Saturday during a “ForWord” workshop that helps teenage students develop their creativity when writing from short stories to essays. Flores is been attending the workshops, sponsored by a local non profit organization, since the January sessions started. She said each workshop has been different.

The Librotraficante Caravan exhibited some of the banned books at Mercado Mayapan. (Idali Cruz/Borderzine.com)

Literary caravan travels to Arizona to protest a law against ethnic studies

EL PASO — Moving to the somber beat of an Aztec drum, dancers performed rituals passed to them by ancient generations to mark what has been called a cultural crime committed by a recent Arizona law that eliminated Mexican American studies from classrooms and prohibited the use in schools of some books by Mexican-American, Chicano, and Latino authors. The Librotraficante Caravan, a group of authors and activists, arrived at Mercado Mayapan here in March on their way to smuggle banned books back into Arizona. “When Arizona tried to erase our history, we decided to make more history,” said Tony Diaz, a literature professor at Houston Community College who is also a novelist and one of the leaders of the Librotraficante Caravan. “It’s important to stop these kind of actions that affect our community, not only culturally but in all ways, and banning a book is just something that cannot be accepted,” said Minerva Laveaga, director of BorderSenses, a nonprofit literary organization based in El Paso and one of the sponsors of the event. Throughout the event some of the banned authors, members of the caravan and others took the stage and read parts of their works.

Belia Saucedo dice que el programa Memorias del Silencio le ha ayudado a aprender cosas que quedaron inconclusas en su vida. (Elvia Navarrete/Borderzine.com)

Memorias del silencio encuentran su voz

EL PASO – En los tiempos de antes, cuando el conjunto Los Tríos andaban de moda, Belia Saucedo recuerda cuando su abuelito se sentaba a comer naranjas y todos convivían alrededor de ellos. También recuerda los tiempos cuando bailaban rock-n-roll y en el pueblo había pocos habitantes. Tiempos que ella jamás olvidará porque siempre traerá a su abuelito en su corazón. “Sus ventanas tan chiquitas la cocina con su cafetera de peltre sobre la estufa de leña con su aromático café, ¡qué delicioso sabor! Nos servíamos en jarros de barro, cómo lo disfrutábamos,”  escribió Belia en un cuento.