WEBVTT

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Thank you very, very much.

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Everything comes full circle.

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22 years ago, I was on trial
for allegedly committing

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the crime of bringing
two Salvadoran refugees

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across the border.

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Of course, it wasn't a crime
if I had, but I was covering it

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as a journalist, and so was
found not guilty on First

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Amendment grounds.

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And that experience came out of
what happened here in Tucson.

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The people here,
Reverend John Fife,

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who were indicted and convicted
for assisting refugees

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fleeing from Salvador and
Guatemala from death squads

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that our government
was subsidizing

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with our tax dollars.

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And three days ago,
I had the privilege

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to go with John to the
border, out to the camps,

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to stop the death camps, to see
where refugees die, Mexicans

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die, to see where they're found,
to see how they're helped,

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to see how they're
able, somehow, to go on

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and so somehow, Tucson is home.

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I mean things really
come around full circle.

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I'd like to open by reading
it's "When in doubt."

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This is from-- it's a
prose poem that I managed

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to smuggle into "Confessions
of a Berlitz-tape Chicana,"

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my essays.

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Your pen is a gavel
calling the world to order.

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People come forth with
their testimonies.

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At a book fair in
Houston, an old man

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looks at you through
smudged glasses

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and says, please write that
people in mental hospitals

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aren't getting the right
medicines because there

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are no Spanish translators
there to translate for them.

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At a senior center, a
woman says, right down

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that Romero, Rosemary, boiled
in water and used as a rinse,

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keeps hair thick and healthy.

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Another says, my mother used
to sweep an egg over our bodies

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and pray to get rid of fevers.

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Write it down, because the
young people don't know.

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In the quiet of your room,
you record the testimonies.

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You light a candle for Paloma
Escobar Ledeszema of Juarez.

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She disappeared, like hundreds
of women workers there.

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Disappeared.

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The police did nothing.

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27 days after she
went missing, her body

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was found on the
outskirts of the city.

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Women around the world hold
demonstrations and demand

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action on behalf of the
disappeared women of Juarez.

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Too many times you walk away
from the page to pour tea,

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but voices call you back.

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Grandpa Luis, author of
corridos that were put to music,

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corridos about the beauty of
New Mexico, a soldier fighting

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in the Philippines, an
unjustly accused man.

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Your great grandmother Juanita,
who wrote and read letters

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in Spanish and
English for people

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in her village of Los
Lunas South of Albuquerque

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calls to you too.

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And you hear the voice of
grandma Lucy whose students

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had nothing to write with.

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She cut wrapping paper she
bought at Woolworth's and sewed

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it into tablets.

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She bought pencils,
cut them in half,

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sharpened them,
then gave them away.

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In the quiet of your room, in
the clatter of coffee shops,

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at the anti-war demonstration
with your reporter's notebook,

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in all these places and more.

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Remember that you
are the daughter

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of Aztec scribes
known as the keepers

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of the red and black ink.

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Those colors flow from your pen.

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You write even when
you are not writing.

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Fall asleep with your notebook
and ink leaks into the page.

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A day or decade later
you recognize the glyph

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on the page, and
with a great "Aha,"

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you set out to translate
it into a poem.

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Years of stained
fingers, the ink

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is working its
way to your heart.

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You will die from writing.

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You write because
you are so human.

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You fall in love the
year that glaciers,

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for the first time in recorded
history, melt and crack.

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You write a love poem.

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A long time ago, you wrote,
because we have no word

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for light, we live in shadows.

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Still, you persist in
the hunt for that word.

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You search for more paper
as the candle honoring

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the spirit of Paloma Escobar
Ledezma burns furiously.

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You email friends in San
Francisco, Vietnam, El

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Salvador, Africa, and Ireland.

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They know shadows.

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There is no burden
too heavy for them.

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Poets all, they promised to
search for the word for light

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in their languages
and histories.

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They put pen to paper and
call the world to order.

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