It's not about drugs

 

The administration has moved on from using drugs as the premise for what is happening in our hemisphere. It is not about drugs, certainly not fentanyl, or, perhaps not even about oil, nor Venezuela. It would be a mistake to allow them to move on. Keep their brutish template always in mind.

In the Southern District of Alabama, there have been 27 cases involving 93 defendants prosecuted under the MDLEA. Of those, I have represented 13 defendants. Mobile is one of the 6 or 7 port city districts that prosecutes these cases with DC/DOJ having the overall responsibility for their oversight.

There are two different types of MDLEA cases; the random sea patrol case and those that develop from intelligence. There might very well have been intelligence involved in some of the bombings of the boats. For legitimate reasons we are not privy to them. That serves as no defense to what amounts to murder on the high seas.

See Here

While Rand Paul might sensibly argue that these boats could not reach the United States, that proverbial ship has sailed. The MDLEA is premised on something called extra-jurisdictionality. We have argued these cases on all manner of issues involving the law of piracy, law of the sea, international law, maritime, etc. We have failed.

Only two of my cases had a trajectory linked to the United States (DR to PR). Most of these cases are from the Eastern Pacific area, not the Venezuela/Tobago/Trinidad area. These are small boats in areas where they are a major form of commercial transport. None of my cases involved fentanyl - nor is there any connection with that drug to Venezuela. The largest crew was 6. (The boat that they blew up with 11 members does not fit any profile.)

And Here

Of the two that are from that area one was initiated by the Dutch police who were turned over to the Coast Guard. Of the crews that I've been involved with, two of the defendants are Venezuelan, but the crews are mostly Colombian, Mexican, Dominican, and Ecuadorian.

But the bottom line is that - whether they contain drugs or not - there's really no basis for extending the dubious rationale of the MDLEA to the point that you're blowing up boats without due process and sentencing people to an instantaneous capital punishment, especially since the punishments actually meted out in my cases ranged from 48 to 168 months. (One case was nolle prossed as the defendant, a relative of one of the crew, was just catching a ride to a cancer treatment in Puerto Rico.)

As with sentencing in federal court, they are based on drug amounts and the criminal history of the defendant. Certain amounts carry mandatory minimums, usually 10 years. (Paradoxically, thanks to Trump’s First Step Act, along with something called the “safety valve” some latitude from the draconian guidelines sentences has been given to judges. Sometimes they get the break, sometimes they don't.)

These cases involve defendants akin to their land-based counterparts, the mule. As in cases involving mules, the “safety valve exception” recognizes the injustice of holding them to the same standard as the bosses who, safe at home, have lost little save their cargo. These humans are flotsam, left to pay for the crime.

They are recruited from the most humble and desperate slices of poverty-stricken countries and who in most cases have never been involved in criminality. Almost all of my clients were first-time offenders, fishermen who have been either shanghaied or who intentionally have been drawn in by the large amount of money that has been offered to them. Criminal sentences are based on a special kind of extortion - cooperate we'll cut your losses. These people are not in a position to cooperate. 

The sort of melodramas that are generally far removed from our shores have become somewhat of a constant by virtue of the MDLEA; unfortunates fished out of the sea, caught in the web of those who would take advantage of their situation and those who would protect this country from the scourge of drugs. Many of them fishermen making a barely sustaining existence, they would come to accept the prospect of a huge reward for navigating a maritime vessel laden with drugs only to find themselves in the nightmare of a prosecution in a foreign land. 

Defendant A

Defendant A is a native of El Salvador and had been living in Guatemala. Defendant worked with his fisherman father from the age of seven. His father was killed by unknown persons who stole his boat engine. "I couldn't study anymore because it was then my turn to step up, to work, to help support my little siblings, and my mother." Defendant A moved to Buenaventura, Colombia and fished there to continue supporting his mother and brothers.

In 2007, his family was displaced by paramilitaries in his neighborhood. Forced to pay a portion of his

earnings as a fisherman, he moved hoping to avoid the conflict. Sometime thereafter, he was employed as a deckhand on a coastal trader until the COVID pandemic. He was laid off. "life was hard." He remarked and then added, "It is difficult to see your children go hungry."

The crime with which he is charged originated in Colombia. His involvement was primarily the result of circumstance. While in Colombia to purchase fish, he was the victim of an extortion attempt by Colombian police. When he rebuffed their demands for money, they obliterated his passport. Complaints to the Colombian immigration authorities led nowhere. Set loose without a manner in which to return to his country, his meanderings ultimately resulted in his being held against his wishes in an area controlled by drug traffickers. While most of the individuals ensnared in these ventures are offered money, his inducement was a return voyage to his homeland.

His debrief by federal agents from the United States resulted in another debrief by agents from both US DEA and their Colombian counterparts who traveled here for that express purpose. As self-serving as this sounds, it is apparently another technique used by malevolent actors to obtain the cooperation of mules. During a HSI debrief, in a different MDLEA case, a defendant gave a similar recounting; induced to travel to Colombia to transport fuel, he was held for 5 months in a compound, giving a complete accounting of the areas where he was held as well as the names of the individuals that held him.

Defendant B

The defendant is a 48-year-old, Black, Hispanic Colombian male. He suffered a heart attack in October 2021, and was hospitalized for three days at an unknown facility in Columbia. He continues to suffer residual issues from his heart attack. He was reared by both of his parents in the same household until his mother’s death when he was 15 years old. While his mother was sick with cancer his father fell from a tree and became disabled, and it became his responsibility to provide full-time care for his mother until her death.

Minimally educated, he has a vocationally-limiting medical history (heart attack) and a work history limited to fishing. He has been working since the age of eight, most recently sporadically earning between 15,000 and 30,000 Columbian pesos “weekly.” The USD to Colombian peso exchange rate is 1 USD to 4,732.1100 pesos, yielding a $3 to 6 per week “salary”.

Like him, his co-defendant gave what’s called a debrief. He told the agents that he had been recruited by a man who once owned a business selling and buying fish and ice to fishermen in the area. He had not seen this individual for approximately ten years. The co-defendant had been working odd jobs for a little over two years after he was laid off from his job as a mariner on a coastal trader, a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Desperate to provide financial support to his family, he made the fateful decision to transport drugs. 

The amount promised was significant, and given his circumstances, lifesaving. He was paid an advance of 15,000 to make the trip and promised the other half if the trip succeeded. This was his first and only involvement with such a scheme. He  was unaware of the amount or type of drugs he would have to transport, the value of the contraband he was engaged to transport.

Defendant C

A native of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, The defendant’s father, 89, and mother, 76, were supported financially by the defendant prior to his arrest. The defendant reported having five brothers and six sisters, all of whom live in Mexico.

The defendant reported completing the 6th grade in Mexico prior to withdrawing, working since age 8 to help provide for his family financially. He earns

earning $300 weekly while working as a fisherman in Mexico.

Defendant D

Colombian, 55yo, married, 3 children:

His father taught him how to fish, how to work, and how to provide for his family, because he was unable to go to school for financial reasons. The defendant stated that he cannot read or write. The defendant stated that he maintains a close relationship with his family, and that they assist in caring for each other. He has worked as a fisherman for his entire adult life. 

He earns roughly $56 U.S. dollars per month. The defendant reports no other periods of employment within the past ten years.

Defendant E

Attended school in Colombia through the 5th grade. His family lived in a rural area and that he stopped attending school to begin working and assist his family.

Employed between 2016 and 2020 driving trucks for a company in Colombia, he fled to Venezuela. He moved to the indigenous community where he met his girlfriend and  began working as a farmer, raising hens, and transporting people with an old truck belonging to the indigenous community. 

He earned between $300 and $400 per month.

Defendant F

Born in Manabi, Puerto Lopez, Ecuador. Family resides in Ecuador. The defendant’s father, age 60, is an ice cream merchant. The defendant’s mother, age 62, is disabled. From 2007 to 2021, the defendant was self-employed as a fisherman. He had no other periods of employment within the past ten years.

Was to be paid $10,000 for transporting the drugs from Ecuador to somewhere off the coast of Mexico and he was given $1,000 initially and was to be given the remainder after delivery.  He and the other two people on the boat received a phone that received text messages of GPS coordinates to a boat with the drugs floating off the coast of the Port of Manta near the City of San Juan Quenzio. The captain was instructed to turn on a GPS beacon when they got close to the re-fuel coordinates and they were given a sheet with a code name to use when talking on a handheld radio. They were given a phone that had GPS coordinates with each refueling stop and the people in the refueling boats were from Ecuador and had an Ecuadorian flag flying from their boat. 

Defendant G

Born in Buenaventura, Colombia. Worked from a young age to help support his family and going through the garbage to find food. The defendant he legally adopted his granddaughter, 8, who currently lives in Buenaventura. The child was born with an enlarged heart and is in need of heart surgery. The money he earned from the instant offense was meant to help pay for the surgery.

Pirates of the Caribbean is US

This picture is making the rounds. 

To some, it's proof positive that this is a drug boat, suggesting that whoever was in that boat deserved it. I've also seen explained as a fuel boat. 

Yes, that boat doesn't look like the boats we usually see. The boat in the picture is very common to the Venezuela, Columbia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, area. 

These are independent countries but somewhat commercially connected maritime economies, primarily fishing and small-time mercantilism.  

I've had a client who was hired to deliver fuel from Ecuador to Mexico, another one would fish in Tobago and spend the weekends with his family in Venezuela.

Are the blue items in the picture fuel drums or bales of coke? I could see that go both ways...

This is the recently released picture of the September 2 boat. 

Assuming, arguendo, that this is not more administration bs.... triple engines, tarps on deck, fuel drums, in my mind those are red flags...

But, eleven people on that boat? 

No. The size of crews is limited by boat size. These yolas are small. More crew, less space for fuel or cargo. The crews are usually no larger than four or five. The size of what is arguably the contraband seems small.

The argument against these strikes made by Rand Paul and others -  that these small vessels can't reach Puerto Rico, much less the mainland - is misplaced. The MDLEA - the law that seeks to guide these extraterritorial seizures - is a preemptive one. It is based on the assumption that the contraband will eventually land here. The latest war fantasy extends that first strike premise. 

Whatever. 

Who or what was on that boat is not the issue. It could have a deck loaded with hundreds of boxes clearly marked "fentanyl" with "bound for the US" and it wouldn't matter. The issue is this administration's imposition of a capital punishment where no law authorizes it. These are serial murders. It didn't take the second strike to make it so.

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Here, Piggy, Piggy!

Here, Piggy, Piggy!

Press Secretary Leavitt's comments defending Trump's "piggy" comments as part of his "frank, honest, and transparent" personality reminds me of a post I wrote ten years ago about a drubbing I took - also televised for the world to see - at the hands of a politician. "I twisted in the breeze. There's nothing worse than sitting there, telegraphing to the world that you're full of shit. Except for knowing it."  ON ARROGANCE

Of course, I knew I was full of shit. Leavitt, (if I were honest, frank, and transparent, here, I would describe her in a most un-PC way), on the other hand, portends to own the ridiculous crap she says. She is a political geek who daily performs for the cheap seats, biting off the head of credulity for whatever attack on decorum Clownie, the circus ringmaster, has served up. I would pity her if she wasn't so shamelessly a proactive part of the Pickles Posse. 

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This is Murder. Period.

 Murder. Period.

In early September I wrote this piece about the bombings of vessels in international waters from the perspective of a criminal defense lawyer that handles many cases dealing with something called the MDLEA. 

I haven't changed my opinion that this is criminal behavior. But, now, the problem has metastasized, with talks of mutiny and respondent retribution somehow on the table.

The administration has switched the way we did things. 

This Commander explains it best

ALSO HERE

Yes, the problem is a serious one. But why change what has yielded some fairly good bragging rights?

HERE

HERE

HERE

HERE

HERE

HERE

That these are extra judicial killings based on bogus rationales is no stretch. 

BS

IT'S JUST NOT LEGAL!

No longer a criminal justice process, it is now one based on a war fantasy. They have eliminated the hard work of due process, of proving their case, of committing no further harm, and are imposing capital punishment without the necessity of legislation authorizing it. 

As it relates to a war powers act, they have circumvented those folks too.

HERE

HERE

HERE

And, this just the latest in the process causing unnecessary internal conflicts in our military 

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I'm There

I've been reluctant to throw around what I know to be overused. abused,  and loaded political terms like fascist; it bites at our credulity - and - credibility. 

See Here

And Here

But, I'm there.

We've been excusing Trump as a dumbass overreaching narcissist and a lot of other things, but we've got to get to the point that we understand what he is. He is an authoritarian, a sick puppy with the keys to the henhouse. 

Fascism is just a term that we give to encompass political authoritarianism. It is a state of mind that overcomes the body politic. What happened in Germany didn't happen overnight. It morphed politically. 

This is a picture of Americans marching in favor of Nazism in New York in 1939. And just like in Germany, they probably they never envisioned that what they were touting could result in the destruction of their nation's political order, send 6 million people to the gas chambers, and worldwide cataclysm. 

Fascism is just another taxonomic term. It's not limited to Germany. The Chile of today had to rid itself of the horrors of Pinochet. Feel free to make comparisons to left wing totalitarianism but keep your eyes on OUR immediate problem. It doesn't take a cataclysmic revolution. These movements are much more insidious. They are gradual immersions.

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ON TOWING THE PARTY LINE

ON TOWING THE PARTY LINE

Party fealty. I get it. I really do. I was raised in Jersey City, a city whose history ranks right up there with Tammany Hall and other cities known for machine politics. What was instilled in me from an early age was that I was naturally a Democrat. Voting Republican was a far-fetched notion, a mortal failing; it meant that you were some sort of fat cat, rank class collaborationist, or nimrod that voted against your interests.

But, the entirety of my voting life has been here. I left the North to join the service and stayed here afterwards and during that time I’ve witnessed what we’ve all lived through, the conversion of the Solid South. And, in my own way, I’ve been partially responsible for some of that bittersweet change and I can’t say I’m sorry.

During my Jersey City days the story behind men like James Pendergast, William Tweed, and Frank Hague meant little to me. But college and the Sixties taught me a lot about history, politics, corruption and morality. I’ve helped fight the good fight here and it has usually been against an entrenched party.

I take voting as a serious part of my civic commitment. I miss few elections. In 1968 I traveled from Alabama to Panama City, Florida to cast my vote for Eugene McCarthy, knowing that to be a pyrrhic gesture but caring enough to make my voice heard.

When, in 1972, the local Democratic party bosses decided they could take no more of the national trends, they abandoned the party. We stepped into that breach. With Don Siegelmann, Al LaPierre and others, we were now the party and we rode the sinking ship of the McGovern campaign. It was my first and last campaign. And, while I generally support rump candidates, my tendency is, still, to vote Democrat.

Until very recently I could boast to only having cast my lot for three Republicans in my entire last half century of voting. Apart from one local contender, my two "other" votes were for Jack Edwards and Ann Bedsole, politicians who put their constituents first and served their communities with dignity and honor.

I’ve relaxed my bias in the last decade; party monopoly has meant that the real choices are intraparty and good citizenship should not be mindless. I started facing that about a decade ago when in one particular race for district judge it was obvious who the better candidate was. I voted for him. But that was a purely private epiphany.

Then, next term I got a call from a sitting judge asking for my endorsement. I politely deferred, telling him that as a Yellow Dog, I could not endorse a Republican. But after that call, I assessed the job that he had been doing. I could find no fault with it. In fact, it was stellar. What could I have against him?

I called him back. I told him what I thought about the job that he was doing and that I would be proud to have my name associated with his. Since then, I’ve actually voted against my party some more times. Each time with the same criteria, that voting for the better person was better than voting for the party.

I was struck recently by the quandary this election has put some of my conservative and/or religious Republican friends. I understand holding the party line. I really do. Hell, one of my friends calls me "Dommie the Commie." And that’s a perfect metaphor for the issue before the folks who are stuck with the choice they have before them. Do you engage in silly criteria, fake labels, false moral comparisons and political narratives about who is the better candidate or do you do belly up to the bar and act responsibly?

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The Rubicon

 Alea iacta est

In the Democrat/ Republican blame game over the shutdown, the Democrats find themselves in what is essentially the spoiler and seemingly undemocratic position of refusing to sign off on the budget.  As nuanced as this issue is, for those of us troubled about the current Catch-22 state of things, we can't help but wistfully revisit some things in the immediate past that, like Aristotle's analogy of all events as just points in the arc of an arrow, further feed our chronic heartburn.

Our heroes share some complicity. 

Ruth Ginsburg hung on too long. So, too, Biden. Hubris has had its cost. As a result, we ended up with a Supreme Court that is collaborationist. When Sonia Sotomajor and Elena Kagan were nominated, the big debate and vitriol was that they were "activist" liberal judges. Ginsberg's death was followed by the failure to nominate Obama's choice. What followed was obvious to anyone who follows the machinations of government; a Supreme Court with new members that have shown their mettle in the Republican culture wars. 

Biden hung on too long. It is their talent that conservatives are able to constantly turn things around. After that horrible debate - their whisper campaign of his incapacity confirmed - he now became the object of their bathos. He was portrayed as the hapless victim of a feckless party who ultimately abandoned him and used an unfair and antidemocratic procedure to nominate Harris. 

I blame Harris for abandoning the ship. She had an integral part of an administration that for four years had successfully undone the Trump administration's damage. It was a record that was not just defensible, it was laudable. Yet, she sold counter-intuitive goods. Her message was essentially defeatist. She distanced herself from Biden while at the same time selling what could only be seen as a generic version of the same. It was an intellectual double bind not lost on an electorate that needed more medicine, not a placebo. 

The perfect storm was the Republicans. You suck. You allowed no one to pass your purity litmus test. No one was shitty enough for you? Not Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Mario Rubio or any of the other horsemen? 

And now, having done that twice, you are cowered. You buy into his style of governance that completely abandons the idea of making things work. You not only condone his anarchic rules of engagement, you abet him. 

And that's how we got to this impasse. But "My way or the highway" only works when you have the numbers. The vote requires 60 votes. (You could have changed the rules but you won't.) You knew you could not count on some of your own members. Knowing that, you FUCK YOU, LUMP IT OR LEAVE IT passed a budget that will completely destroy the lives of the most fragile members of our country. Decimating health care for millions of people, millions of poor people, while at the same time passing tax benefits for uber rich is the Rubicon. The position of the Democrats is not the spoiler position, it is a principled rearguard action.

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The Palace of Justice

 The Palace  of Justice

In 1995 I traveled as part of a delegation to Cuba celebrating Mobile and Havana becoming sister cities. As this was a thaw in the Cuban-American relations, we were being hosted like celebrities. 

When I expressed some interest in going to a courthouse, the guide made it happen. The next day as we entered the courthouse the attendant refused me entry. I was in shorts. "He can't come in here. This is the palace of justice." He was very angry at my insolence. The guide argued the counterpoint, that we were some sort of hotshots. The attendant stood firm.

At some point, the Chief Justice of the Cuban Supreme Court came down and arbitrated the situation, siding with powerpolitik. "Let him in," he said. 

He assigned me a chaperone, a young black lady. She showed me the courtroom, explained to me their system,  and eventually we witnessed a trial. It was, I thought, friendly enough. We shared our thoughts on each other's systems. I was relaxed and unfiltered with her. 

Perhaps too much. At some point I must have betrayed the fact that I thought she was a secretary. "You do understand that I am the second highest ranking judicial officer of the Republic of Cuba?," she told me. I was embarrassed and chagrined. 

She was gracious, accepting my apologies as we passed a pleasant day kibbitzing about the fate of the cashier accused of having intentionally left a skylight unlocked so that someone could steal money out of her till. 

That day is a constant: The attendant at the gate - In this case the literal attendant but euphemistically also the universal attendants of all court systems  - saw his role as a sacred duty, whatever frailties it might have, imagined by me or not; and, I need to be vigilant about the self-inflicted traps of bias, be that about other systems or the stranger in my midst.

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Bad Bunny

About 2 years ago I traveled to Puerto Rico for the funeral of my stepmother. It went as expected, lots of crying and grief, a wake, funeral procession, burial, a couple of days of emotional heavy lifting. 

Afterwards most of us ended up at my sister's house. It was the typical extended family. My sad and morose sisters were sequestered in quiet places throughout the house while the rest of us just tried to endure the pall. 

The adults played the requisite dominoes out on the porch. Music played. My nieces and nephews, many of them here just for this occasion, squatted out on the lawn, catching up with their cousins.

They hijacked the music. My brother and I groussed. We salsa classicists have been at war with what we deem to be modern crap: reggaton, rap, etc. Bad Bunny! It just seemed like the latest perversion. But It was a losing battle. They weren't dilettants. They sang along to all the songs. It filled them with joy and you couldn't help but think it was a good thing.

I didn't walk away with any appreciation for his music. In fact, still not a big fan. I keep meaning to buy the album and give it a fair shake but I just haven't gotten around to it. 

But in the interim I've been watching his progression as a bona fide Puerto Rican hero, a true ambassador of our culture. And he's done it on his own terms with the utmost levels of professionalism and gentility. I think of him as our Taylor Swift.

Dear ABC

Dear ABC:

During the early '70s my wife and I moved to Fairhope, Alabama in order to attend college at the University of South Alabama. At some point, I took a break from my studies and got a job at the local weekly, a small town newspaper in a small Southern town that was  right out of Norman Rockwell.  

The Courier was run by a wonderful couple, Ford and Edith Cook and what I learned from them went well beyond learning the mechanics of newspapers and printing.

I was part of a group that published The Rearguard, an underground newspaper in Mobile. If you own a giant web press and publish a newspaper once a week, It makes no sense financially - or even mechanically - to leave it idle. The Courier job-printed other newspapers, ours included.

One day an FBI agent came to the paper investigating us. He wanted to know who published the paper as well as a bunch of other specifics. Mr. Cook, although very conservative himself, was incensed. He told him to get the hell out of his office that he was acting un-American and gave him  a lecture about the First Amendment.

You could learn a lesson or two from this great American.

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Cut to the bone

 As is evident in the constant shifts in the conversation about Kirk's killer, we parse out issues through the prism of beliefs and prejudices. It seems we are now going to return to talking about the shooter's personal life and that somehow his presumed justification for carrying out this terrible act is what we should be talking about. 

Cut to the bone - past the gristle and fat of the shooter's motivation - and face the fact of a senseless killing and our seeming acquiescence to this constant mayhem. I have little confidence that it will bring us out of our coma of indolence. Any meaningful action will be lost in the push and pull and the fact of another senseless killing will be just more dust in the wind. 

"Well, shit, what can we do?" Not much could have been done to stop him from going to a campus with which he was apparently very familiar and using what's probably gramp's hunting weapon. But things can be done to make these events less likely. Kirk's killing has now shared the grief with those who oppose doing anything to curb gun violence in the name of the sanctity of the Second Amendment. It's not a defeat to recognize that something has to change, to give up a bit of your absolutism, to belly up to the bar.

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THE STATE OF OUR POLICE STATE STATE OF MIND:

THE STATE OF OUR POLICE STATE STATE OF MIND:

How Has Law and Order Been Degraded to this Point? 

No president in our lifetime has better exemplified the arrogance of power than Donald Trump. There is no better a perfect metaphor for the state of our police state than a picture of the phalanx of armed men - A Praetorian guard - in front of the Lincoln memorial; unidentified, no name tags, terrifyingly ominous. That image now seems tame compared to the double-down brutishness of Trump 2.0.

But we didn’t get here overnight. 

The problem cannot be blamed solely on one man or one party. He is the symptom, not the disease. We continue to deal with problems in a visceral way and that often leads to disastrous results. We link even mundane things like window tint restrictions with crime or high school graduation with the privilege of driving. We pass domestic violence gun-control laws but refuse to deal with gun control, sex crimes and drug databases, restrict bond, etc. They’re all linked to some government sanction as a solution, perhaps well-meaning but many times leading to some other problems. 

Where Are the Many Points in the Downward Arc? 

It’s always been a balancing act between too much government versus not enough. We over-criminalize and mass incarcerate as if incapacitation were the only solution. We dried up social services and government programs and helped birth a major mental health crisis in mental health that, in turn, placed the problems of draconian overreactions by government in play. 

Of the panoply of moments, of the myriad acid drips that have steadfastly worn away at the firmament of our liberties, the most cataclysmic has been 9/11, or more specifically, our response to it. That day, we crossed the Rubicon. 

Revenge and fear are powerful emotions. The elixir of the two, this deadly potion, yielded the Patriot Act, FISA, Total Information Awareness, and our acquiescence to the spiraling expansion of the police state. The citizenry was no longer presumed innocent. What previously might have been just a routine traffic stop now developed into a full investigation of all of the occupants, secret cameras on the highways, databases, etc. The War on Drugs was now the war on us.

 Can’t Have a Police State Without the Police.

Police are the bulwark of the law and order front line. The job is dangerous and underpaid and they must deal with a citizenry that is pampered and privileged, that has a tendency towards violence, and is potentially heavily armed. Understanding this, the law - and all branches are complicit - had already been accommodating Constitutional proscriptions to the “reality” of their work. 

In the process, over the past forty years, our rights have taken a beating, the guardrails against overreach weakened, and the actors more brazen. In that regard, Trump's fileting of the law into thin gossamer strips is nothing new. He is Alexander’s solution to the Gordian Knot, simplistic, dangerous, and counter-productive.

I became a lawyer in 1986 at just about the time that there was this tectonic shift in the law. That's when the Federal sentencing guidelines took effect. At that point the rights of the accused were on the ropes and being pummeled into near unconsciousness. Many states, including my own, followed suit.

The guidelines were just manifestations of a long-standing evolution and signaled what had been happening in this country for a period of time. It's how we got here, afraid of our police, suspicious of our government, and putting up with things a few decades ago would have sounded improbable.

Here, too, it would be convenient to talk about race and the impact of the guidelines. They have had a disastrous effect on persons of color. That is an important discussion to be had. The guidelines have a tremendous impact on everyone accused of a crime and on the rest of us whose rights are further diminished by these things.

That it has been a disastrous experiment can be seen by the fact that there have been numerous attempts to mitigate their impact - from making mandatory minimums less Draconian, the safety valve, conversion ratios, to most recently, the First Step Act.

Monetizing Justice

    "There's a lot of money in slavery," a client of mine once quipped. He was complaining that he had been housed in a for-profit jail in Florida somewhere and that his rights were now secondary to what some corporation wanted, demanding exorbitant prices for services like telephone calls and commissary. He was right; the exploitation of personal liberties for economic advantage is slavery. Justice delivery is now just another service industry calibrated to maximize those profits. They have monetized justice.

    A few years ago while conferring with an Assistant District Attorney in Baldwin County, I noticed a giant building being constructed. "What is that building?" I asked. It was the new jail. "If the largest building in your town is a jail, you're doing something wrong," I told her. They are now constructing an even bigger addition and it's being done on the backs of penalties, fines, programs, video and phone kiosks, and rents paid by the federal government to warehouse prisoners. 

    When you go to court - and every court systems I have ever been in is the same now - you will face the issue of pre-trial detention or be forced to pay for a cafeteria plan of costly services (court referral officers, specialized courts, leg monitors, traffic school, color codes, etc.), all leveraged by your liberty interest. 

    The police, also, are part of that gravy train. Not only do government funds flow to police departments, they get to play GI Joe with sophisticated weapons not meant for the civilian population (tanks, sonic weapons, heat-ray devices). Given the new reality, there is infinitely less accountability for the "Warrior Cop" and the folks who ostensibly oversee them. Things like tort reforms that shield municipalities and states from being sued, the evisceration of the EEOC, and Supreme Court rulings providing cover for police brutality have led us to the point that tactics reserved for enemy combatants (e.g. snipers?) are more likely a norm.

Race

Persons accused of crime are a constituency without representation. In any policy debate or judicial decision, severity is usually the wiser course. The law, this hammer, often peens most harshly along racial lines. Race is an enticing topic, the moth to the flames. Not to diminish its importance but let us also look beyond it. Racism is The dark crusty scab on an ugly wound. Yes, it  exacerbates the problem of disparate treatment and the use of the most oppressive mechanism available, governmental action. 

"Race", however, distracts us from talking about the underlying roots of what is essentially universal oppression. "Black Lives Matter" is countered by those that say that "All Lives Matter" and they're both right, they are not exclusive or contradictory terms. Let's recognize that race is a very important topic but also that it's a veneer and in many ways a barrier that keeps us from looking at many of the underlying causes of the problem. Lurking underneath is the loss of our freedom in general and the transformation of a society that was essentially libertarian to one of a burgeoning police state. I don't know where we're going but I know where we've been. We need to get back there and that requires more than hand wringing.

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Shooting bullets into the hull of the boat

 Shooting bullets into the hull of the boat

As one of our district's Spanish-speaking attorneys, other than the U.S. Attorney that prosecutes most of these cases, I have probably handled more Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA) cases than anyone. The first one of these cases began with my surprise that we could pluck somebody out of the ocean somewhere very far away, someone who is not in route to the United States, and proclaim that we have jurisdiction over them to enforce drug laws. "Surely, that can't be right. Is it?"    

        Over the last decade or so we criminal defense lawyers have litigated that issue - and everything else, from jurisdiction, law of the seas, standing, venue, economic zones, territorial boundaries, archipelagic boundaries, etc. - and each time we have arrived at the point that the United States is pretty much like the Roman Empire, it can roam all over the high seas and do whatever it wants. We reached that point through a process that I'm not real comfortable with, but at least it was a process.  

Imposing a capital punishment on the 11 lives in the boat sunk last week off the coast of Venezuela was a crime. It was, in the immediate sense a crime against them, but on a larger plane it's part of the serial crimes being waged against the  United States by a crew of hooligans obeying the fantasies of an infantile wannabe who along with his posse are channeling "there's a new sheriff in town" behavior out of something akin to a Tom Clancy novel. Forget niceties such as civility, we're now at the point we've abandoned any pretense that we're going to follow laws, even a law as ridiculous as the MDLEA. 

Without getting too far into the weeds, here's what the MDLEA does and what, at a minimum, due process it affords. Here's a daisy chain of MDLEA bullet points and what it prohibits: certain acts on board a "covered vessel" (a covered vessel is a vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the United States); "Subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" includes a vessel registered to a foreign nation (if that nation consents or waives objection to the enforcement of the United States laws); or, a vessel without a flag (and therefore a vessel without jurisdiction). 

Before reaching that point, though, requires probable cause, a reasonable suspicion that the vessel is engaged in illegal activity. As to this boat, it has four engines on it, so that immediately would raise suspicion. Eleven people on the boat, that's a bit much. I Can't get a good shot of the interior of the boat, but the crews on on these boats usually have a maximum if six people. Were there photos of oil (fuel) drums, packages, etc.? (They may have been on its way to the mothership. If so, that makes this - leaving aside the inhumanity part - suspect that it has little to do with anything but theater. 

To insure the principle of freedom of the seas, international law generally prohibits any country from asserting jurisdiction over foreign vessels on the high seas. The first step would have been for a helicopter to get a cutter in the area. Sometimes the Coast Guard has personnel on foreign (British, Dutch) ships. They will radio the Coast Guard command and then a series of interchanges can happen: does the ship have a flag?; Did you query that country for permission? ("vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" includes a vessel registered to a foreign nation if that nation has consented or waived objection to the enforcement of United States law by the United States. 46 U.S.C.S. § 70502(c)(1)(C)); and, finally, did the Secretary of State's designate certify the response of the foreign nation to the claim of registry . 46 U.S.C.S. § 70502(d)(2))  Here's an interview with the Coast Guard Commander we would usually deal with.  

Once approved, the Coast Guard sets out to stop, investigate, and if necessary, arrest the crew and its contents. This will include videos shot from the convoy helicopter, the Cutter, and the Zodiac boarding crew. Sometimes engine disabling or warning shots will be fired to force compliance. What follows, as befits their military discipline, is an almost-perfectly documented criminal case: videos, Coast Guard crew statements, suspect statements, drug field tests, logs, contemporaneous notes, diagrams, etc. 

Whether or not this was really a drug boat or was just ferrying immigrants (or were part of Tren de Aragua, or whatever scenario they can conjure up) what those of us that do this kind of work know is that these cartels will often impress people sometimes against their will. There may be one or two people that are actually the owners or an integral part of the conspiracy but the crew are mostly just people that have been shanghaied either economically or through force. The cartels need people that are familiar with boats and that's usually hard-scrabble fishermen. They will offer them a large amount of money. Some have been held captive against their wills for months. Some lured out of places like Guatemala or Ecuador with offers of legitimate work and held in a compound in some remote place in Mexico. Families are threatened. The list goes on. 

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Roy Black

"Epstein's lawyer". That's going to be the hook for the news of the passing of Roy Black, penultimate criminal defense attorney.

Before anyone goes down the conspiracy rabbit trail, do know that he was so much more than that. If you're interested, look up his bio but speaking from personal experience Roy Black is one of the many blips of good fortune in my life. 

I graduated from law school in 1986, spent some time in Austin, and came to Mobile in 1987. As I am able to speak Spanish, I started representing federal cases as a  Criminal Justice Act panel attorney.

One of those involved Roy. He represented Dickie Lynn, who was accused of importing 16 tons of cocaine into Alabama.

My client was an offloader who was stupid enough to try his case in federal court. (We won. But that's another story. Read my book if you want to know more.) My job was to stay out of the way and let the big dogs fight. 

I had no idea how far out of my depth I was at the time. But Roy (and the other defense team) handed me a priceless luxury; for 5 weeks I sat there and watched the precision surgery of criminal defense artistry. I even wrote a book about it.

But more than that, I saw up close that you can be the big fish in the biggest pond and not lose your sense of grace or humanity. Roy legitimately cared about the law and his client and he never made me feel like the baby lawyer that I was. He took pleasure in walking around downtown, enjoying things  like the shoeteria, peanut shop, George's Candy store. He was a real person through and through.

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How does he do it?

You are right to be scared.

We are now only 6 months into Trump's presidency and, go figure, things are even crazier.

Looking positively to the future, though, how are we going to explain him when he's gone when even now so much of this makes absolutely no sense?

Politics and policy - at least in the general sense - aside, his reactions reveal the perfect storm; an obviously deeply troubled person, a bumbler, but somehow skating on the brink works for him.

This week's "what now?" moment has been the "Epstein matter". The beat-back he's getting is a problem of his own creation. Karma. But some of the things that he does leads us back to the whole question of how does he get away with what for others would be disastrous?

It's really just minutia, but his response to the "bawdy" tape "Wall Street Journal" story is a great example. We have gone from the "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue" claim, to the Access Hollywood "grab them by the pussy" tape, a disastrous first term, all culminating in an attack on the Capitol during his first term and now, Trump 2.0.

We know that Trump never ducks or covers but how would you catalog some crude drawing and cryptic message about a "secret" among this list of dirty doings? This guy is a convicted felon, been accused of rape and has been fined civilly for sexual misconduct. Who cares if he sent another perv a birthday message with some sort of crude drawing?

The question for me, the thing that brings me back to being puzzled, is why not just say "so what?" and move on? Instead, he engages in denials and things that can easily be proven to be patently false. 

Why does he get yet another pass? The only explanation I can come up with is that deep down inside contrarians fascinate. Like the frontier American Indian shaman who rides his horse backwards and acts in all manner of unexpected ways, he is mesmerizing. To some he just seems like a crazy man but to the others in the tribe he's magic. 

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Disrupting the apple cart

The African proverb that "When the elephants fight the grass gets trampled" has an analogous significance to me as it relates to the topic of tariffs and It's impact on small businesses.

After my brief tenure as a reporter with the Mobile Press Register, I started a local newspaper in the early '70s. Without any significant capital but assisted by my fellow reporters from the paper and other local artists, we rocked along fairly steadily. 

And then, the "great shortage" happened. We were hit with massive inflation and part of that was because of the tariffs that hit newspapers, especially small ones like ours ("readers": free, artsy), especially hard. Because of the costs associated with the recession and, especially, the tariffs placed on Canadian newsprint, we went from being able to publish from 50 to 70,000 runs to just 10,000. 

I borrowed money to keep it afloat but eventually it was too much of a struggle. I sold it and was lucky enough to get hired as a paralegal by legal services where I wore a few hats; public benefits specialist, community organizer, pr, etc. 

I had taken the job, first, because I needed one, and, secondly, because I wanted to see if I was smart enough to be a lawyer. I was happy in my job. I was well-paid, respected, and, most importantly, I was doing some really good things for the community. 

Then, Reagan happened. 

I spent the last year of my legal services tour crying in my office, frustrated at my impotency in helping our clients. On top of everything else that was happening in the country, the "government is bad" folks had plunged everyone, including, the marginally - employed middle class into a crude cold bath. The same folks who had voted for him were now finding the bumpy reality of the gilt-paved welfare Cadillac streets, horrible before, but now almost non-existent.

  

I jumped to law school.

I had been horrified by the actions of the Reagan Juggernaut - and, as a side bar, that includes Iran Contra, October Surprise etc. The impact of their attack on the social welfare system, at that time, I thought to be the height of cruelty and counterproductive. When he left I thought we had passed our darkest moments.  

I was wrong. 

Compared to Trump, Reagan is Eugene Debs. Unlike Reagan, Trump is indiscriminately flailing around trying to make happen his loosey-goosey public policy notions and they center around his fixation on tariffs. Like the kid stealing from the apple cart, he pays no heed to the manner in which things are stacked and is indifferent to the dangerous potentiality of his actions.

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Red Dogging

Red Dogs

 I was 17 when I joined the Air Force in 1964. It didn't take me long to find out that I could go to this place called Vietnam and be paid quite handsomely in return. They were called Red Dogs, a mechanism that hid the fact of the involvement of our troops. (Officially, our troops were in Thailand.) I think my pay was probably $50 a month or maybe every other week, but whatever it was it was a pittance. The Red Dogs paid $16 a day per diem, $100 hazardous duty pay, and TDY pay. I was pretty gung ho and, besides, the picture that was being painted was not one of guerilla warfare but of a tropical paradise where we would be living like kings.

I don't ever see the Red Dogs discussed but I keep things like that and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution constantly in mind when the talking heads make claims, excuses, and explanations for their actions; why they are helpless to do otherwise. The "you made me do this" rationale for the resent unprecedented actions would hold no mettle, especially so coming from this cast of characters. So, also, Israel's Battered Wife defense for the inhumanity it has unleashed in Gaza. . The upside to the discovery of the abuses - Johnson's and Nixon's - is that guardrails developed over time. It may take a repeat of the sort of sacrifices we made back then but when this plays out - and this is me being optimistic - we need to ensure that this behavior cannot be repeated.

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Keep It In the Road

Divagate is like watching political Motocross. On the left there's a big deep drop off that this is somehow a diversionary tactic to keep attention away from the passage of the "Big Beautiful Bill". On the right there's a big mountain of granite, "The Russians" orchestrating a coup (as if they needed anything more than what is already happening) and are somehow in cahoots with The Alt-Right in order to impeach Trump and get Peter Theil's boy in power. 

Even though the Vance Manchurian candidate conspiracy has some constancy, this glosses over what we know about both of these men: they are not deep; they are super ego divas who are so used to getting their way that they lash out whenever something doesn't work out for them; and that somewhere in the White House there's a bunch of professionals actually earning their keep, are cursing under their breath trying to manage yet another fiasco, and planning their next expose once they leave this administration.

Like just about everything that's been happening since January, there's not much we can do about it. Control your breathing. Hands on the wheel, keep it in the road and just enjoy the ride.

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It's Worth Emphasizing Part One

In putting together a collection  of things as a gift to my new daughter-in-law, I ran across two speeches I've given recently that seem - given the latest issues regarding law and order and immigration - worth revisiting.

[My Naturalization Ceremony Speech]

I am honored and humbled to be here 

but I can only guess why I am here

Your stories are probably much more interesting than mine

I’m a Criminal lawyer. The constitutional law I practice is prophylactic not honorific

Yet here I am here today: mid point between your yesterday and your tomorrow. 

Today, you become like me - 

but unlike me you had to work to get here.

Like you, I have an emotional attachment to another country.

And, as opposed to most of the people in this country that take it for granted, I can appreciate that citizenship means opportunity and that a US passport is a metaphor; it allows movement in more ways than one.

In 1898, my grandfather, Mario Mendez-Colon, an eighteen year old native son of the central mountainous region that was the wellspring of the island’s revolt against Spain, would witness the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. He was now part of the spoils of war. 

There is no indication that my grandfather was in the least bit political or centered on anything but the survival of his family. 

But his spirit was unquestionably instilled in his offspring. 

Ten years later he would marry. 

They would eventually have thirteen children. 

Three would die of diseases borne of poverty, 

Ten of them would survive; 

some of them would become part of the vast Puerto Rican migration to New York, 

all would remain doggedly proud of their heritage. 

Theirs was a pride borne of an amalgam of years of personal identification melded with political struggle, economic privation coupled with cultural identity.

By 1910, my grandparents, along with their two infant children, were living in Utuado’s barrio Angeles. 

A coffee farmer eking out an existence, Mario and his little family were somewhat better off their peers. 

But a decade later, their situation had worsened. They now had eight kids and he worked as a laborer.

[period encompasses WWI, Depression, and WWII all of which impacted an already poor country]

In another ten years, the family would grow even more so, now to include eleven kids and with no one but Mario working, now growing fruit and in the midst of a depression from which Puerto Ricans fared even worse.

 By 1935, everyone in the family was pitching in;  Mario, a tobacco farmworker.

My grandmother and her oldest daughter worked at home taking in sewing. My twenty five year old uncle worked as a store clerk and the three sons were laborers on a tobacco farm. 

The older children would soon leave. Of the four that remained at home, the two remaining worked in a textile workshop as hand-sewing items that in a 10 hour day might bring $1.50. 

Their world would collapse fully in 1942 with the death of my grandmother but it was the watershed moment that would mark the beginning of their odyssey. 

 In 1944, preceding by only a few months the Allied invasion of Normandy, Celina, one of Mario’s younger daughters, along with her four-month-old infant, boarded a seaplane at Isla Grande Puerto Rico and headed to NY. She would be the tip of the spear. 

Two years later, Vina, his oldest, along with her husband and their teenage daughter, would also leave San Juan for the Big Apple

She was followed by Irma, the youngest daughter; she with a baby forty days old, me. 

They were followed soon thereafter by the wives of two of Mario’s sons who had flown ahead to establish a beachhead. The Mendez siege of New York City had begun. 

They ultimately merged with others they encountered here and - fellow travelers in a hostile world - forged a tightly-knit tribe. 

I did not fully appreciate any of this until my recent excursion into Ancestry.com. 

My family spent almost every weekend with each other and yet these people who were now fully established business owners, professionals - who had wonderful homes where they amply provided for their broods - never truly shared with us their stories - how they worked stringing beads, doing piecemeal sewing jobs, being janitors, migrant agricultural workers, plasterers, cooks, bus boys. Doing what it took. Never looking back.

In putting this together I kept thinking that it was your stories that we should be listening to.

I have had 38 fully productive years as a lawyer - from the trivial and mundane to mega cases. Written two books about some of my cases.

But two cases that fill me most with pride are the two  adoptions that I’ve done. I’m in awe of someone selflessly committing to that level of responsibility, of upping their skin in the game. 

that’s what this kind of feels like to me. Except that it’s a two-way adoption.

I know you appreciate the enormity of what today means to you. 

But please do appreciate what you mean to this country.

What made my family strong is that they worked together to get where they wanted to go. 

We are now part of the same family. 

We sometimes fight and disagree but in that vortex we become stronger. 

(Passport) You can add more metaphors

 more pixels make the picture vibrant, 

strength to the fabric, 

In short, we are stronger in our diversity, now more so, thanks to you

So, on behalf of the Southern District United States, I thank you for coming here and helping us fulfill the promise that this country has always held.

Words cannot express how humbled and appreciative I am to be able to address you today. 

I wish you a fruitful tomorrow.

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It's Worth Emphasizing Part 2

In putting together a collection  of things as a gift to my new daughter-in-law, I ran across two speeches I've given recently that seem - given the latest issues regarding law and order and immigration - worth revisiting.

[My CJA Award]

When he called to tell me about this award, Judge Murray suggested I think about a pivotal moment that shaped my legal career and for the life of me I couldn’t narrow it down to just one aha lawyer moment. There are so many. Over the years I have been involved in just about every major case, have been the nemesis of government agencies, and made a name for myself as a pain. 

I don’t ascribe to the grand design, that things happen necessarily for a reason but I do think that life events and experiences shape you and reform you into your ultimate version.

My pivotal moments don’t start with me becoming a lawyer. I didn’t graduate from law school until I was 40 and how I got there depended on a chain of events. 

• I came to the states when I was 40 days old, lucky to have been born in Puerto Rico as opposed to Honduras; 

• Because I was a “troubled” teenager, my mother took us out of Jersey moved our family back to Puerto Rico; 

• I escaped PR and joined the service at 17; 

• the GI Bill gave me, a two-time high school dropout, educational opportunities; 

• I came out of the service, continued my studies got wrapped up in the 60s revolution, became a journalist and eventually joined Legal Services as a paralegal. 

Those are all my grand pivots but none as important as me becoming a lawyer and then earning a spot in the top-tier practice that is federal law.

It’s not just luck - I have worked hard to get where I am - but it plays a pretty big part. Even doing criminal work; that hadn’t been my intention. I spent my legal services time and my law school apprenticeships in civil law doing Public Benefits work. 

Fresh out of law school I was already hitting burnout listening to civil lawyers and sitting in pointless depositions. I had teamed up with my Legal Services mentor Arthur Madden. I got sucked into criminal law when he sent me to cover a few things for him. It was exciting and interesting and seemed like much more vital work.

My partnership with him gave me street cred. My Spanish language skills all of a sudden became an asset and, yes, luck, I jumped to the front of the line.  

The majority of the work I do is federal and over the years I've reached an equilibrium here. I do my job. I do my best. I'm conscientious. I’m respectful but I am not a pushover. I try to be as honest as I can be. I try to be all of those things because I am my stock in trade and because what we do - all of us, from the judges down to the file clerks - is important.

I try to stay real. I can be pathologically candid.  Some times folks don't like what I say. Some years ago I was quoted in the newspaper making some remarks critical of the system. An AUSA’s husband read the article. Won’t he get in trouble for that? Had I lost my mind saying that? "Oh that's just Dom," she told him.

These days, I make it a habit that when I enter our federal courthouse I greet the gatekeepers there with a "power to the people" fist-raised salute. 

Now, these guys are not Bernie Bros. They are ex-Troopers and all sorts of law enforcement folk. But I don't get that they're put off by that. They laugh. They probably welcome the breakup of monotony. Or maybe they just think "well, that just Dom".

It might just be indulgence but I don't think so. The real reason, I think, is that in the many years I've been practicing here they've come to know me; they know what I stand for and that for all my shenanigans, froth, labels, antics, I am striving to respectfully do the best I can do to make the system work AND at the same time serve my clients.

Regardless, I don't do it for them. I don't do it to provide comic relief. Power to the people is an idea right there where it belongs. It's a reminder to myself why I became a lawyer. In a certain aspect, it tracks close to being self-deprecating - me, I have bought into this gig where by systemic design I am handicapped and fighting a very powerful machine; where all the odds are pitted against my clients. And it would be if I wasn't proud of the work that I do, if I didn’t feel that my clients need me to be there for them and that without us the system would be evermore grinding and merciless.

But that’s just Dom.

I couldn’t be prouder of working with our court. I love being here, practicing Top Gun level legal work with this caliber of people is itself an honor. This award is just the cherry on top.

Words cannot express how humbled and appreciative I am of this honor. I hope to continue to do justice to it. 

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Suspending habeas corpus?

Suspending habeas corpus?

Suspending habeas corpus is shorthand for eliminating a process that protects a constitutional right, like the right of due process.

It's easy to dismiss something with a Latin phrase that discusses a writ about something or other. What it hides is an attack on the Constitution, an action so consequential that it has been invoked only twice and only in times of war.

Rending our founding document by engaging in fantasies as the rationale for invoking war powers damages what little credibility this administration has and is much more important than this band of miscreants.

Due Process is just one of the guardrails put into the Constitution for exactly the purpose that they're trying to get around it. Like posse comitatus, it is designed to question oversteps of authority. When people liken what is happening to fascism, it seems less hyperbole where the historical parallels are obvious and now in play. Here, not elsewhere.

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THE NEW YEAR

 THE NEW YEAR

"How did his hand become crippled?", she asked. Perfect timing. Just as if it had been planned, the door came ajar. A Mom peeked in. He noticed his wife, thought better of the answer but, characteristically, did it anyway. "In a knife fight." The door shut quickly. Footsteps scurried away. "A night fight?" his little boy asked.  "A knife fight," the older girl corrected, anxious not to break the momentum.   The kids howled, wanting to know the details of a thing he had broached as a secret he would share with them. "Your daddy was in a knife fight?" Here he was, sitting in the little boy's cocoon of a room irresponsibly assailing their guileless overprotected upper class sensibilities with stories from the underbelly of his life. Why?          They had stayed home on New Year's Eve just watching pay television and hanging out with the family. The holiday always made him maudlin about coasting down the other side of life's bell curve. It was a time when - as one friend put it - you found yourself reliving the top ten blunders of your life. The mistakes you made in your life, regrets with your parents and with your own kids seemed a cruel circle. He had been okay until this transcendental death scene in Little Women where one of them had died and the lights had dimmed. It had blind-sided him, pushing him over the holiday edge and flooding him with images of his own mother's death.          His terminally ill mother who had died that year had hung on for weeks past the doctor's estimates. She had survived on droppers of water and morphine and grit, obviously terrified of what lay beyond and, characteristically, having her petulant way and refusing to go. She was staying, coño .  When death finally had overcome her last defiant act that night, she had blown out all of the lights in his brother's house and took the house next to it too, plunging the gathering of relatives into darkness and the now wailing mourners into a scene from Dante's Inferno. Remembering that night and the events of those horrible weeks pushed him over the edge to his secret tears, sad memories and wells of regrets. He sat there watching the show through his tears. His wife and sister-in-law knew where he was. "I guess we'll just sit here and make believe we don't know that you're crying." They laughed nervously. "Let me put Carlos to bed," he said, excusing himself.            The son, a five-year-old who had of late taken to fantasizing himself to be different animals, had also taken to sleeping on a pallet made on top his bed. "Help me build my nest. I'll be the baby bird and you be the papa bird." They fluffed their pillows into a nest, laying in the darkness, a dim nightlight their campfire. Sad and obsessed, blindsided by the reminders of life and his fear of mortality, he grasped for stories from the fountain of his youth - of fireflies in a Newark cemetery, of funerals for his sister's butterfly, of water balloon fights with his clan of cousins and brothers and sisters. Their closeness was cemented by this firelight chat as his memories spewed out in a conspiracy of revelation.            The boy was curious. But more than that, he was patient well beyond his years, a father to the man who told him about life in the North East, of universes far far away in a time long forgotten but now shared in this their secret first communion.  The father mused at how much of his life he had managed to change and how he had changed with it. "You know that when I was a kid aunt Lydia didn't live with us? She lived with tia."  The child thought a minute. "Was titi adopted?" The man thought about his oldest sister who called their mother tia and their tia, mami. He didn't go into their special bond, each the product of a different failed marriage.  Not that his other brothers and sisters ever treated him differently, if anything they were reverential. It never occurred to any of them, including himself, that he was anything but a full-fledged brother. But, even though he was the oldest brother in a latino family, it was they who protected him from the old man's mistreatments.           But his sister was special. She was the oldest, but she wasn't there. He always regretted not having had her with him all of the time. He understood the pain of her isolation and abandonment. He never forgave his mother for giving her away, for making all of the mistakes a peasant girl might make when she lands in another century, trades one jungle for another.  He didn't go into the violent fights that had always divided the family. Either his mother had abandoned his sister or his aunt had stolen her, he wasn't sure these days about anything his mother had told him. "No, baby, that's just the way things worked out." The child's face betrayed that he didn't understand but he said nothing.          The mental journey landed the father on the first time he met the other side of his family. Where the countryside houses had no running water, no glass in the windows, no floor coverings and had made him long to be back in Jersey City. The parselas, agrarian reform homesteads reserved by the government to insure the very poor had land, were carved into the clay bluffs and overlooked the sugarcane central, the kids a wild bunch of urchins, his father's wife a shy and gentle lady.  He went to see his grandmother. From the minute he began the walk to her house he could feel the intensity of her stare. She waited for him on the veranda dressed in a simple cotton smock, her long gray hair pulled back in the Pentecostal style, her hair and aquiline nose making her look like a dignified Indian chief.            But as he neared, she broke. She squirmed with obvious anticipation, jumping up and down like a Snoopy-footed four-year-old. She cried immense tears of joy. "Hola, Abuelita ." "I've been waiting for you all my life," she said, crying tears of joy and hugging him tightly. "I swore I wouldn't die until I saw you."  She made up for all of the years of failed grandmotherly doting and they loved each other for finally filling a void, but he left her within a few months and never saw her again.  Thinking about her made him angry and sad.      He focused on his dad. "You want me to tell you about the first time I ever met my father?" The darkness intensified. The boy's face became somber.           It was a flood of soporific memories like bad writing or a shitty Grade B movie script: The car dogging the street like the constant tropical sun that eventually burns away the impertinent morning chill; the license tag, its color, inscription, authorizing its languid movements in their uptight neighborhood of burglar bar decorated, bunker-looking concrete homes; the passengers craning their necks like tourists misplaced in this suburban geometry; one wearing a pava, a straw hat and the cultural equivalent of a Texan's Stetson. "It's a publico . They must be looking for a fare," the younger teenager said. They watched from the slab of their flat faux porch, two boys, twin gargoyles in canvas wingchairs....           "I didn't meet my father until I was sixteen. I quit high school and joined my mother in..."           The door opened and his wife and niece entered. "What are ya'll doing?" Curtly he told her the obvious, that they were sharing a private moment. "I'm telling Carlos stories about when I was kid." He was passive about the interruption. "Can Grace join you guys?" "Sure." The birds made a space in the nest for her.      "Start the story again so Gracie can hear it," the little boy said. "I never knew my dad when I was growing up." They were quiet and uneasy. "I only had a picture of him as a young man." "Was he my age?" the four-year-old boy asked. "He was a man, baby." "Was he fifty?," the girl asked. "Fifty? That's OLD," Carlos said. The father laughed. "You know what baby? I'm fifty." It was an admission of his youth, not his age.          "I guess he was somewhere between twenty and thirty years old. The photo was the only father that I knew". He remembered how he had carried the picture in his wallet like a valuable religious artifact. A saint who never answered his prayers, or his letters. The prodigal dad.  "When I was sixteen I moved to the island and sent my father a letter but I never got an answer. I was there six or seven months when a taxi pulled up in front of the house. The driver, a little white-haired man, asked for me. It was my dad." He flashed on the real west side story, of accounts of weapons and fights, of his father climbing up fire escapes to drag his young bride home from the refuge she had taken with her sisters. Of the commotion when he went into his cousin's window. Of other stories.          "I didn't know a lot about my dad. I knew that he played the guitar and that his hand was crippled because he had been in a knife fight when he was a young man. He was a Romeo and supposedly a real man, a macho. He played the guitar with his barber's comb. When the driver walked up he shook my hand and told me that he was my father but I already knew."  "Because of his crippled hand, right?" The kids were excited. "I almost fainted. My knees got weak and I wanted to sit down. I waited for this moment all of my life and the whole thing didn't last more than five minutes."          "Did he come inside to meet your mom?" "We just stood out on the street. He asked me how I was. I said 'fine' and that was it. His car was full of people he was bringing to the airport from the other end of the island and everyone was looking at us. There I was out on the street feeling tiny and sad, happy and embarrassed.  He told me I was always welcome at his house and that was it. He left. Later I got in a real big fight with my step-dad and I left the house to live with him and his family but that didn't last too long cause I left to join the air force. I was on my own by the time I was seventeen."           That's when they had asked him how his hand had gotten mangled and when he had told them about the "knife fight". He had neither the time nor the inclination to tell them the whole sordid story, that really would have been irresponsible. But it was a good beginning. It was time to share with the little guy just who he was and, maybe, help him understand how he'd gotten to the present.      Their mothers burst into the room, a maternal swat team come to rescue the kiddies from the pervert who was telling them who knows what. "We came to find out just what it is that you're telling the kids." Each mother took protective custody of her child. Away they went for debriefings, a deprogramming, if need be.           The Dad laughed for a long time. Hysterically, almost. It wasn't that funny but he couldn't stop laughing. He laughed as he undressed for bed. He guffawed while he brushed his teeth and made the necessary preparations for his usually fitful sleep, for his encounter with the frightening chasm of the night.  But this time he had no room for the fear of the void. He was still terribly amused and upbeat about the whole affair - at himself, the kids, their moms, their wonderfully middle class lives. MY FAMILY. He lay in bed, closed his eyes and for the first time in years remembered only the pleasant things about his parents, how much he owed them and how much like them he was. He remembered that he loved them and wished them a happy new year.  Then he slept. Main Page The Day Doña Irma Died  The Day Doña Irma Died by Kathryn Runco        It was hot and there were too many people and the unexpected had happened. Doña Irma was not dead and didn't seem to be in any hurry to die. In fact, she seemed determined to the last shred of her diminished strength to keep on living despite the agony she must have been enduring. It wasn't going to be a pretty or peaceful death. She was DYING. In pain, in confusion, suffering. And fighting to hold on.        The woman was there because her husband had phoned her office days before. "She's dying" he had said. And "Find Zack, get him some clothes for his grandmother's funeral and get on a plane." She had done those things. She had closed her office. Packed a black dress. Found her stepson and sent him to buy a blazer and some khakis. Reserved plane tickets, held a rental car at the Tampa airport and made hotel reservations. Because she was a Southern woman she knew that death required food and liquor and coffee. Along with the black dress, she packed her cookbook so that she could glaze a ham or bake a cake--the ritual preparation of food required of all adult Southern women when there is a funeral to throw.        There is comfort in ritual, for those performing the ritual, at any rate. Doing the familiar acts of cooking and serving food, making coffee, pouring a drink served to reassure her that nothing has really changed and that grief and heartbreak and untied ends were not at the doorstep. And because her husband's family was huge and noisy, a retreat to the kitchen could provide some time alone, down time from the hysteria that she expected to accompany Doña Irma's death.        But that is not what happened, at least not immediately. "You should see her. She looks like a skeleton." Her husband's eyes were wide and scared and he looked like a little boy. He had been there for days on the death watch. He had seen enough of the suffering and was ready, maybe even panicked, for it to end. But it wasn't going to end that day. Or the next. Or for many more days. So she saw her mother-in-law and her husband had been right. All that was left of the fat little lady was a skeleton and that skeleton was not at anything even approaching rest.        Doña Irma was in pain. She was dehydrated because her throat and stomach could not accept food or fluid. She was hot and her skin was mottled. She did not breathe easily and she choked on bile so black and vile that her daughters and daughters in law and grand daughters had to hold tissues soaked with bay rum to their faces sometimes. But she could talk a little and she could hang on to the life force.        The woman joined her sisters-in-law and, together, they watched and helped and provided awkward nursing. None of them were trained in caring for a woman so ill, but they did what they could. Ice chips. Tiny sips of sweet, thick Puerto Rican coffee. Sponges soaked in drops of morphine. They tried to ease her. They encouraged her to let go, to allow herself to stop suffering. They all secretly wondered if that was the right advice. They were (mostly) her daughters-in-law. Did the women married to her children really have the right to tell her to die? Whether or not, they told her....begged her. She was suffering and they were suffering and the children and the grandchildren couldn't have held out for much more of it, so they asked her to give up and go to God.        She did her best not to accommodate them or God in that request. The woman probably knew Doña Irma least of all of the woman attending her. She was the most newly married into the family. The woman knew some family history and some she did not know. She had never lived in the same city nor visited with the old lady much. But the two women shared some things beyond the matriarch's oldest son and youngest grandson. They shared a hardness of spirit and a huge streak of stubbornness. They were tough broads, both of them, and neither were inclined to give an inch.        Through the woman's pregnancy of that youngest grandchild, they had worked out an arrangement. The woman would not speak her broken Spanish to Doña Irma and the old lady would not speak her broken English to her daughter-in-law. So they spoke in different languages, understood each other perfectly and maintained their respective high grounds. A stand off. A pyrrhic victory for them both. Maybe if there had not been so much high ground the younger could have explained to the elder what she had seen of her husband's wounds and the elder could have understood just how deep those wounds ran. Maybe the elder woman could have explained some of the mystery of her life and warned against wanting too much and about the dangers of being mistaken and stubborn at the same time. But those things never happened.        Doña Irma won the battle. She never spoke a word of English to the woman during all of those terrible days of the death watch. The woman spoke deathbed Spanish to her mother-in-law. "Abre su boca" when it was time for the morphine sponges and " Quiere agua, Doña?" She spoke soothing words learned from the other women when the old lady choked. The old lady would respond sometimes with a "Si" or "Cafe, por favor". And one hot bright afternoon when the woman thought she would scream from the heat and the crowd of in-laws and from being a witness to such prolonged agony, "Kathryn es muy bonita, muy bonita". Doña Irma had never told the woman before that she thought her pretty. It kept the woman from screaming and it made her cry.        The woman's intimacy with her husband was routine and "regular". The normal exchanges of confidences and secret pain, revelations of anguish shared between spouses were a part of their marriage. The knowledge of the other person that was the product of living together; which buttons to push and which to avoid was a part of their bond. The intimacy of another person's family was not so familiar to the woman. Discovering the scars which transcended the individual and marred the entire group was not unknown to her but she was not prepared to experience such an intimate and enormous group revelation. Seeing the levels of fear and anger and loathing and love that happens only in an immediate family and the knowledge that these emotions were bared to her only as happenstance of time and place was harrowing.        These people were suffering and hurting each other, themselves, their children, and she could not tell them what she saw happening because she was not one of them. Only a daughter-in-law. And so she did what she could to comfort her husband and his family. She cooked gringo food for the family because she couldn't cook for their palates. She held Doña Irma's hand and chipped ice and wiped the dying old lady with cold clothes. She would have changed the diapers but Doña Irma was so dehydrated that there was seldom a change needed. She prayed for an end to the agony and for the old lady to reach enough peace that she would finally let go. But she could not tell the old lady's children to lay off each other and to stop looking back. It wasn't her place; it wasn't her family; they weren't her scars; Doña Irma wasn't her mother.        The woman, one of the sons and his wife were there when the old lady died. There had been some scares in the preceding days when the old lady choked horribly and had to be turned over, the daughters-in-law raking out the bile that clogged her throat. There were times when it did not seem that Doña Irma could possibly wake and speak again because no one, even she, could breathe so little and be in so much pain and keep living. But in the end, she drew a slow breathe, exhaled it, and her chest did not rise again. After a few moments the son felt for the pulse in her throat and when he did not find the rhythm, the woman walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to tell the other sons, drinking at the table, that the struggle had ended.        She wondered at their shock. "What have they expected all this time?" she thought as the sons rushed to the back of the house and as she poured herself a glass of the bourbon left sitting on the table. The brothers and sisters, spouses, grandchildren poured into the stifling bedroom to be with the old body, to kiss her goodbye. The woman took her bourbon to the patio and sat by the pool, wanting to be away from the grief and the crying grandchildren and the noise brought on by the death. She wanted to sit in the hot, damp night and be alone but because the old lady's spirit was so strong, because she was so stubborn and so afraid to die, it would not be that easy.        The old lady's soul took with her the electricity in the house abruptly, leaving the hot house without air conditioning and light and scaring the shit out of her family. In the hot dark hysteria, the woman found her husband and they laughed because they were tired and spooked and because the grief was escalating all around them. Their laughter was not understood by the others but the family had spent the last weeks not understanding each other and not trying very hard to make sense of all of their shared scars and pains and love and hopes. It was not to be expected that the woman's laughter with her husband would be understood nor did it matter.        What happened next was also routine, "regular". A funeral was planned. Flowers were ordered. Aunts and uncles and cousins were called. The children of Doña Irma buried her and with her they buried the hope of reconciling the mystery and pain of the life they had spent with their mother. They lost with her much of their collective hope of understanding their mother and her life and they wounded each other deeply in the process. In the end, they couldn't even agree on the pronunciation of their last name, some preferring the Spanish inflection, others the English. The woman did not stay for the funeral because she would not willingly witness any more grief and would not watch the brothers and sisters strike out at each other.        She left the family a few years later, with regret. They were loving people who had been good to her. They had beautiful names and their mothers' eyes and they had shared with her their culture, one of their men, and the intimacy of the death of their matriarch. She would be forever bound to them through emotion and through the blood of her son and she would always wish that she could have told them, on the day that Doña Irma died, to lay off each other and to stop looking back. Main Page Subscribe to: Comments (Atom) Interesting Links Full Version of my Blog Mobile's Counter Culture (Facebook) Personal Links Facebook Madden and Soto Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia Operation Skymaster Zack Soto Zack & Krista's Wedding Ceremony (Video) Krista's Vows (Video) Zack's Vows (Video) Album (Facebook) Album (Flickr) Photos Tall Ships Mardi Gras Freaker's Ball Picasa Albums Followers Blog Archive ▼  2025 (29) ▼  12/21 - 12/28 (1) It's not about drugs ►  11/30 - 12/07 (1) Pirates of the Caribbean is US ►  11/16 - 11/23 (2) Here, Piggy, Piggy! This is Murder. 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