Tlahtol Macehualli: Bread, Cheese, Bones and the Eviction of the Phoenix Trailer Park Residents

Tlahtol Macehualli

Comites de Defensa del Barrio
Neighborhood Defense Committees
Press Release

Phoenix, Aztlan (Where the Spirit of Truth Lives)

 

"The loggers of San Juan ask for bread and they don’t get it, they ask for cheese, they give them bones and cut their necks," my great grandma sang this rhyme to us before we fell asleep. The Loggers of St. John has several variations, but the background remains the same.  It is a lullaby to prepare children for what awaits rebels in this world. 

In some cases, instead of bread they give them wine, as happened in the old company stores. Instead of paying them with food or money they paid them with wine to get them drunk, indebted, and tied to the hacienda owner.  In other cases, it refers to workers in sawmills requesting better wages. As the rhyme says, instead of bread and cheese they end up cutting their necks.

 

We found it funny when my grandmother sang the rhyme to us, without realizing at that tender age, that they were preparing us for life. It was a lesson disguised as a nursery rhyme.   A lesson that continues in the different struggles in which we have been involved,  whether it is the fight for immigration reform, the  fight against the abuses of Sheriff Arpaio, the struggle of the Macehualli day laborers, and now the struggle of  "trailas" (Mobile Home Parks) residents.

The theme is the same as the lullaby that my great grandmother sang to us. 

Today it is close to one year that we requested that families not be evicted from  their mobile  homes.  We asked the owners, we asked  the state authorities, we asked the city council of Phoenix Arizona.  Yet, the same thing happened to us that happened to the loggers of San Juan, they gave us cheese in the form of vouchers to pay rent when before we had a home, in the case of Grand Canyon University they offered us 5,000 USD for our house in which we had lived 30 years.  

Now under a state law they offer us about the same for giving up our homes to millionaire companies.  In other words, they give us a bone and if we do not accept it, they cut our throats by sending the sheriffs to throw us out "without our belongings " into the street.

 

The bad thing is that the children of the "trailas"  are not listening to the song sung  by their grandmother. They are living the terror sung by corporations in their own flesh.   Worst of all, they are not asking for bread,  they are asking for more time to be able to find a home in a market that does not exist for them. 

How many of them will be able to find a home when the houses are worth between 350,000 and  500,000 USD? How many of them will be able to find a rental location when rents are between 1,500 and 3,000 USD?

 

Meanwhile in a final attempt by 3 council members, Carlos García, Betty Guardado, and Laura Pastor, by the time this column comes out, we will know if they achieved the  5 votes necessary to extend the time 6 months for those families who still cannot find a home to go to.   Frankly, I find it very difficult. Mayor Kate Gallego is  committed to big business and simply ignores it, when they evict hundreds of families. 

The trouble is that it is not only Kate Gallego, but also most of the Council and the staff behind them. They hide behind the sanctity of private property and their skewed interpretations of the  law to justify human rights violations against those affected.  The right to shelter has been a human right from the time we lived in caves until today. In the same way as the cradle song of my great-great-grandparents, they continue to give us bones and cut our throats in the name of progress.

Salvador Reza