Nayeli Chavez-Geller with her father, Raymundo Chavez.
I often think about my father.
I find myself engaged in the most mundane of my daily activities, and I randomly remember some of our conversations. I treasure them like old video cassettes – worried at times that they will fade off if I think about them too much.
My parents got divorced when I was five years old, and I am the eldest of four siblings. My mother, who is from New York, met my father in Oaxaca, Mexico and returned back home after their separation – giving him sole custody over us. I don’t remember much about the days living with both of my parents. It’s as if life started one day when I was at elementary school and all my friends pointed out to me, “Nayeli, your father is outside the school waiting for you.”
Looking back, I guess we were the topic of conversation in other households – the four “gueritos” (a Mexican slang term meaning “light-skinned people”) that just by their physical appearance stood out like a needle in a haystack and were being raised by their father in a time where every kid in my classroom lived with both of their parents, and in the rarest scenario with their mother.
My father was very devoted, but an authoritarian figure who was very strict with us. He believed in what he called “an integral education.” We had to excel both academically, and in sports. He also believed it was very important to have social skills. I remember one day he hit me with a belt for something that was not my fault. At night, when I went to kiss him before bed, he actually apologized. I seized that unusual moment of understanding and asked him why he was always so harsh with us? He told me it was because he knew that as good as we seemed, we hadn’t reached our potential, and that as a father, it would be a crime not to ask for more if he truly knew we had the capacity for it.
I have been living on my own since I was 17, and I always remember that moment. I guess it’s a motor of motivation when things get too comfortable or tough.
My father was born in a village that he’d take us to often, while we were growing up, to visit my grandmother. Once there was a bull running loose on the streets, and my first instinct was to run away from it, but my father got really mad, and he told me, “How can you turn your back on it, Nayeli? In life, you must face the bull in order to see which way to run.”
I learned later that there is even a known phrase, “Grab the bull by the horns,” and hearing that for the first time reminded me of that moment.
When I feel depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, I force myself to go out for a run. I then start hearing his voice again,”Happiness isn’t permanent, you have to fight for it. This is your life, you can make the best of it, or be a victim. There aren’t any guarantees. Be the best that you can be. Remember time goes by, don’t waste your youth. You are free. I gave you wings to fly, and the skills to survive no matter what. Go out in the world, and be happy.”
Nayeli Chavez-Geller is a reporter and correspondent for Univision television network, and she resides in New York City.
Casey Camp Horinek speaks inside of the United Nations COP21 Climate Negotiations during a WECAN International event (Photo: Emily Arasim/Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network)
Casey Camp-Horinek has a gentle demeanor, with her long, salt and pepper-colored hair and lyrical voice. However, there is searing fire behind her caring, dark eyes.
She was born into the Ponca Nation, a Native American tribe originally from the Nebraska/South Dakota area, and which is now scattered throughout the U.S. Camp-Horinek lives in north central Oklahoma, where approximately 800 reside.
In addition to being a mother, grandmother, and councilwoman of the Ponca Nation, Camp-Horinek – who turns 69 next month – is an activist for all of us.
Camp-Horinek was one of the thousands peacefully protesting at against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota, last year. And last month, she came to New York City accompanying other indigenous women leaders from across the U.S., and around the world, for the conference, ‘Indigenous Women Protecting Earth, Rights and Communities’, presented by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) to educate the public, as well as CEO’s and shareholders, about renewable energy, earth awareness, and indigenous issues.
“Many of us believe in a seven generation philosophy,” explains the indigenous leader about why she does not give up fighting for justice. “We believe that our people, the past seven generations before, have prayed for us to live in a good way. It is our responsibility in the decisions that we make that we should care for seven generations to come.”
Camp-Horinek hails from a large family. She’s been married 48 years and has four adult children, and over a dozen grandchildren.
“I feel very very fortunate that our family is very integrated in terms of being able to hang out with one another,” she says. “Our grandchildren visit us regularly. We travel, pray, eat and laugh together. Intergenerational life is part of indigenous life. What drives me to activism and environmentalism is a duty of a grandmother, woman, wife, and daughter to carry on the relationships of all living things and caring about what happens to the generations to come.”
Going to Standing Rock, last summer and autumn, was part of that duty.
“It was a horrible, racist, militarized situation,” says Camp-Horinek. “We had more than a thousand arrested, made into less than human feelings.”
On October 27, 2016, she says 141 people, including herself, and her sons, were arrested while praying.
“They wrote numbers with markers on our arms…I’m Standing Rock 138,” says Camp-Horinek, adding that she’s not washing off the ink until she goes to trial in July so she can show the judge. “They put us in these bear cages in a basement…[and] they had militarized tasers, mace and pepper spray in containers the size of fire extinguishers.”
She says growing up on the reservation, she and her people have become used to living with racism, but now she feels they also have to deal with environmental racism.
She describes a Taiwainese business that’s producing carbon, as well as Oklahoma gas lines, fracking, and earthquakes happening as a result of it, as “an environmental genocide” on her people.
“We are one of the cancer capitals of the world – children and elders are dying of cancer,” says Camp-Horinek. “There is a long process that brought us to this. The way the federal government has failed its responsibility to the indigenous people.”
Her grandfather was born in northern Nebraska, where the original Ponca people came from.
“In Oklahoma, there are 39 recognized tribes,” says Camp-Horinek. “The other six are there from forced removal. We had no choice but to leave to ‘Indian territory’ – putting us in one general location – on reservations. My grandfather was eight at the time of the forced removal.”
“In one generation, we had to leave our hunting, growing organic food and fishing,” she continues. “One in three of us died in our Trail of Tears, and we had to depend on the government commodity foods.”
She says being forced to have white flour, white sugar, and dairy – all foods that were foreign to the bodies of her people, caused them to develop all sorts of ailments.
“Now we have the highest diabetic rate on earth,” says Camp-Horinek.
As a councilwoman, she’s one of seven trying to make an economic and cultural way forward for generations to come for her people.
“One of the reasons I’m here today is to stop the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline,” says Camp-Horinek. “Our kids are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia, and we already have rampant cancers, and diabetes, and other illnesses. We need to empower our children and great great grandchildren.”
She says she would like them to have basic necessities like clean water to drink.
“In my youth, I could not imagine buying a bottle of water,” she says. “There were natural springs. In our case, there was well water. Now that same well water is completely contaminated from fracking.”
What is one piece of advice you wish you could tell yourself when you were 20 with the wisdom you have now?
“I believe that growth is a healthy, organic, happening, and it has to happen in the manner which your spirit guides you. [You can’t be] constantly looking for the positive growth to take place, that change has to happen in its own way.”
Bobby Gonzalez has had practically every job you could think of — from a medical records clerk in a hospital to customer service at a utility company. However, he says it was at age 40 that he discovered his life’s calling and passion – storytelling. His favorite topic is his Puerto Rican and Taino heritage, which in turn, challenges his listeners to get curious about their own roots.
Ever since that moment of enlightenment, storytelling is what Gonzalez devotes his life to. At 65, he still resides in his native Bronx, NY, with his wife Maria, but sometimes he doesn’t even know where he’ll end up the next day giving a workshop or lecture. So far, he’s spoken in 42 states — in the past two weeks alone, he’s been at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Davidson College in North Carolina speaking about the racial and cultural diversity of Latinos. Next week, he’ll host his monthly spoken word event in Queens, NY.
“When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, I’m an educator through lectures and poetry,” says Gonzalez, who has also authored two books, “The Last Puerto Rican,” and “Taino Zen.” “I don’t know what’s going to happen the next minute. Occasionally, I get a phone call asking me, ‘Can you do this?’ and I do it. I’m not afraid to fail.”
His second favorite job in life, he says, was working at his family’s bodega, which they owned for more than 30 years.
“That’s where I really polished my speaking skills, and I heard a lot of great stories,” says Gonzalez, about the place which birthed his purpose. “It was quite an experience.”
He says his parents also played an important role.
“We were very fortunate, my brothers and I, to have had two Puerto Rican parents who always made the point to tell us where we came from and instilled in us a great pride of who we were,” says Gonzalez. “That inspired me to embark on a lifetime of personal research. I got my information from books and oral traditions – here and in Puerto Rico. When I was a little boy, my parents would take me to Puerto Rico, and I would sit at the feet of my great grandfather. He would tell me the stories of the old days, and I would roll my eyes, but I wish I listened more carefully.”
Gonzalez can see clearly now that his ancestors grew up in a different world, and that gives him the incentive to tell their stories. One story in particular which has marked him is one of his mother’s arrival to New York from Puerto Rico via a train from Miami in the 1940’s.
“She was very light-skinned, and when she got to Miami, the conductor told my dark-skinned grandmother to sit in another car,” recalls Gonzalez. “I have to remind young people they take a lot for granted – even the right to vote.”
Gonzalez remembers the exact date he began documenting his family roots by writing poetry.
“It was February 9, 1964,” he says without hesitation. “The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the day after, millions of kids around the world bought their own guitars and started to write their own music.”
Storytelling came very naturally to him, he further explains.
“Every day, I would go to the library, get some books, and then go down my block and tell stories,” says Gonzalez, who still has the same almost involuntary instinct years later. “I spend a lot of time in the Manhattan and the Bronx libraries,” where he sometimes also hosts spoken word nights for teens.
He says one of his biggest career challenges also took place in a library while he was telling stories of his ancestors, the Taino people, who are an indigenous people of the Caribbean.
“Once I was speaking in a library in Queens, and a man told me, ‘There are no Tainos left. I don’t know why you’re doing this.’ At the end, he came up to me and said, ‘I’m proud to be a Taino.’ I was taught by my parents never to say ‘You are wrong.’ We were all raised differently, so it’s important to dialogue in a civilized manner. We are all one.”
Gonzalez says he used this parental wisdom when speaking at the University of Mississippi last year, as well.
“We can’t have the same perspectives, and that’s okay, as long we listen to each other with respect,” he adds. “I meet students from Latin countries, and they don’t know about their indigenous heritage, and people who lived here their whole life don’t know American history. My favorite moment is always when people say, ‘I didn’t know that.’”
Education is primordial for Gonzalez, even though his father only finished 2nd grade and his mom, 6th grade. He admits he never finished his bachelor’s degree in marketing, but he believes through his natural curiosity, he has learned so much more by devouring books on his own. And now he loves to share that knowledge with kids as young as pre-k, all the way to seniors.
“I don’t have the sense of fear,” says Gonzalez about what has helped him the most in life. “The times now are nothing compared to what my parents went through. Police brutality was a lot more common back then, there were no bilingual services, and immigrant groups lived in one neighborhood. My brothers, and I went to college. We didn’t finish, but we did it, because my parents sacrificed for us.”
What is the one piece of life advice he wishes he could tell his younger self today?
“It gets better every day if you make the conscious effort to improve yourself passionately and persistently.”
Eugene Ethelbert Miller, who goes by his middle name, “Ethelbert,” is a writer and literary activist who says he’s never been busier than at 66.
Originally from the Bronx, NY, Miller made his way to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University at 18. He’s been residing in the U.S. capitol ever since, where he’s written several collections of poetry, two memoirs and where he has served as editor of America’s oldest poetry journal, “Poet Lore.” His most recent book, “The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller,” hit shelves last year.
The award-winning poet also loves to discuss history and politics, and thus currently hosts and produces half-hour segments with experts in different fields, called, “The Scholars” on UDC-TV, and is the host of the weekly morning radio show, “On the Margin,” which airs on WPFW-FM 89.3.
“I made the decision to be a writer my sophomore year [of college],” recalls Miller. “I arrived to Howard University in 1968 – the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and then following that, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June. The Vietnam War was going on – 1968 was one of the most important years in world history.”
He says it was during this time that he was “sort of baptized in black history.”
“I wanted to be involved in every aspect of writing about it,” says Miller about the politically-charged time, as sharply and energetically as if it were just yesterday. “It was just like now – with the Woman’s March and Black Lives Matter…”
He remembers writing his first poems on the back of envelopes on his letters to family back in NY – his favorite topic being love.
“I wrote many love poems,” says Miller. “I wanted to leave behind poems that were similar to Pablo Neruda’s work.”
Eventually, his poems made it to the school newspaper, and then a DJ started to read his poems on Howard’s school radio.
“Last year, my collective works came out,” continues Miller. “Now I can hold in my hand a body of work that represents 40 years.”
As the first member of his family to go to college, he considers this quite the accomplishment.
“My family is from the West Indies,” says Miller. “My father worked in the post office, my mother was a seamstress. College was a strain financially, and when I said I wanted to be a writer, it took them a while to understand.”
However, he has no regrets on his career choice.
“When I look back on my writing, it took me to places that I couldn’t have gone otherwise,” says the poet, mentioning the U.S. State Department sponsored some of his trips. “I went to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, people would send me to all sorts of places.”
Miller also spent 40 years as director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University, where he was able to give back to an institution that has given him so much.
“I was one of the first graduates of African American Studies at Howard University,” says Miller, explaining it was one of the first schools to offer this program in history. “Howard students pushed for the African American Studies Department, and the Ford Foundation gave a large grant to set up the department, and part of it was the Resource Center.”
Miller started out as a student at the Resource Center, and then became a director in 1974. He describes it as a place with a lot of books, and a base to document African American history.
“I made a lot of contacts working there – there’s probably no African American writer I don’t know,” says Miller, remembering the memorable time Alex Haley, the author of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” came to meet him there. “A lot of people came through that program. When you stay at a place 40 years, you are going to touch a lot of lives, and a lot of lives are going to touch you.”
However, about two years ago, Miller says budget cuts shut down the program, and he was let go.
“You might have three, four, or five professions in your life. I worked in a place for 40 years. That way of life is not coming back,” says Miller about the changing times. “Now, you’re most probably not going to marry your high school sweetheart. [And that] redefines what family really is.”
Miller says one of his most challenging roles was being a father and raising two kids. And even in fatherhood, the way he used language was intentional – even in naming them.
“I’m a baseball person, and I look at my life in terms of innings – now, I’m going through the 7th inning stretch,” explains Miller. “When you reach your 70’s, you still have your life ahead of you. Jazz musicians are still performing in their 80’s, and that should be a guide for all of us. As an artist, you are not dependent on an employer. [Your art] never stops until you die.”
Right now, he says he’s doing better than ever, and it’s the busiest “inning” of his life.
“Before, I was not making a living as a writer. I was never applying for grants and fellowships, but now I am free to travel and write more,” says Miller. “My career has really taken off. I finally have an assistant. She edited my collected works, which would never have happened if I was with the University. It made me very, very productive. Some people think I don’t sleep.”
He’s also been the board chair of the Institute of Policy Studies for the past 10 years (currently the interim chair) – a progressive think tank working to build social, cultural and economic equality.
“I chose the board – I moved our organization to a new facility. I put Danny Glover on our board, and Harry Belafonte,” says Miller, adding they discuss things from domestic workers to healthcare issues. This is the first year that I know personally well two members of Congress. Some of those people I’ve met through the Institute. People associate me with literature, but I’m also involved in politics. My day has a lot of projects – I’m doing a tour of the south right now – going to all the black schools with my friend, a filmmaker. Just came back from New Orleans, and next we are heading to Tuskegee in Alabama. There’s a lot to do – a lot of collaborations. Being a writer, you’re not just concerned about what’s going on in the U.S. but all around the world. That’s how you should live your senior years. If you stay healthy, you can make a contribution…What we need today is heroes.”
What is the most important piece of advice about life that you would tell your younger self knowing what you know now?
“I think what I’ve learned now are two things:We have to practice deep listening. We have to understand what [people] are afraid of, what they’re suffering from. Then the next level is compassion. Once you get past that point of compassion, then you can talk about the beloved community. There are levels. You have to prepare yourself spiritually for the steps…Every day when you wake up, fix something that’s broken. That way you know there’s going to be something different between today and yesterday. That’s how you know…You gotta make some changes, and it might be very small. Sometimes the first thing you gotta fix is your heart…When I look at my love poems, they’re always about desire and seeking. If you can in your life have one good friend, then you have done something that is very, very difficult, because you have to love that person with all their flaws. It takes a strong spiritual point of arriving, too – that level of love is what we’re really lacking in society. We are losing that with our young people – we’ve gotta bring caring and civility back. I see people yelling at each other and no deep listening.”
Juana la del Pipa, once known as the “Tina Turner” of Flamenco, for her strong legs and dynamic nature, is still turning on passionate performances at 68.
The deep-voiced Gypsy cantaora (singer) was born and still lives in, Jerez de la Frontera, located in the Andalusian region of southern Spain. The city of more than 200,000 is best known for its sherry (“Jerez” is the Arabic word for “sherry”), its fine horses, and its classic Flamenco music and dance tradition. And like most of Andalusia, Jerez de la Frontera has a large Arab and Gypsy influence.
In many classic Flamenco songs, Juana says it is customary that many lyrics are in Caló – their Gypsy dialect. However, her primary language is Spanish. When having a conversation, she ends almost every sentence with “cariño.” The Spanish expression for “my love.”
Juana seems to live every day driven by feelings. Flamenco, an extremely emotional musical genre, seems to run through her veins and make her heart beat. And when she sings, the words seem to flow from the depths of her gut, through her heart, and out of her mouth with a passionate force only capable from a deep-seated love, which has also known great pain and sadness.
“It came down through my genes,” says Juana in her in her native Spanish. “It is my life, and everything I feel, my love.”
From as far back as she can remember, Juana remembers Flamenco being a part of her life. After all, she lived her entire life in Barrio Santiago, the neighborhood coined as the birthplace of classic Flamenco, and nearly all of her family members are Flamenco musicians of some form. Her nephew is the world-renowned Antonio El Pipa.
“It’s important in Flamenco circles to know what town you’re from,” explains Juana, who is related to the Parrilla guitar-playing family and both the Zambo and Terremoto singing clans. “Barrio Santiago is where you can hear the best original Flamenco – the most Gypsy. We have a certain way of approaching the rhythm.”
It is common for families there to sing and dance together, as Flamenco expresses her people’s way of life, their philosophy, their struggles and pride in their culture.
Juana started singing among her family at age 11. Then at 15, she sang at the Mairena del Alcor Festival, which began her professional singing career.
“I felt marvelous the first time,” says Juana. “It was, I don’t know what I felt…I can’t explain it.”
She says she was mainly influenced by the talents of Manolo Caracol, Tio Borrico, and Terremoto, because their singing reflected her Gypsy culture, and they transmitted deep feelings.
But the most memorable moment of her career, she says, was at 15, when she sang a solea for her mother, while her mother danced for her.
“That was an incredible honor for me,” says Juana, explaining that it took place at the wedding of her niece.
Her mother played an integral role in her life. Juana inherited her name, “Juana la del Pipa,” from her mother, a world-famous Flamenco dancer. And her mother got the name, because when she was young, she sold “pipas,” the Spanish word for “sunflower seeds.”
“She was a great person,” reminisces Juana. “[Her character] was the first thing I learned about her. And she danced until she died.”
Today, when Juana’s not on tour, or performing at an event or family functions, she spends her days cleaning, cooking and taking care of her 19 grandchildren.
Professionally, she sings as soloist in many festivals around the world, accompanied by different guitarists. Most recently, she will be returning to sing in New York with world-renowned dancer José Maya on February 17 (her first time in NYC was at age 28, and has come many times since then), and then in San Francisco on February 19 and 23.
Like her mother, she says she hopes to continue performing classical Flamenco until her last breathe.
What advice about life would she give her 20-year-old self?
“The most important thing in life is your health. I take care of myself with food. I eat lots of fish,” says Juana. “Keep fighting in life, and don’t give up the struggle. Stay strong, my love.”
