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This was the original intro. I cut it for space but it talks a little bit more about the project and my motivation.

Community

6 AM. We used water from a well we brought up with a bucket, saving water in a tin barrel for daily use& heating water on the stove for those cold morning baths from a bucket. It was there where I lived as a teen with my grandma & Dad in Mexico that the complexities of poverty, racism & environmental challenges became increasingly apparent, even if I didn't have the words to articulate them.

I've been fighting the loss of both my parents in the last few years & a fight with the original COVID-19 that was very persistent. Chronic pain/ scoliosis and then the pandemic kept me away from the local parks, the Sal Del Rey and nature centers I loved to go to, take photographs and record the noises and then come back home and write about the experiences, my thoughts, the tranquility. Probably because of covid, my asthma came back. The memories of my parents are in the places I visit, even the ones I can't go to now, so both memories and place and grief and death are frozen in time. This anchors me to this region that has become my home and had become theirs.

When my mom died, I started reflecting on my life until that point, what I’ve learned, where I was at the time & how my trajectory led me to where I was. There was one Sunday school lesson that I occasionally think about. She was a teen Sunday school teacher in the giant church in Chicago when I was a kid and we hadn't moved. I wasn't old enough to be in it, so I'd hang around with the "big kids" in the basement. This one lesson was on importance of sharing our gifts, nuestros dones. Whether is was to sing or speak, we were supposed to use them to serve others & shine our light before them, so that they may see our good works.

I really didn’t pay any attention to this. This came to mind after mom died. I hadn’t realized how I had internalized what she taught. In the framework she was giving us at the time, I’m sure she didn’t imagine I would contextualize that to explore how to share the zine-making skills, the ways I learned from alt media & how a big part of disability justice would be in my life.

Growing up, I rejected traditional gender roles & societal norms. I eventually left public school in the 8th grade due to an undiagnosed learning disability. When I was 13, I lived with my mom for a brief time in Edinburg. When everyone else went to school and work, I walked to the library and read rows and rows of books. I tried learning everything I could. I had this fear I would be left behind. It was difficult, being a smart kid who liked school, learning and books, who couldn't pass math. A learning disability was on no one's radar, I guess it was just like that.

I got my GED while working and was an old enough teen allowed by the state. then slowly I started taking college classes. Here again, my learning disability & autism & my undiagnosed ADHD made it extremely hard to finish my maths and sciences. I hit a wall, taking all my other requirements and most of my major and minor requirements (112 hours out of 120, for a degree in anthropology with a Mexican American focus, I don't think that offer it anymore. Ay, leaving that unfinished with so much already done towards it was hard). Eventually I left school, became a single mom while working full-time.

In my mid-30s, I returned & tried to finish my degree, trying to deal with my debilitating anxiety, dyscalculia & my undiagnosed ADHD. I completed my BA & enrolled in a master's program, studying subjects like South Texas history & Mexican American history. But my debilitating anxiety didn’t cure itself like I thought it would by the end of grad school & I ended up not teaching.

So now I write, make mixed media & make zines, occasionally doing community workshops on poetry or zines.

The Rio Grande Valley is a place where people from different motherlands make community. Together, we have made this place our home. As a single parent, poet, activist & member of the disabled & neurodivergent community, my connection to this region was rooted early and with that comes a profound concern for its future.

These experiences, plus my studies on Texas history, the small press, indigenous people of the southwest, have reshaped my perspective & left me with a deeper sense of purpose in contributing to sharing whatever skills I have, if they would be of use, a concept I learned from my mom. They also serve as a reminder of the urgent need to address environmental justice & the importance of self publishing. It is with this understanding & personal investment that I present this, as always, rooted in revolutionary love.

I am a poet, studied history & writing, multiple disabled & have a learning disability +ADHD. This guidebook is the result of a long & ongoing effort to bring attention to the environmental impact of SpaceX’s operations in the RGV & my understanding of using alt.media in ways that helped me learn outside of the traditional classroom. It’s a personal project, born out of my love for this community and my belief that we can do better. I’m a disabled writer and poet dedicated to a life of creative expression and activism & a passionate advocate for the RGV and its people and land. I am a member of this community and care deeply about our environment.