Delivery of Wool and First Place ribbon.

This is what my car looks like when I drop off the wool. Yikes. Thank goodness its not heavy.

Here we see Las Rancheritas in front of the donated wool. Note the first place ribbon on Bonifacias blouse. They are so grateful for the beautiful wool. The

 quality of the rugs has greatly improved because of this beautiful wool some of it even hand dyed.

Petra Grande is always up for fun so she jumped into the wool.

They prepared a potluck as their way of thanking me, and any friends I bring along, for bringing the wool. Since this is the season for nopal cactus, in the USA it is called prickly pear, we had allot of nopal dishes: nopal cactus salad, nopal cactus stew, quesadillas stuffed with nopales and beans. Some of the extras were, spaghetti, fried potatoes patties, rice with mole sauce and of course piles of tortillas. And just to make things interesting there was a spicy dark red chili sauce. It was country feast.

To prepare nopals for eating you much first remove the spins, tricky work, not recommended for the inexperienced.

Nopal Salad

1. Take fresh pads of nopals and remove the spins, or buy them at the grocery store (but they won't be as fresh)
2. Slice the pads into strips.
3. Cook in boiling water for about 20 minutes
4. Drain well in a colandar at least 5 minutes. They have a slippery interior a bit like aloe and you are cooking and draining some of that off.
5. Place the cooked, drained strips in a bowl and add, chopped onions, cilantro, tomatoes, chopped jalapeno chilis, and salt.
Delicious. Nopals are an hightly nutricious vegetable with many additional properties like lowering cholesterol. 

King William Art Show

On Saturday, April 16, Susan White and I showed the rugs at the King William Art and Craft Show in San Antonio. This was a special honor since usually you must be the artist to exhibit your work. But do to the help of Rose  Kanusky and Max Martinez we were invited to participate since they understand the project and want to help rural Mexican communities. We sold 13 rugs most importantly Bonifacia's Wedding Rug!! And we won "Best of Show". Note the ribbon above our heads. I am thrilled.

Pictured: Rose, Charlotte, Susan.

From the show I drove to San Miguel were I am now nerviously waiting for 3:00 when I will give my yearly lecture on the "The Guide to Semana Santa" taken from my book about same. Tears from the Crown of Thorns.
Tomorrow is a big art craft show at the art school in San Miguel. Las Rancheritas will be exhibing there so I will bring them their money from San Antonio. On Sat I'll head out to the village to deliver the huge load of wool I have in my car, donations for all of you especially from the Yellow Rose Rug Camp. I'll take photos of the distribution and post them here.

Who are these Immigrants (migrants)

All over the USA we are seeing small brown Spanish speaking people. Where do they come from? Why are they here? Will they ever go home? These are a few of the questions that we should be asking if we are ever going to find a solution to the immigration problem in the USA. But we do not ask questions instead we base judgment on what we hear and see in the news. And since what sells news is the sensational, the curious and the unusual. And since most USA citizens have no personal experience outside of the US boarders. In 2011 only 37% of US citizens had passports. This means that 63% of the 307,006,550 are victims to media misinformation careless or inaccurate reporting.

This will be the focus of this book, to help spread accurate information and answer these questions. For once we have accurate information we an arrive at the solution to this unfortunate problem.

First we need to define terms: immigrant or migrant. An immigrant is basically someone who comes into a country generally with the desire to stay. A migrant is someone who moves back and forth like migrating monarch butterflies.

Next, we need to differentiate “small brown”. According to statistics taken from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2009, the breakdown by country for people illegally in the USA is as follows: Mexico 62%, El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras, 12%, Phillipines 2%, India 2%, Korea 2%, and other 20%. The focus of this book will be on the largest number, the Mexican. However, we share a border with Mexico and their people have been migrating for hundreds if not thousands of years. The border between the US and Mexico, 1969 miles, was not determined until the Texas annex 1845, Mexican Cession 1848 and finalized with the Gadsden purchase in 1853. Before that time all of California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas were Mexican land. And according to figures given by the International Boundary and Water Commission.It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with about 250 million people crossing every year.

Rich Roots Begins

In 2000 the photographs from the processions of Semana Santa, Holy Week, in San Miguel de Allende, GTO MX led me down an incredible path of discovery which eventually became the book, "Tears from the Crown of Thorns".

For years now another group of photographs have been calling me to tell their story. It all began in 1994, when after spending one month in San Miguel on vacation, my husband and I purchased property on which we spent the next 2 years building a house. It was through an invitation from a worker on this house that we visited our first rural village 30 miles out side of SMA. This small community of 30 families is situated on the banks of a river in a picturesque arroyo. Their home was the most humble I had ever seen. However the hospitality was grandiose. It was through this community that I was introduced to life in rural Mexico.

As we became more ensconced in the community I became involved with another rural community, Agustin Gonzales. I was introduced to this village again through photography but this time is was to chronicle a craft cooperative of Rug Hookers which was in the early stages of development. www.rughookproject.com. I became enamored with the people and the project and have been assisting them with marketing since 1999.

During the same time frame the concern about illegal immigration in the USA had turned into an uproar. There was a disconnect between what I was seeing and hearing from my Mexican friends and what was being reported in the US press. What I saw, in the majority of the people I knew, were migrants, people passing back and forth. But what I heard and still hear in the press is about immigrants, people that come to stay. The people I knew that had worked in the US at one time or another came home.

I then came across the books "Beyond Smoke and Mirrors" and "Crossing the Border" by Douglas S Massey, Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone. The authority of these books derives from the ambitious, multi-decade Mexican Migrations Project that studied population movement. This study mirrored my personal experience. The majority of Mexicans are migrants. All the numbers we hear about in the news are about people entering the USA. There is virtually nothing about the millions that return to Mexico every year. These books validate both figures.

And what do they return to? Family, friends, community and a fascinating ancient culture.

I had been chronicling the lives of these two rural villages for years. My images showed a full and compelling life. They also told of the struggle, especially to get ahead. They portray how money earned from work in the US was raising their standard of living and improving their communities.

I decided I needed to tell the story of life in rural Mexico. I wanted to shed light on the true experience of the the migrant worker but most of all to show through imagery the land and home and culture that keep most Mexicans in Mexico and draw those that have traveled to the US for jobs to come home, back to their Rich Roots.