This is also a book signing for Rodriguez, whose book was recently published, and culminates research he started with Gonzales on his investigation on the origins and migrations of the Mexican people in the Four Corners region of the U.S. by following the corn and the people associated with that crop and stories from the elders he interviewed along the way.

Listen to a podcast interview with Rodriguez from Amanda Shauger at KXCI.

We recently interviewed Rodriguez about his book, and intended our interview to be part of a Currents feature in last week's issue, but our decision to focus on marriage equality forced us to change course for the week. Here's part of our interview with the author, journalist and UA associate professor.

Rodriguez was one of only a few active UA academics involved with championing Mexican-American studies at Tucson Unified School District—supporting students at protests and speaking out at many governing board meetings and other public hearings. He was arrested with local high school and college students the day the anti-Mexican-American studies legislation was signed into law when outgoing state Attorney General Tom Horne paid a visit to Tucson. He also experienced a fair share of criticism from MAS critics and far-right attacks, including a threat on this life.

What is the time frame of your work on this book?
It was the mid-1990s. That was when the process began in the literal sense, a research project on maps I was given that showed that the Aztecs reached into the Four Corners of the United States. I had no knowledge of the maps and had never heard of them. I was just given them as proof that Mexican people were native to the Southwest. I wasn’t a scholar then, but even with the little I knew, I knew that this little piece of paper does not constitute proof. So I embarked on a research project.

You found more maps, right?
Yes ... from 1847. That’s what triggered this research. At the time Patrisia and I were colleagues and married when we embarked on this project together. It was exiting and exhilarating. We went everywhere on this topic ... and at some point we saw some of the oldest maps that showed Salt Lake as the point of origin of Mexican Indians. Everyone made the assumption that we were looking for Aztlan. We knew the story but we weren’t sure if that was what was supposed to be depicted. We knew that there has to be memory there and that people would be able to tell us stories. We began to do interviews with elders, many of them are dead now.

I know many people will say, 'Why do you always talking about corn?' Your academic nickname, Dr. Cintli, is Dr. Corn.
When we did the interviews, I realized forget the maps. If you want to know where we come from, follow the corn. At that point it became obvious to me. I think some people were disappoint we didn’t find Aztlan. But we literally did follow the corn and saw how it changed the continent and it was corn that led to what we call civilization. Massive cities.

How did this research related to your own personal story?
I grew up knowing that society saw me as inferior, but I got a different message from my father and my mother — mostly my dad telling me stories, anciet stories, that didn't reinforce the idea that we crossed this ocean to get here. "Don’t worry about that or what they say, we didn't cross the ocean. We are from here

Part of your research was also during the state's attacks on TUSD and MAS, right?
I would say it was coincidental that when I went to do my PhD, it was 2003-2007, and in 2006, Horne began hsi campaign, his war was about indigenous knowledge. Kids were being taught in lakech and pacnhe be — and that was precisely my work. The teachers taught lots of things, but some of what was being taught in the classroom was also from my own materials and column Patrisia and I did.

In your classroom at the UA, you say you teach beyond in lakech and panche be?
I expanded to what I call the seven maiz based values. Really there’s no story like it on this continent — the story of the maize. It is not a counter story. It existed for 7,000 years and it doesn't revolve around Greeks and Roman. The maiz stories is important and it is humble. It's not a claim to land, this isn't about Aztlan, but a claim to our humanity. We are part of a big story — a bigger story. I always looked at SB 1070 as a way to attack brown people, and that was a law to deport the body. HB 2281 was to deport the mind and spirit. My book is a way to help understand that we are from here and we are also fully human.

For a love of all things lowbrow and dark places that offer cold beverages and respite from the bright, bright sun, we bring you Day Drinking. This is the first in a regular series, and lucky us, Tucson artist Melo Dominguez agreed to be our guinea pig. So last week, we grabbed some drinks at The Shelter, a local retro spot at 4155 E. Grant Rd., known for its martinis and Rat Pack-era interior. On this day, the staff were putting up the Halloween decorations to some good music on its jukebox, and somehow we persevered to find out what cool projects Dominguez is up to lately.

Edge 69, the Casa Libre reading series of emerging and younger writers, continues tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., with Jia Oak Baker, Roberto Bedoya and John Myers, at the 228 N 4th Ave. literary arts center. Suggested donation is $5.

Reading tonight is Jia Oak Baker, author of a forthcoming chapbook, Crash Landing in the Plaza of an Unknown City, from Dancing Girl Press and recipient of the 2013 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award; and John Myers, a social worker and writer living in Tucson with his partner Brian Blanchfield, who has work published inPank, Ilk, Spork, Abjective, Frigg, Handsome, Word For/Word, The Bakery Poetry, among many others.

But I'm particularly excited to see Tucson Pima Arts Council's Executive Director Roberto Bedoya. A writer and arts consultant who has worked on projects for the Creative Capital Foundation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts
(Creative Capital's State Research Project), The Ford Foundation (Mapping Native American Cultural Policy), and more, is also the the author of the chapbook, The Ballad of Cholo Dandy from Chax.

One topic Bedoya has written extensively on is placemaking and creative placemaking, and recently swimming through the Facebook internets was a beautifully written essay from Bedoya in Creative Time Reports titled "Spacial Justice: Rasquachification, Race and the City," that looks at gentrification, placemaking and the Chicano practice of Rasquachification and how placekeeping could expand racial justice.

I don't know what Bedoya is sharing tonight, but I know this essay—you can read it in its entirety here—is a great reminder for Tucson's own struggles with gentrification, and a good reminder om how we need to work to hold it all together with "rasquachismo":

The scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto describes Rasquache as a Chicano aesthetic with an “attitude rooted in resourcefulness and adaptability yet mindful of stance and style.” Evoking rasquachismo from an artist’s perspective, Amalia Mesa-Bains calls it “the capacity to hold life together with bits of string, old coffee cans, and broken mirrors in a dazzling gesture of aesthetic bravado.” When I think of rasquachismo, I think of repurposing a tire into a flowerpot that you would never find at Home Depot. Such an object signifies the imaginary structured by resourcefulness, and prompted by poverty, which is distinct from the imaginary imposed by the monetization of neighborhoods, a prevailing objective in urban development.

Rasquachification messes with the white spatial imaginary and offers up another symbolic culture—combinatory, used and reused. The Rasquache spatial imaginary is the culture of lowriders who embrace the street in a tempo parade of coolness; it’s the roaming dog that marks its territory; it’s the defiance signified by a bright, bright, bright house; it’s the fountain of the peeing boy in the front yard; it’s the DIY car mechanic, leather upholsterer or wedding-dress maker working out of his or her garage with the door open to the street; it’s the porch where the elders watch; and it’s the respected neighborhood watch program. Rasquachification challenges America’s deep racial divide through acts of ultravisibility undertaken by those rendered invisible by the dominant ideology of whiteness.

Rasquachification is also what the community activist Jenny Lee calls placekeeping—not just preserving the facade of the building but also keeping the cultural memories associated with a locale alive, keeping the tree once planted in the memory of a loved one lost in a war and keeping the tenants who have raised their family in an apartment. It is a call to hold on to the stories told on the streets by the locals, and to keep the sounds ringing out in a neighborhood populated by musicians who perform at the corner bar or social hall.

A series of town hall meetings on the direction and role of the UA Museum of Art begin on Tuesday, Oct. 21 for staff, faculty, students and the Tucson community.

The meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 21, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. is for faculty and staff; for students the town hall is on Thursday, Oct. 23, from 1 to 2:30 p.m.; for partners, members and donors the meeting is Wednesday, Oct. 29, 9:30 to 11 a.m.; and artists and gallery staff will meeting on Friday, Oct. 31, from 10 to 11:30 a.m.
9:30-11 a.m. There's time set aside for Tucson media, on Wednesday, Nov. 5, from 3 to 4:30 p.m.; educators on Friday, Nov. 7, from 3 to 4:30 p.m.; and then finally the Tucson community, on Thursday, Nov. 13, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

From UA:

With roots on campus since the 1930s, the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is a crucial and highly visible asset and educational center on campus. We need your help to keep it that way. With the start of our new director, W. James Burns, we will be holding a series of Town Hall Meetings to hear from faculty, staff, students, and the Tucson community on their thoughts about the role and direction of the Museum of Art. We welcome all opinions, whether you are a museum regular or have never visited.

Town Hall Meetings will last 1.5 hours. Participate in a lively discussion on the future of your museum. The museum is located at 1031 N. Olive Road, next to the School of Art and at the corner of Park and Speedway. Parking is available at the Park Street Garage.

...

We welcome your opinion — if you are unable to attend on the date scheduled for the group you identify with, you are welcome to attend any town hall meeting that fits your schedule

To RSVP, go here. If you want additional info, call the museum at 621-7567 or email [email protected]; and the museum wesbite www.artmuseum.arizona.edu.

On the exhibit and digital archive:

"The Documented Border" exhibit and a digital archive shares original research material collected and curated by University of Arizona faculty on the US-Mexico border. This innovative open access archive documents personal stories of journalists who have been silenced and government processes that cannot be videotaped or photographed.

Contributing faculty include Celeste González de Bustamante and Jeannine Relly from the Center for Border and Global Journalism and the School of Journalism, Lawrence Gipe from the School of Art, and Verónica Reyes-Escudero, borderlands curator from Special Collections, and Erika Castaño, digital archivist with the University Libraries. The yearlong collaborative project was funded by the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry at the University of Arizona.

Look Tucson, we haven't had this talk. It's been on my mind lately, but with this month's staging of what is sure to be an amazing performance of a mariachi opera from the Arizona Opera company, it's time to stage an intervention. Do not wait, like you usually do to buy tickets. That rude behavior that has everyone trained to be on the edge of their seats until the day before a show opens when you finally make up your mind what you're going to do that night. Stop. Doing. That.

No. Please. You can do this. I believe in you. It starts with the production of "Cruzar la Cara de la Luna." The show opens in Phoenix and there are only two performances scheduled for Tucson: Saturday, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m. and
Sunday, Oct. 19, 2 p.m.

The opera, which features Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, was written by José “Pepe” Martínez and Leonard Foglia and commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera.

From Arizona Opera:

Where is home?
Is it where we are born?
Or where we live most of our lives?
Is it with the family we leave behind or with the new ones we create?

To Cross the Face of the Moon / Cruzar la Cara de la Luna follows three generations of a single family, divided by countries and cultures. As a Mexican/American man deals with the approaching death of his father, he is forced to face these questions about his own place in the world — straddling two cultures — as well as that of his immigrant father and his American daughter. As long-buried secrets are revealed, he finds himself dramatically re-evaluating his own understanding of what makes a family. Like the Monarch butterflies that migrate every year to the birthplace of his father, the members of the Velasquez family must travel both physically and spiritually between Michoacán and Texas and look deep into their hearts before they learn where they truly belong. —Leonard Foglia

Tickets and more info, go to www.azopera.org.

The play, at ZUZI’S Theater, 738 N. 5th Ave., runs through Oct. 5. Tickets opening night are $24, and the remaining run $20 general admission, $17 seniors and $14 for students. For more info or reservations, call 882-7406.

From Borderlands:

(Hernandez) was thrown into a whirlwind of publicity after he became a national hero. Reyes examines how, “as his private life becomes public, Daniel’s family and upbringing in South Tucson provide the backbone that empowers him.” "They Call Me A Hero," is an honest and touching story about the importance of caring for others.

...

Reyes ... examines the relationship between gun violence and mental illness with additional research, outside of Hernandez’s memoir, into the life of gunman, Jared Lee Loughner. The play bears witness to how the elimination of bilingual education in Tucson shaped Daniel’s political intellect. Most meaningful is the depiction of a young, gay, Latino role model who perseveres.

"They Call Me A Hero is a quintessential Tucson story about a bi-cultural, intelligent, compassionate young man from humble beginnings who realized the value of helping others from an early age. His story encompasses familiar Tucson values: the importance of family, compassion, civic participation, and resilience. Daniel’s journey of self realization is something that all Tucsonans - Democrat or Republican, gay or not, Latino or otherwise - can learn from.

• Andres Volovsek

That's what playwright Dawn Costello Sellers has crafted here with beautiful direction from Eva Tessler, showing us that when man meddles with nature, not only does it create a complicated mess and tragedy, but it also compromises our own survival, both physically and spiritually.

The true tale took place in 2009, when a biologist with the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project set a snare trap in the Atascosa Mountains west of Nogales and north of the border in hopes of trapping a male jaguar, using female jaguar feces to attract him. The elusive jaguar, an animal not seen in the area since the mid-'90s, had been photographed and with that egos and politics went to work and the bureaucracy meant to protect Macho B, failed—failed big time.

The female feces worked, Macho B was caught in the snare—the animal panicked and severely injured himself unable to break free. Biologists found him, drugged him with Telazol and put a radio collar on him. The jaguar, hypothermic and injured, died days later. It took investigations from several agencies and the guilty conscious of one of the biologists involved, to get an idea of what really happened—the careless crusade to tag this jaguar for glory.

In "Jaguar!," the same story is told, but through the eyes of Moon (Avis Judd), who protects Macho B (Christopher Johnson) and loves him with all her heart. There's also a little girl, Maya (Milta Ortiz), who happens to love nature, but just a little too much. She's us—the human who explores, catches and collects—sometimes holding in her hands just a little too tightly. Moon lectures Maya, who eventually dreams of finding jaguar. We watch Maya grow up to become a biologist, hired to work with the biologist and his assistant on the hunt for Macho B (played by Brian Taraz and Tenoch Gomez, respectively).

Together this cast deftly tells the story of Macho B as if telling us the same folktale that's been told over and over again over the centuries about jaguar—how much humankind has loved and worshiped him, and his mystery and power. Moon helps with this, too: When she wears her mask, she is the storyteller and without the mask, she is our conscious that deep down feels pained with every wrong, reminding us, or really Maya, to be better, and reminding her precious jaguar to be careful. After all, "people aren't always the brightest."

In a conversation between Moon and Maya is the obvious, such foolish people we are: "I can't see in the desert without you," Maya tells Moon. "You can't see in the desert with me," Moon answers.

By the end of the play, the lessons are clear and Maya is transformed—emotionally and physically—just like we should be or at least should have been once we heard the full true tale of Macho B, sacrificed for needless scientific glory and a broken system.

I have to say that watching Judd as Moon, with Oritz playing Maya and Johnson as Macho B, is delightful. They are perfect in their roles. Joining them are three coati played by Yvonne Montoya, Sherry Mulholland and Anjelina Mendibles, who dance and play with jaguar—mischief makers who share the desert with Macho B, and live in fear and love of him. Nannette Robinson also does beautiful aerial work as Moon hanging sky, the evening stars as her backdrop.

The matinee I caught was a school-day production, the audience a large group of middle school students from Palo Verde Middle School, who seemed to enjoy the production and had great questions for the cast and crew at the end of the show. But what's unique about this play, is this storytelling method Seller's uses, and I could see a younger set of kids easily letting go and entering Maya's world, a world they love and know that comes with their own desires to catch butterflies and poke at lizards, all with curiosity and sometimes love. At the end, they'd understand the injustice deftly.

Then there's us who know better at this point. Have we completely given up on being transformed? Are we so jaded now that nature has no place in our hearts? "Jaguar!" is a mirror for us, a folktale that needs to become part of our consciousness in order for us to finally do what's right: Protect what we have left and allow the transformation of a new world to take place.

The Latina Dance Theater Project has given Tucson a gift, a beautifully crafted play about what we did to Macho B that left us with profound lessons. Keeping Macho B's memory alive, well, maybe that's the only way we'll finally learn.

This is the show's closing weekend, tonight and tomorrow, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the 738 N. 5th Ave. theater. For more info, go to jaguarplay.com.

Shakespeare returns to the park tomorrow, Friday, Sept. 19 with "King Lear."

OK, here's part for the CliffsNotes summary on the story of another one of those quirky British kings:

King Lear opens with a conversation between the earls of Kent and Gloucester, in which the audience learns that Gloucester has two sons: Edgar, who is his legitimate heir, and Edmund, his younger illegitimate son. This information will provide the secondary or subplot. Next, King Lear enters to state that he intends to remove himself from life's duties and concerns. Pointing at a map, Lear tells those in attendance that he has divided his kingdom into three shares, to be parceled out to his three daughters, as determined by their protestations of love. The two elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, exaggerate their love by telling their father that their affection for him exceeds all reasonable expectations. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, tells Lear that she loves him, but only as a daughter should love a father. Lear, angry and disappointed at what he deems a lack of devotion on Cordelia's part, divides his kingdom equally between Goneril and Regan, and banishes Cordelia. Later, France agrees to marry the now dowerless and banished Cordelia. When Kent attempts to defend Cordelia, Lear banishes him as well. Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan decide that if Lear becomes too much of a nuisance, they will have to decide what disciplinary actions to take.

The play, brought to you by El Rio Theater Project, is the group’s 8th year bringing theater to the park’s outdoor amphitheater at 1000 N. Tucson Blvd. Bring a blanket or lawn chair. $5 suggested donation.

The play runs two weeks, Friday Sept. 19 to Sunday, Sept. 21 and Friday, Oct. 2 to Sunday, Oct. 5, 7 p.m.

Those good literary-minded people we like so much over at Casa Libre, need a bit of our help ... not a lot, just a little.

Executive Director Kristen Nelson made an announcement today that $2,500 is needed by Wednesday, Oct. 1 due to some the late arrival of some expected grant funds, along with some facility repairs and admin expenses:

We hate to come to you in a crunch, but we also know that you are our people. That we all make Casa Libre what it is together and now we need your help. We need help with general operating system funds, and as the local desert folks can attest, a new air conditioner. It’s really hot here, and we’re not just talking poetry and prose.
We are trying to raise $2,500 by October 1st. Can you help us bridge the gap in our funding until our grant checks arrive?

If 25 people donate $100 or 100 people donate $25, we will reach our goal!

Can you donate $100?
How about $25?
Can you share this announcement via email and/or social media?
Can you come to a Casa Libre event and throw a few extra dollars in the donation jar?
Can you buy a t-shirt or journal?

Any of these things can help. You can make a secure online donation by visiting Network for Good.

Or, you can send a check made out to Casa Libre to:

Casa Libre
228 N. 4th Ave. #2
Tucson, AZ 85705