Steve Klinger

01-lomas-del-poleo

I wrote this song last fall about the settlemen of Lomas del Poleo, which once had 300 families but now is down to 13 after the powerful Zaragoza family laid siege to the community, erecting guard towers and barbed wire to force residents to leave or hold them hostage. The colonia is in the path of binational development–a huge industrial development that will encompass both sides of the border–and has been the object of a land dispute between settlers who were told it was federal land, and the Zaragozas, who claim they own it.  Buildings have been razed, residents burned and beaten to death, but Mexican authorities have declined to get involved, except for a seemingly endless case to resolve the ownership in Agrarian Court in Chihuahua City. For background, check the archives at www.grass-roots-press.com or type Lomas del Poleo into a search engine to find numerous articles and video.

Here are the song lyrics, based on the actual history of the dispute:

LOMAS DEL POLEO
By Steve Klinger © 2008

On top of a hill
We built our homes in north Mexico
On federal land
Just southwest of old El Paso

We put up our shacks
On soil where little but pennyroyal grows
But we had each other
And our homes in Lomas del Poleo

We built a school and a kindergarten ourselves
We called our small chapel Jesus of Nazareth

Todavía vivimos
En Lomas del Poleo
No nos ayudará nadie
Con estos hombres muy feo?
Solamente queremos
En nuestras casas a vivir
Y que nuestros niños
No se van a morir

After thirty years
Some rich men suddenly showed up one day
Laid claim to our land
And told us we must move away

They spoke not a word
Of the plans to develop and put a road through
To the U.S. side
And the land’s future value

A local court ruled that they could turn our power off
Then they brought in armed guards who sure treated us rough

Todavía vivimos
En Lomas del Poleo
No nos ayudará nadie
Con estos hombres muy feo?
Solamente queremos
En nuestras casas a vivir
Y que nuestros niños
No se van a morir

These Zaragozas
Paid thugs to demolish our homes one by one
They beat us with bats
And now our Luis he is gone

They cut off our water
And fenced our colonia in with barbed wire
Two thugs set the flame
And two children died in the fire

The governor of Chihuahua has turned a deaf ear
The federal lawsuit drags on year after year

Todavía vivimos
En Lomas del Poleo
No nos ayudará nadie
Con estos hombres muy feo?
Solamente queremos
En nuestras casas a vivir
Y que nuestros niños
No se van a morir

(Instrumental break)

All of us live
in Lomas del Poleo
As we lived in Dachau,
Manzanar and Soweto
None among is free
While our brothers are oppressed
So speak out we must
Till these crimes are redressed
So speak out we must
Till these crimes are redressed

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.