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Cover
Photo from Concrete River, showing
Luis J. Rodriguez at 36 years old
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Luis
J. Rodriguez was born on the U.S./Mexico border in 1954 and
is of Mexika/Raramuri indigenous descent. At the age of two,
his family migrated to Los Angeles, where they settled in
South Central LA. Later, at around age 8, the family moved
to the San Gabriel Valley. In the 1960s and 1970s, Luis was
an active street gang member in the East Los Angeles area,
documented in his memoir "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang
Days in L.A."
He
began stealing at age 7 and joined a gang at age 11. He began
using drugs at age 12. He dropped out of high school at age
15 and was also kicked out of his home, eventually becoming
homeless until he returned to live in the family's garage.
From ages 13 to 18, he was arrested for numerous crimes, including
stealing, fighting, rioting, attempted murder, and assaulting
police officers.
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Despite
his gang activities, Luis also participated in the Chicano
Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 East LA
School Blowouts and the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam
War of August 29, 1970. In addition, in 1972 Luis painted
several murals in the Rosemead/South San Gabriel communities.
He eventually returned to and finished high school, becoming
leader of the Chicano student organization there and leading
several school walkouts. From 1972-73, Luis briefly attended
Cal State College, Los Angeles and became active in MeCha
(Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), becoming MeCha
organizer for East LA high schools.
At
age 18, Luis faced a six-year prison sentence, was hooked
on heroin, and by then 25 of his friends had been killed in
the barrio gang life. Because of his new-found participation
in community work, and after members of the community wrote
letters on his behalf, Luis was given a lesser conviction
and a county jail term. Feeling responsible to the people
who rallied to his defense, Luis turned away from the "Crazy
Life" and dedicated himself to conscious revolutionary thinking
and activity, expanding his organizing efforts to other parts
of East LA as well as Watts/South Central LA, LA's Harbor
area and Pasadena. He also got off drugs at age 19, "cold
turkey." However, he was unable to continue his college courses
and he began work in industry, including four years at the
Bethlehem Steel Mill in Maywood. During that period, he also
worked as a truck driver, a school bus driver, paper mill
worker, a foundry smelter, carpenter, and maintenance mechanic.
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After
taking night classes in East Los Angeles Community College,
in early 1980 Luis began work as a reporter/photographer for
seven East Los Angeles weekly newspapers including the Eastside
Sun. That summer, he was accepted at the Summer Program for
Minority Journalists at UC Berkeley. In the fall, he was hired
as a daily newspaper reporter for the San Bernardino Sun,
where he covered mostly crime, disasters, auto accidents,
and murder stories. He was 26 years old. Luis also returned
to East LA from time to time to run the LA Latino Writers
Association, including its Barrio Writers Workshops and as
editor/publisher of ChismeArte Magazine, where he had offices
at Self Help Graphics in East LA. During this period, he also
freelanced for the LA Weekly and other publications.
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Luis
J. Rodriguez and his
Bestseller, Always Running
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In
the early 1980s, Luis attended workshops in prisons and juvenile
facilities under the tutelage of Manual "Manazar" Gamboa.
He also worked as a radio programmer at KPFK-FM and briefly
for California Public Radio. In late 1982, Luis got out of
the San Bernardino Sun after a dispute with his editor on
journalistic integrity. He then worked on the largest union
representation campaign in U.S. history for the American Federation
of State, County, & Municipal Employees. They eventually won
the right to represent 60,000 clerical and blue-collar employees
of the University of California system. In addition, Luis
covered stories of indigenous uprisings and guerrilla movements
in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
In
1985, a couple of months before his 31st birthday, Luis moved
to Chicago to become editor of the People's Tribune, a national
revolutionary newspaper. There he did analysis of labor, the
homeless and the arts that took him throughout the United
States to cover various fronts of struggle against poverty
and injustice as well as for immigrant and prisoners' rights.
He also freelanced for the Nation Magazine and other publications.
From 1988 to 1993, Luis worked for the Archdiocese of Chicago
in their publications department, Liturgy Training Publications.
He also worked weekends as a news writer and reporter for
WMAQ-AM, then an all-news radio station.
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LJR
at 39 years old
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In
1988, Luis became active in the burgeoning Chicago poetry
scene, birthplace of the Poetry Slams. He helped organize
the Chicago Poetry Festivals and read his work in bars, cafe,
libraries, schools, and other venues. In 1989, Luis started
Tia Chucha Press, a poetry press, with the publication of
his first book "Poems across the Pavement," which over the
years has published Elizabeth Alexander, Kyoko Mori, Diane
Glancy, Denise Duhamel, Nick Carbo, Tony Fitzpatrick, Ricardo
Sanchez, and many more. He also helped found the Guild Complex,
a multi-arts presentation organization. In 1991, Curbstone
Press published his second poetry collection, "The Concrete
River." He also freelanced for publications like US News &
World Report, the Nation, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Utne
Reader, New York Times, and other publications. During this
time, Luis continued to do workshops in prisons, juvenile
facilities, homeless shelters, community centers, and schools
- now expanded to migrant camps, Native American reservations,
and public and private schools around the country.
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When
Curbstone Press first published "Always Running" in hardback
in 1993, Luis, then 39, quit his jobs to dedicate himself
to promoting the book and to his writing career. He went to
30 cities in three months and appeared on many national and
local TV, radio, and newspapers before embarking on a European
tour. The next year, Simon & Schuster's Touchstone Books bought
out the paperback version of "Always Running," which has become
an international bestseller.
After
this, Luis dedicated himself to his own writing projects that
over the years would yield more books - including "Trochemoche,"
a poetry book for Curbstone Press; "America Is Her Name,"
a children's book for Curbstone Press, "It Doesn't Have to
be This Way: A Barrio Story," a children's book for Children's
Book Press, "Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent
Times, a nonfiction book for Seven Stories Press; "The Republic
of East LA: Stories," a short story collection for Rayo Books/HarperCollins;
"Music of the Mill," a novel for Rayo; and "My Nature is Hunger,"
a poetry collection for Curbstone.He
was also interviewed for a photo book by Joseph Rodriguez,
with an essay by Ruben Martinez, called "Eastside Stories:
Gang Life in East Los Angeles," from PowerHouse Books; and
did a poem and essay for "Si Se Puede!/Yes We Can," a children's
book by Diane Cohn, illustrated by Francisco Delgado, for
Cinco Puntos Press.
In
addition, C&C Press out of Pajaro, CA in 2005 began to do
limited edition, numbered & signed, hand-made artist books
of Luis's poetry, including beautifully designed and created
broadsides. By 2008, they published "Seven," "Two Women/Dos
Mujeres," and "Making Medicine." These books were sold to
individual collectors and university archives as well as the
public.
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Luis
travels have included readings, talks and workshops in Paris,
London, Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, Mexico City, and various cities
in Germany, Holland, and Austria (in 1993 as part of the first
US "Slam Poetry" tour with Patricia Smith, Paul Beatty, Neeli
Cherkovsky, Dominique Lowell, and Alan Kaufman). He's also
visited throughout Canada (Toronto, Montreal), Mexico (various
states and cities), Puerto Rico and Central American countries
such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala as
well as the South American countries of Peru and Venezuela,
both as a reporter and has a poet/lecturer for some 30 years.
In November of 2006, he also did readings as part of a promotional
tour of the East LA band Quetzal and David Gomez (DJ dGomez)
in and around Tokyo for Shin Miyata and Barrio Gold Records,
which for years licensed Chicano music for the Japanese market,
including those in the growing Lowrider scene there. In addition,
in early 2000, Luis finished a ten-week reading/talking residency
in North Carolina that took him to universities, colleges,
public and private schools, prisons, juvenile facilities,
migrant camps, and churches (around 21 events a week).
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(L
to R) Robert Redford, founder of the Sundance
Institute; Luis J. Rodriguez, recipient of a 2002
Sundance Institute Arts Writing Fellowship; Susan
Gerhard, senior editor of the San Francisco Bay
Guardian and a 2002 fellowship recipient; Margo
Jefferson, New York Times columnist and Creative
Advisor for the Sundance Institute Arts Writing
program; Jason Shinder, director of the Arts Writing
Program; and Chloe Veltman, freelance writer,
critic and 2002 fellowship recipient (Photo -Chloe
Veltman).
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In
1994, Luis helped found Youth Struggling for Survival, working
with gang and nongang youth (and the Increase the Peace Network
and, in 2000, the Humboldt Park Teen Reach in collaboration
with other gang peace and intervention organizations). In
1994, he began working with Michael Meade and the Mosaic Multicultural
Foundation doing retreats, conferences and workshops utilizing
poetry, story, drumming, dance, and emerging rituals to address
issues of initiation and youth-elder mentoring. He continues
to work with Michael Meade and spiritual practitioners like
Jack Kornfield, Orland Bishop and Malidoma Some. In the early
1990s, he was also a cofounder of LA's Rock A Mole Productions
that produces CDs, films, and music & art festival. And in
1995, Luis and his wife Trini were also founding members of
the League of Revolutionaries for a New America - an organization
dedicated to the comprehensive revolutionary education and
activity vital for truly just and equitable social change
in this country.
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LJR
CD -My Name's Not Rodriguez
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Also
by 1995, Luis returned to his indigenous roots, participating
in Native American ceremonies in Chicago and various reservations,
including the Lakota and Navajo reservations. In addition, he
connected with his Mexika/Tolteka traditions in Mexico through
the In Koltonal Spiritual House in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, part
of the Mexikayotl spiritual movement of indigenous people in
Mexico. And he began visiting areas of his own indigenous roots,
such as the Sierra Tarahumara, home of the Raramuri people,
in Southern Chihuahua. In 1998, Luis received his Nahuatl name,
Xikome Tochtli, based on the Mexika Sun Stone Calendar in a
ceremony, held in Chicago, with members of the Kalpulli Yetlenazi-Tolteka
Trece. In 2000, he received a Navajo ceremonial name with the
guidance and teachings of Medicine Man, Anthony Lee on the Navajo
(Dine) Reservation. The year before, Anthony Lee had adopted
Trini as his spiritual daughter. |
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In
addition, Trini and Luis have participated in indigenous ceremonies
among the Quechua people of Peru. And they are both founders
and water-pourers for the Northeast San Fernando Valley Sweat
Lodge Circle.
In
the summer of the year 2000, Luis, 46, and his family moved
to the Northeast San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles,
where Trini grew up. The following year, Luis, Trini, and
their brother-in-law, Enrique Sanchez, a long-time community
activist and business man, helped create Tia Chucha's Café
Cultural - a bookstore, café, art gallery, and performance
space in Sylmar, CA. In the summer of 2003, Luis also helped
found a not-for-profit cultural center next door called Tia
Chucha's Centro Cultural, which also houses Dos Manos
Records, Xispas Magazine (an online magazine where Luis serves
as editor), and Tia
Chucha Press, which now has published more than 40 poetry
books and a CD (distributed by Northwestern University Press).
In 2002, Luis also created, with Ernie Perez, his first CD
of poetry and music called "My Name's Not Rodriguez," with
plans to produce other musicians and poets through Dos Manos
Records.
On
a more personal note, Trini is Luis's third wife, whom he
married in 1988. She has become his spiritual companion as
well as business and political partner in the work he does
in the community and throughout the country. Helping stabilize
his relationships involved becoming sober in June of 1993
after seven years of drug use and 20 years of drinking. By
early 2008, Luis - going on 54 years - has four children:
Ramiro, 32, presently incarcerated in an Illinois State Prison;
Andrea, 30, a teacher and the first in the family to finish
college; Ruben, 19, and Luis, 13. He also has four grandchildren:
Ricardo, 15; Anastasia, 14; Amanda Mae, 12; Catalina, 11.
In
early 2007, Tia Chucha's Cafe Cultural had to move from its
Sylmar, CA location due to a tripling of rent when the landlords
wanted to bring in a multi-million dollar laundromat. However,
they found a temporary location in Lake View Terrace, and
turned everything over to the non-profit Centro Cultural by
March of that year. They are presently working on finding
a bigger, better and permanent Tia Chucha's in the Northeast
San Fernando Valley, obtaining the support of such luminaries
as Bruce Springsteen, John Densmore of the Doors, Cheech Marin,
Dave Marsh of Rock & Rap Confidential, the poet Adrienne Rich,
as well as the LA City Department of Cultural Affairs, LA's
Community Redevelopment Agency, Liberty Hill, LA County Arts
Commission, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the Middleton Foundation,
and many more.
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Luis
is still running Tia Chucha Press - with new poets published
such as ariel robello, Patricia Spears Jones, Alfred Arteaga,
Linda Susan Jackson, and Richard Vargas - and working on new
writing projects, including another memoir, a documentary
film on gangs and their solutions (with Cookie Carosella of
Tuff Cookie Productions), and a couple of feature film projects,
including for "Always Running."
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