Macehualli Day Laborers

By:   Salvador Reza
Imprint:   Chantlaca Publications
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 18mm
Weight:   445g
ISBN:   9798988994237
Pages:   332
Publication Date:   02 October 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Salvador Reza was born on November 14, 1951, in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico, unaware that his world would soon change in both name and language. At just nine years old, while playing with his sister Jesusita by the Sacramento River in Majalca, his aunt Elvira suddenly interrupted their laughter with the news that split his childhood in two: ""Salvador, Jesusita! Your mother says to go in the milk truck to Chihuahua, because you are going to the Estaites Naires"" (United States).With the improvised urgency of migrants and the confusion of uprooted children, Salvador's journey north began.His welcome in the United States was harsh. On his first day of school, he was punished with three swats of a wooden paddle for speaking Spanish at recess-a brutal introduction to a system that not only despised his language but also sought to break his spirit. He bent but did not break. Demoted from sixth to fourth grade, he quickly learned English, passed his exams with honors, and understood early on that racism was an obstacle to be overcome, not a wall to surrender to.In high school, Salvador joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) for four years. Later, in the Air Force, he found himself once again facing the system that had tried to tame him. In Biloxi, Mississippi, he witnessed discrimination against the African American community. In Europe, history repeated itself: this time with Turks and southern migrants. Signs in Germany that read ""Dogs and Turks Forbidden"" echoed the same hatred he had seen as a child in Texas.After returning to the United States, and seeking to understand the fabric of the system that humiliates human beings, Salvador studied Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He immersed himself in Latin American literature, searching for the soul of a wounded continent. But he soon discovered that academia could also serve as a factory of accomplices-where teachers and idealists often sold themselves to the highest bidder. Just three chapters short of completing his doctorate, he abandoned the university path and turned to the streets.A natural organizer, Salvador worked in San Diego, then in East L.A., and later spearheaded educational programs during the amnesty of 1986. Yet another disillusionment awaited him: corruption within non-profit organizations disguised as service to the people. Lost between broken ideals and a world unraveling in the Middle East, he fell into alcoholism, like so many dreamers before him-Huey Newton, José Revueltas, the Magón Brothers-idealists trapped in their desire for justice and their attempts to escape reality.It was in 1992, during the Peace and Dignity Journeys-an Indigenous spiritual run from Alaska to Teotihuacan-that Salvador found renewal. The fire of ancestral spirituality pulled him back from the abyss. Since December 18, 1992, he has not touched alcohol or drugs. He found the Red Road.This book is more than memory. It is testimony. The fight against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and SB 1070 was never just about papers or laws-it was about dignity. About the ancestral ways of the Earth, before borders existed. Ancestral memory continues to guide and sing through the veins of those who resist.As a Nahuatl poem reminds us: They plucked our fruits, they cut off our branches, they burned our trunk, but they could not kill our roots.