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Novels

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Guarding the Haven, Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO Born near El Salto, Colima ALEJANDRA HAD TURNED thirty-six recently. Just like her daughter, she was born at home with the help of a mid-wife, but in a different part of the country, in a two-room shack and in a settlement next to an open ore mine. Her place of birth was a shanty wedged on the side of a ravine, along other shanties that hung for dear life on unstable squatted land.…
Pedro Chavez
November 28, 2021
ColumnsNovels

Guarding the Haven, Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE Early December, nineteen-ninety-eight ALEJANDRA HAD AN off-and-on vexing discomfort in her stomach, a strange nagging feeling of queasiness and lightheadedness that had been pestering her all morning long. It worried her because it was different than any other bellyache she had experienced before. She was alone. Her nine-year-old daughter Juanita was at school and her husband Manuel was at work. She thought about resting for a while to see if the rare vexation…
Pedro Chavez
November 15, 2021
Border TalesColumnsMexicaliNovelsStoriesUncategorized

Unscripted Journey: Our Trek North

IMAGE: Some of us with our mother in a photo taken for a local crossing permit. Circa 1950s. There were no triple walls then, in 1962, the year we crossed the border between Mexicali and Calexico in our way to a place that promised us a better future. Triple walls are abundant now in myriad spots along the geopolitical line that defines where Mexico begins and the United States ends. And vice versa. There was…
Pedro Chavez
March 29, 2020