Far-Out Juarez: Géminis Ochoa

 

I first became aware of Géminis Ochoa a few years back, when I was watching the evening newscast on one of Juárez's Mexican TV stations. There he was being interviewed, this one-armed man with long, flowing, salt-and-pepper hair all the way down to his waist, who, together with other members of the “radical” street vendors union “Che Guevara,” was staging a protest on the Mexican side of the Paso del Norte international bridge.

The video-images of that protest immediately caught my attention, and when I heard all the outrageous, far-out things that Géminis was saying in a very animated, rapid-fire way, I remember saying to myself with a smile: “Wow! This guy actually seems to be crazier than I am! Somehow I've got to interview this guy.”

The following day, I got caught up doing other things -- as always -- and so my Géminis project was relegated to the back burner. Nevertheless, I kept reading about Géminis and his social activism in the Juárez newspapers from time to time (for that protest at the bridge, he eventually got arrested and sent to the Juárez Cereso prison, where he ended up spending six months), and so I was able to keep tabs on him, sort of. But I never seemed to have the time and/or the means to go to Juárez and look for him.

Then, last May, I saw news videos and read newspaper stories about how Géminis had been sometido físicamente (“physically manhandled” -- in other words, beaten up) by Juárez cops for trying to stop them from removing the street vendors, their stalls and their wares from the sidewalks of Downtown Juárez. There he was in an almost full-page photograph in one of the Juárez newspapers. In the photo, one cop had him in a headlock while the other was forcefully grabbing his only arm, while his familiar long hair was flying wildly in all directions. Then, in early June, there he was again in the news; this time, Géminis had sewn his lips during a sit-in protest staged at the foot of the front steps of the Juárez city hall building.

Well, after that, I had no excuse whatsoever left. I just had to meet and interview him, no matter what.

So after almost a month of unfruitful inquiries and failed attempts to contact him, I was finally able to track him down.

What follows is -- finally! -- the result of my meeting with Géminis last week in Downtown Juárez.

The Background

Géminis Ochoa Castro, 32, was born on Oct. 29, 1973, in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco. He was raised mostly in Bahía de Kino, and Hermosillo, Sonora. When he was 19 years old, he arrived in Juárez with his father, with whom he has traveled, since infancy, up and down the Mexican Republic, “literally all the way from the Yucatán peninsula to Tijuana, Baja California, on the U.S.-Mexico border,” he likes to point out.

His father, Mario Héctor Ochoa, 56, and Géminis, traveled to Juárez by jumping on a freight train. “My father is a real aventurero (adventurer, traveler, wanderer, seeker), and always has been. He has a lot of wanderlust in his blood, and I think I inherited a good dose of it myself, although not as much as he has. My father is the type of guy who you see in Juárez one day, on his bicycle … and then three or four days later he'll turn up in Mazatlán, or Bahía de Kino, still on that same bike. If he wakes up and feels like being somewhere else, he'll just go. Anyway, on one of those types of days, we ended up in Juárez.”

When Géminis got to Juárez, he didn't have a cent to his name. He started selling newspapers on the street, specifically the afternoon paper “El Mexicano,” in order to eat. While doing this, he got to know many street vendors Downtown, and became fed up with seeing how the cops constantly abused them, confiscating their merchandise, extorting money from them, and even beating them from time to time.

Thinking that if they were organized they wouldn't be so abused, Géminis started recruiting some of the street vendors to create a union.

“I wanted to help my fellow street vendors protect themselves from these abuses and harassments, and so we created the Che Guevara Street Vendors Union. It was founded in the late ‘90s, when Gustavo Elizondo was the mayor of Juárez,” he recalled.

The Interview

NPT: What's the structure of this union like?

Ochoa: There are no leadership positions in the Che Guevara Union. We're all mates, all comrades; we're partners, all equal. I am only one of the members, just like everyone else that's a member.

NPT: Why did you choose the name Che Guevara?

Ochoa: Because through readings, we got to know this man and came to admire his story. I consider Ernesto “Che” Guevara one of my mentors. Him, and God, and the Mexican Constitution. I consider Che Guevara my teacher. He didn't believe in hierarchies, he believed in the equality of men.

NPT: You mentioned God. Do you really believe in God?

Ochoa: Yes, but my god is not the god of the Jews. We visualize an internal god. God is not like they paint him. My god is not going to reproach or punish me when I die. He's not going to tell me that I'm going to hell. With the passing of the years, you come to realize that the powers that be have deceived the community with the established religions.

We believe that one has to work in order to earn one's bread, but without taking anything from anyone, and above all, without exploiting one's fellow man.

NPT: So how do these beliefs hold out in Juárez?

Ochoa: Here in Juárez there is no equality, no fairness. The minimum wage is literally a joke in very bad taste. We, the members of the Che Guevara Union, pursue the ideal of living in freedom -- that's why we've chosen to work and live as street vendors. We're certainly not going to work at a maquiladora assembly plant for a paltry $50 dollars a week, and we're most certainly not going to earn our living by robbing, or by prostituting ourselves.

NPT: What about your political beliefs?

Ochoa: We don't believe that the local authorities have the power to enact whatever petty laws they wish, according to their own selfish interests; but we also don't believe in rebelliousness for rebelliousness' sake. We do believe in la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the Mexican Constitution).

NPT: How many times have you been in the Cereso prison of Juárez?

Ochoa: Well, just to be clear, first let me say that I had never been to jail until I started my political and social activism. Since then, I've been in the Cereso five times. Included among the charges they've tried to frame me with are mutiny, sabotage, attacking the general roadways and byways of communication, injuries or battery -- supposedly because during our peaceful protests or “resistencias,” some policemen have been “injured” after they started attacking us physically -- dangerous attacks, whatever that means, resisting arrest, resisting particulars, again, whatever that might mean, etc., etc. To give you an idea of how much the local authorities hate me, let me just say that my police file is about 10 inches thick.

The most time I've done at the Cereso at one stretch is six months, after which I was exonerated from most of the charges stemming from the sit-in protest we did at the Paso del Norte bridge at the beginning of April 2004. We stayed there for about 15 days, not allowing the toll takers on the Mexican side of the bridge to charge anyone -- vehicles or pedestrians -- for crossing over into El Paso. So everyone crossed to El Paso free for that period of time. Of course, this bothered the authorities a great deal. We weren't impeding the crossing of vehicles or pedestrians, but instead, only blocking the toll takers from charging these people for using that bridge.

After two weeks of this, the authorities arrested me and took me to Cereso prison. I ended up spending six months locked up, and then, when I went before the judge, he gave me “time served” for the one charge that was still pending: a fine of approximately $290,000 pesos, which is what the federal authorities claimed they had lost during those glorious two weeks. So supposedly I was ‘indemnifying' them for their losses by serving those six months in jail. In a way, the judge did the only logical thing he could do, for I'm certain that he was plainly aware that being in jail was the only possible way I could compensate them, since I sure as hell didn't have -- and still don't have -- $290,000 in the bank. In fact, I don't even have a bank account, let alone any money in it.

NPT: What's the difference between the Che Guevara Union and other labor unions in Juárez?

Ochoa: We're more radical. When the local government doesn't accept reasonableness, we don't go to armed combat, but we are willing to fight with our fists and feet against them to defend our reasons, our rights and our civil liberties, as they are laid out in the Mexican Constitution. In fact, that's all we ask -- that the local authorities respect and abide by the Mexican Constitution of 1911, nothing more, nothing less. There are very important stipulations in the Constitution, like for example the right to work that every Mexican citizen has, according to the fifth constitutional article. And the derecho al libre tránsito, which is the right that every Mexican has to freely travel within the territory of the Mexican Republic, to whichever point of Mexico he wants, up and down, across and over, without any impediment whatsoever from the authorities or anyone else.

NPT: What was all that brouhaha, all that commotion we saw splattered all over the front pages of the Juárez newspapers during mid-May this year?

Ochoa: On May 16, we fought against the Juárez police because they started removing us and our stalls from the streets of Corregidora, La Paz and Amado Nervo in the downtown area located behind and to the east of the Mercado Cuauhtémoc. The cops beat the hell out of me -- once again -- and even the chief of the Juárez Police Department, Guillermo Prieto Quintana, personally gave me a beating when I arrived to the holding cells before being taken to the Cereso. I made bail and got out on May 20, only to find out upon being freed that my dad had been arrested for ‘attempted homicide' during that same incident when they tried kicked us out of the mentioned streets; and that my son had been arrested shortly thereafter for holding a protest banner during a peaceful demonstration in Downtown Juárez asking that I be freed from prison, since I hadn't attacked anyone, or initiated anything, but in fact quite the contrary. Because it was the cops who started physically attacking us, and at first I was just asking them to stop, that there was another way of resolving this situation, that instead of physically attacking us and trying to remove us by force, what the authorities should do is sit down and negotiate a peaceful solution with us. But of course they didn't want to listen to anything I said. Instead, they started manhandling me and then outright punching me.

NPT: And then, at the beginning of June in front of the Juarez city hall building, what was that all about?

Ochoa: On that occasion I sewed my lips in protest that my son had been arrested and sent to Juvenile Hall for that peaceful protest action he had participated in. I mean, who ever heard of someone being arrested for holding a completely peaceful protest demonstration? Aren't we supposed to be in a democracy? After all, I'm not in Cuba, or in China, but instead in what's supposed to be a free country, am I not? The local authorities made it quite clear to me that I should shut up about this matter or else … I was literally told to shut my mouth, unless I wanted to end up back in the Cereso. So in protest, and as a matter of illustrating this in public, I decided to sew my lips shut, as a way of telling the Juárez authorities: you want to shut me up, to silence me, and by taking this action I'm showing you, literally, the only way you're going to be able to do this to me. Of course, it was also a protest against the total lack of freedom of speech in Mexico.

NPT: It seems like the local government hates you quite a bit. Why do you think that is?

Ochoa: The Juárez government says I'm a professional agitator just because I choose to stand on a street corner with a placard protesting the completely illegal removal of our persons and booths from the streets. I think the local authorities hate me because I choose to stand up and defend my constitutional rights, instead of lying down and letting them walk all over me. We believe that the day will come when the Mexican people will start demanding respect for the Constitution and their constitutional rights, and that then the governmental authorities will have no choice but to start respecting the law, instead of trampling all over it, like they do nowadays.

NPT: Can't help but noticing the tattoos. What do they mean?

Ochoa: Each one of my tattoos has a specific meaning. The national seal of Mexico (the eagle eating a serpent, on top of a nopal cactus), on the right side of my neck, symbolizes my patriotism, since I'm a nacionalista. I love Mexico and the Mexican people to death, even if I'm not all that crazy about the Mexican government. The tattoo of Che Guevara on the left side of my neck represents ‘Pure Socialism.' Not the communist-fascist governments of Cuba, or China, or the old Soviet Union. In fact, Che broke from Fidel Castro precisely because of this. He felt that Castro was on the path toward fascism/authoritarianism/dictatorship, and he completely disagreed with it. Imagine his degree of disenchantment with Fidel Castro! That's why he left for Bolivia, to continue to pursue his dream of a free Latin America, where everyone would be equal.

The Freemason symbol on the front of my neck and upper part of my chest symbolizes being unified with the universe. To be in harmony with ‘the great architect,' as they like to say. The unicorn on the left side of my forehead signifies purity of thought, which doesn't mean I have it. After all, we don't believe man is perfect, but perfectible. The Santísima Muerte (literally, ‘Holiest Death') tattoo on the inside part of my forearm means that for me death is not the end, but a beginning. A new door, as it were … to where? I wish I knew. But I do know it's not the end. The tattoo on the outside part of my forearm I call ‘Religion Discarnate' or ‘The Virgen without a Mask,' because I feel that religion has deceived the people. Like Karl Marx said, religion is the opium of the masses.

NPT: When it comes to laws at the local level, where do you draw the line?

Ochoa: For us, the only law worth anything is a version of the so-called golden rule: Do not do unto others what you wouldn't want others to do to you. Everything else is a bunch of bullshit. Most other ‘rules' or ‘concepts' or ‘laws,' at all levels, are nothing but ideological prisons with which others want to trap or confine you.

We don't believe in dualities. And we certainly don't believe that there's a reward after death for living a so-called ‘good' life, nor a punishment for having lived a ‘bad' life. In fact, we believe that after death, neither one of those things apply. For us, death is only a door to a new reality.

My father is a total atheist, but I'm not. I do believe there is a god, a universal force. Not an anthropomorphic God, like the one depicted in the Bible. Perhaps a supreme being, yes, but not a vengeful god.

NPT: Going back to the Che Guevara Union, I was wondering, if there's no structure, just how do you survive?

Ochoa: Our organization does not ask for a fee to join it. It does not bill its members for any kind of membership fees. Nor does our union sell itself to political parties in exchange for votes, or favors, or whatever. We are totally apolitical when it comes to the Mexican political parties. We are anarchists, and we only abide by the Mexican Constitution. We don't believe in the local laws. And I'll tell you exactly how, and why, we are able to survive: through brotherhood and comradeship. For example, when one of our members get sick, we all get together and cooperate by pooling our money together to pay for his medicines and treatments. In that sense, we are a true “cooperative.” Perhaps the truest form of cooperative there is. But we don't have an office, or leaders.

NPT: When it comes to unusual names, does it stop with you, or do you have any relatives who are also named unusually?

Ochoa: My father started the trend, and I've continued it. I have a brother named Jehovah, who is literally a hermit, since he spends most of his time up in the mountains, up in the sierra. He likes to come down sometimes and work in the fields, in grapevines, mostly. But he spends most of the year in the wilderness. I also have a granddaughter who I named Jerusalem.

This is what the local authorities think of me. They say that I’m virtually identical to this doll. Needless to say, that’s not what I think of myself.