La Corua Digital Art
  • Home
  • Barrios
    • Gardens
  • People
  • Folklore
  • Border
    • En Memoriam
  • Codex
    • Graphics >
      • THCC

The late great Ed Keeylocko

9/10/2020

 
Ed Keeylocko & Jazz
With his horse, Jazz
Ed Keeylocko close-up
ed's horse
Jazz
Born Edward J. Brooks, a black man who had faced adversity all his life, he wanted a place where everyone was welcome - from immigrants to city folks who stumbled off the beaten path.  An Army Ranger who fought in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, Ed Keeylocko started his own town southwest of Tucson after his cows were rejected at a local auction when it was discovered he was black.

Keeylocko was his own unique brand of rancher who understood the interplay and connection between all living things and bred his cattle accordingly.  He was a U of A graduate with a degree in agriculture and was concerned about how the lack of foresight and degradation of the natural world would sustain a growing population.  He was a proponent of environmental education, and built a little research library that contained out-of print books about ancient civilizations around the world.  (A man after my own heart!)  He considered himself to be a steward of the land as well as a cowboy.
I first learned about this remarkable man from an old episode of Arizona Illustrated and fell in love -- then, as usual, life happened.  In 2018, when I heard of his passing I did an extensive web search, gathering articles and photos and watching videos of him and his life, and vowed to do a painting of him. Then the Trump War on Asylum Seekers sucked up national oxygen and my attention turned elsewhere.


Nicole Santa Cruz in the Seattle Times, 2010: 

"Keeylocko was born in South Carolina in 1931. Abandoned by his mother, he was rescued by a woman who gave him the name Keeylock (he added the O later). He left home at 14 and traveled America as a hobo before serving in the Army for 23 years.

He then attended the University of Arizona, earning degrees in agriculture, because he wanted to breed aggressive, well-armed cattle that could protect themselves on the range. (“Give them back their horns,” he says.) After experiencing discrimination at a cattle auction, he decided to create his ranch.
Keeylocko’s life is as unpredictable as the Wild West. He’s an ordained minister. And he has traveled the country, giving lectures on black cowboys.

“There are people that believe that people like me only play basketball, football, dance or maybe play the banjo,” he said. “What they don’t know is, there were black cowboys long before there were white cowboys.”

His life has made him open to welcoming anyone in his town, regardless of color, or as is the case in southern Arizona, regardless of citizenship. He’s known for chasing the Border Patrol off his property.
“I tell people that Cowtown Keeylocko doesn’t choose who comes here,” he said. “That’s the real West.”
Those he welcomes include illegal immigrants who come for water — from the U.S.-Mexico border, less than 50 miles away.

On a recent afternoon, Keeylocko continued to nurse his tequila at the bar, sweating slightly. Aside from the faint hum of a fan, which didn’t provide much relief, the only sounds were insects chirping. Keeylocko’s eyes became soft...
    A person has to go back to the land,” he said. “It creates thought.”
This painting came about because of the horrific chain of national events in 2020.
My life has not been the same since.
When the triple-murders of Ahmaud, Breonna, and George Floyd slammed in one after the other, my entire life foundations crumbled.  I was raised with a set of values that promoted diversity as God's Christian soldiers. Further, I had plenty of first-hand witness to Arizona's brand of bigotry.  But the depth of nation-wide systemic racism revealed itself in new ways to me everywhere. It is inescapable by design-- giving me a creeping nausea in the pit of my stomach every day, and I realized for the first time that America's Original Sin is still very much who we are. With it, I began to see how much even my upbringing was a white-washed version of the White Lie, filled with sins by omission.

Meanwhile, the covid virus was spreading death across the country.  The 45th president ridiculed everything that wasn't his idea and peddled snake oil. Unmasked faces wearing MAGA hats and battle gear and brandishing assault weapons rallied to his defense around the country.  Various "patriot" and confederate flags flew along streets, storefronts, and from pickup trucks everywhere. But Queen Covid didn't care and claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives unabated.  Conspiracy theories and vitriol flooded social media stoked by the president, igniting real-life incidents.  Violence was now "Patriotism", and humanitarians were now "Radical Left Socialists".

It felt like my very core was under siege. I have lived through a number of "scares" in my time, but nothing like this. This was batshit crazy.

So I shut down my social media accounts and joined the real world again through the peace of covid sequester in my home. 2020-21 were years of inner reconstruction and outer grounding.

Here finally, after months in the making, is my vision of Ed J.B. Keeylocko.  I brought out his "swamp" green eyes.  Above him is his signature Blue Dog Saloon.  I include his pinto horse, Jazz, who seemed to be a good fit for this painting.  He was an incredible man and led an incredible life. I am sorry our paths never crossed in this world.  For those who had the privilege of knowing him, I hope this portrayal of him comes close to doing him justice.
la corua
I'm happy to donate the digital files of my work to Mr. Keelocko's family. Feel free to email me. Click on the icon below.

La Corua at Quitobaqutio dies...

9/4/2020

 
This piece of normalized recklessness and profiteering jumped out at me recently.  A July pictorial  in The National Geographic about Trump's border wall captured the essence of why guardian spirits like La Corua and ancient gifts from I'itoi  (O'odham Elder Brother) are meaningless to those who "take no responsibility".

Beautifully written by  Douglas Main  with powerful imagery by photographer Ash Ponder, I share snippets that speak to the heart of the Living Being that is the Sonoran Desert and the decimation of both land and culture that its guardian people, the O'odham, now face. I hope you will follow the link to view and read the whole thing... It speaks to a critical tipping point for an area that exists nowhere else in the world.  When it's gone, it's gone.  And for what?  To make a few white men rich and feed an emperor's vanity. 
A classic, wretched old story... 

White Man's ignorance is a dead-end road. We are already there.
But we are a stubborn bunch.  As long as there is mud in the pond, we will continue to scrape.
Picture
Dusk falls on the pond at Quitobaquito Springs, in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The pond is at its lowest level in more than a decade, exposing mud flats throughout. Photo: Ash Ponders

Sacred Arizona spring drying up as border wall construction continues


​Midway down a cactus-covered hill in one of the driest parts of Arizona is a miracle: a spring. Water continually streams out of the ground, down a small channel, and into a pond.

Quitobaquito Springs, as the area is known, is one of the only reliable above-ground water sources in the Sonoran Desert. This oasis long provided water to the Hia-Ced O’odham, a tribe indigenous to the area, and records of human use and habitation go back more than 10,000 years. It’s also home to two endangered species found nowhere else in the United States: The Sonoyta pupfish and Sonoran mud turtle.

“The spring is regarded as sacred, a living element provided to all from our Elder teacher,” says tribal elder Ophelia Rivas, referring to the O’odham Creator God.

​But this once-quiet spot within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is in trouble.
The flow of water, in slow decline since the 1980s, has dropped about 30 percent since March. The pond is at its lowest level in more than a decade, exposing mud flats throughout—a potentially urgent situation for its endangered animal inhabitants.

The pond is 200 feet from the U.S.-Mexico border, and contractors have already dug a six-foot trench for an electrical grid within a stone’s throw of it. Walls are going up several miles to the east of the spring in Organ Pipe and to the west in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. As construction advances closer to the spring, many people fear that the large quantities of groundwater that contractors withdraw to make concrete for the wall could exacerbate falling water tables and dry up the spring. Quitobaquito is probably fed in part by a regional aquifer that’s already been drawn down by agriculture.

“It’s unbelievable; it’s just horrible; it’s going down and down,” says Christina Andrews, a Hia-Ced O’odham leader, of the spring flow and pond level. She’s visited the spring since childhood, and has never seen it so depleted. “It feels like a violation of innocence.”

​The wall construction uses a lot of water to suppress dust and to mix concrete for the base.
For a stretch of wall built a few miles east near Lukeville in 2008, Customs and Border Patrol estimated construction used up to 710,000 gallons per mile of fence. More may be necessary now, since the new wall is twice as high. To put this number in context, it would take about 70 days for Quitobaquito to produce enough water for one mile of fence.

Border Patrol spokesperson Dyman says that at the moment, the agency “does not calculate the amount of water usage per mile of construction.”
Holding Himdag Together - Leonard Chana

"On Each side the people hold it together, to share M Himadag, O'odham"
- The late Leonard Chana, O'odham artist

(Picture and quote found on Facebook page, O'odham de Mexico.)

​The O’odham intensely oppose construction on this sacred land, which also contains a sizable tribal graveyard that is centuries old.
While nobody lives at the springs anymore, it’s still used regularly for ceremonies and to pay homage to ancestors. Once difficult to access, the spring now has a road running past it. Large trucks and heavy machinery rumble by continually—and soon, contractors plan to build the 30-foot wall, illuminated by lights powered by electric lines in the already completed trench.

The area around the springs was sold without Hia-Ced tribal consensus to the government in the 1950s and became part of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The O’odham are not only upset about what they see as the desecration of Quitobaquito, but the dozens of miles of fence already put up elsewhere throughout their historic homelands, separating tribal members from their relatives in Mexico. They were particularly outraged when Border Patrol contractors blew up ground in Monument Hill, to the east of the spring in Organ Pipe. The hill contains ancestral graves and a shrine to children.
Picture
There's a fabulous little treasure of a book to learn about the O'odham Children's Shrine, their sacred mountain--home to I'itoi,  Their legends and creation stories, the Yaquis (Yoeme), Native Christianities, La Corua, and other rich stuff:
Beliefs and Holy Places - A Spiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta,
by James S. ("Big Jim" ) Griffith
Picture

    La Corua
    A blog of inspirations, interpretations-- things that move me in this place where I'm planted.

    Codices

    All
    Aboriginal
    Barrios
    Border
    Cultural
    En Memoriam
    Folklore
    Graphics
    Migrants
    People
    Sonoran Desert
    Spiritual
    Traditions

    Archives

    April 2021
    September 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    September 2018
    April 2018
    September 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    November 2015
    April 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    July 2013
    October 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    December 2011
    August 2011


 Home  •  Barrios   •  People   •  Folklore  •  Border  •  Codex

© La Corua Digital Art | All rights reserved 2023 |
  • Home
  • Barrios
    • Gardens
  • People
  • Folklore
  • Border
    • En Memoriam
  • Codex
    • Graphics >
      • THCC