This unhappy subject — loss of creativity in the pursuit of knowledge, or framed another way, delegitimizing music and art education in the pursuit of “career readiness” — is a familiar theme in both storytelling and educational policy. Now we have another, paradoxical version: the marginalization of arts education by a local school district’s use of a state block grant intended for arts education.

The recent news reported on the use of a taxpayer-funded music and arts education block grant by the East Side Union High School District is not surprising given the current educational policy emphasis on STEM and the decades old underfunding of education in California. According to District financials, of the total grant amount of $13,267,936, 72% will be utilized for “operational costs.”

About  $1.5 million will go to music and arts “classes”. But that money is allocated to materials and professional development.

What the budget presentation to the East Side Union High School District Board does not elucidate is how the allocated operational costs will be spent. The presentation describes the district’s system emphasis on goals pertaining to equity, career readiness, graduation rates, achievement of English language learners, student behavior responses, attendance and engagement with homeless students. Nowhere does the presentation provide specific guidance or insights on how taxpayer dollars will be utilized to achieve the titled  goals of the block grant which are, presumably, the activity of actually teaching music and art.

The impact of this obfuscating non-allocation of grant funds is the further marginalization of arts education by those who should know better. Indeed the benefits of sequential, rigorous arts education provided to students during the instructional day is a stated goal of the California Arts Council and many other arts education funders.

In fact, small and large arts education non-profits who seek arts education support must specifically provide samples of standard’s-based curriculum and other evidence of the grantee applicant’s sustainable capacity for instruction of standard’s-based arts education in California public schools, such as experience teaching music and visual arts, and an active partnership with a school site.

The numerous reports on tangible and intangible benefits of music and arts education are well documented. Among many other resources available through Californians for the Arts, there are statistics showing the benefits of a kid’s brain on music education, arts curriculum resources provided by the California Arts Education Association and California Department of Education, and data illuminating the access to arts education gap experienced by underserved communities, like the students in this district.

We can and should consider the evidence of the intangible benefits of an arts education. This is a happy paradox, too often ignored by policy wonks but definitely understood by legislators with the power to cut arts funding when art making or learning threatens prevalent points of view.

You can find this evidence on YouTube — like the video of Elementary Public School 22 of Staten Island performing “Don’t Give Up On Me.”

Or the many YouTube videos of San Jose music students, like the rock out performances at the mariachi festival or the stunning ensemble artistry of San Jose’s Firebird Youth Orchestra or the numerous jazz concerts by the San Jose Jazz High School All Stars.

With all this proof to support increased funding for arts instructional hours at the tips of District bureaucratic fingers, why are the line item expenditures for operational costs a mystery? To answer this we might remember the cultural acuity of children and youth in social groups is profound, and evident in a natural musicality kids freely use to explore musical sounds. Youthful music is unique, purposeful, self-motivated, impressively improvisational. It’s a music occupied with curiosity and enchantment, as I’m sure the music educators at San Jose Jazz, or any mariachi conference, or the Firebird Youth Orchestra will attest.

Why not take advantage of this baked in motivation to learn and show us the numbers? The answer may be in the reported District assertion that the grant is needed to help the District “stay afloat.” If this is the case, will raiding an arts block grant help ESUHSD face the music?

Marcela Davison Avilés is managing partner of TomKat MeDiA and founder of Chapultepec Group.

But irony drapes the Uvalde massacre with the community’s anguished observation that the shooter was finally stopped by border patrol officers. The fear and mistrust of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. border patrol and local police in immigrant communities is well documented. In Uvalde, it took a paramilitary border patrol unit to stop what might have gone on for hours.

No, irony isn’t dead. This is America, where we watch music videos about massacres, read poems about massacres, and the president finally visits the borderlands because of a massacre.

In communities such as San Jose, police audits reveal ongoing fears of bias, improper use of force and discrimination. A review of five California police departments by the State Auditor found multiple examples of troubling behavior that included social media posts and conversations between officers that mocked transgender people, women, Latinos, Black people and immigrants. And a community report from San Jose’s Reimagining Public Safety Community Advisory Committee states Black adults are 6.6 times more likely and Latino adults 2.2 times more likely to be given a local infraction by SJPD than white adults.

And in Uvalde? Same as it ever was, as recorded in oral histories from Uvalde’s elders, even as Robb Elementary School parents were witnessing the massacre of their children. Parents were tasered. One woman was handcuffed because she protested a bit too loudly to officers on the scene. But she performed her own miracle, got unhandcuffed, ran into the school and saved her son while authorities fumbled for a key to unlock a door, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the day after the shooting, the Office of Homeland Security issued a press release to remind the public that school sites are considered protected areas.

This week, The Mercury News published an in-depth report on the rise of teen deaths from guns. This follows insights on re-building community trust from the city’s Reimagining Public Safety committee. And the mayor’s office illuminated the impact of regulating gun ownership. San Jose is doing the work. Fact-based discernment dismantles the rhetoric of futility and fear. It insists we claim the alternatives hope imagines.

Let’s understand the impact of the statistics provided by the mayor’s office in his announcement of a gun reform ordinance following the VTA Massacre and California’s gun reform efforts. Regulation can:

• Save hundreds of lives — more than 200 people in San Jose annually.

• Save California taxpayers billions in costs for gunshot-related medical treatment, police response, ambulance transport, etc.

• Save millions — up to $8 million annually — in emergency services for gun-related violence.

• Save $2,199 for each emergency response call to the police department for shooting incidents, potentially $7.8 million annually. That’s almost $500 in savings back to each San Jose household for costs incurred to respond to gun violence.

• Substantially reduce California’s rate of gun deaths — according to data published by the National Center for Health Statistics as reported by the LA Times — by 10% since 2005, while the national rate has climbed.

As I write this 11 school shootings occurred during the last week, according to the Washington Post. It’s hard to believe that the number of averted shootings far outnumbers completed attacks. I remember Lincoln’s consolation to another mother: “How weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.”

But I also remember Bobby Kennedy at Indianapolis and his call to action: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. To act for democracy withvirtue and hope. To stop the gun massacres.

Marcela Davison Avilés is managing partner of TomKat MeDiA and founder of Chapultepec Group.

El Camino Real, otherwise known as Highway 101, the Mission Road, the Silicon Valley freeway, the King’s Road, the road with the bells — yes, that road — was not always a royal road of Spanish kings, connecting continents and churches in the name of faith. And its passage was never truly open because it was forged through the extraction of human souls and natural resources.

Before the arrival of “conquistadors” to North America, indigenous people created trade routes for commerce between communities. According to the National Park Service, which maintains sections of the United States portion of El Camino in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, these footpaths were forged around 1000 AD. The routes branched throughout the southwest region of the United States and spanned north from Mexico City through the Sonora desert, the entire length of California, into New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. When Spanish colonizers entered these regions, Native Americans often guided them through unfamiliar and daunting landscapes.

A unique creative collaboration between San Jose State University, TomKat MeDiA and Camino Arts commissioned two projects to elucidate through music the evocative history of El Camino. Called Camino Chronicles, the two-day series arrives in San Jose just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), and offers two world premieres of new music by Mexican and Mexican-American composers.

The first piece is a work for orchestra and solo flute by Gabriela Ortiz, and the second is a new album of Americana folk music by the Ronstadt Brothers. Both projects are musical reflections on migration and diaspora within the context of empire, colonialism and the heritage of the road connecting North to South America — El Camino Real. Don’t let the musicology language scare you off — the music is powerful and resonant.

Camino Chronicles aligns with work that SJSU faculty in the College of Humanities and Arts undertook to decolonize curricula in light of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. We organized programming around the theme of “Borderlands” from 2018-2020, exploring migration and immigration in the 21st century, with a focus on “Blurring Boundaries, Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges.” The installation of pink teeter-totters at the U.S.-Mexican border by SJSU chair of Design, Virginia SanFratello, and her partner Ronald Rael, showed what it means to break down the barriers between our two countries: It went viral and earned Design of the Year. This year, SJSU’s “Inclusion Initiative” looks to do the same by examining social justice and racial equity through the arts and humanities.

In 2020, SJSU faculty reviewed the curriculum to make it more inclusive and to engage our own students’ diversity and the perspectives that they bring to the University.  These Camino Chronicle events are working hand in hand with these initiatives to illuminate different perspectives onto the history of the El Camino, and in so doing reimagine what — for example — 4th grade California history can look like if you trade out building a mission out of sugar cubes for an in-depth exploration of an ancient road transporting people across these western areas for centuries.

Like the stories and songs borne from the El Camino Real, Camino Chronicles brings to life new and diverse perspectives. This year, as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage month, let’s uplift historically marginalized storytellers. The world we live in is far richer than myths like the Wild West. Our understanding should be equally complex to transform society for the common good.

Shannon Miller is dean of the College of Humanities and Arts at San Jose State University. Marcela Davison Avilés is managing partner of TomKat MeDiA and founder of Chapultepec Group. Kat Taylor is Co-Founder of TomKat MeDiA and Founding Director of TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation.

I’ve also been thinking about my mother.

This year the election coincided with Día de Muertos, and so naturally when Mom came to visit, I asked her thoughts on the pundits, the predictions, the candidates.

Día de Muertos is the time when Mexicans and Mexicans at heart celebrate and honor our ancestors and deceased loved ones. We decorate ofrendas with their photos and mementos, food and treats, to entice them back. We take time to retrieve memory by sharing it with each other. We try to make good on one wish: to be reunited with the people we loved and lost.

This year the election kept photo-bombing my memory making. So when my parent’s photo went on the ofrenda the first voice I heard was, natch – Mom’s.

Mom: “Turn off the TV. It’s Dia de Muertos. We’re here.”

Me: But Mom – it is the election.”

Mom: No importa.

Me: Not important!? Mom! The nation is having an existential crisis! Everyone thinks everybody else is lying. The only thing anybody agrees on is cat videos.

Mom: What’s for dinner?

Me: Remember in 1972 — you and Dad got ready to go vote?  Daddy was obsessed; voting was his everything. By the way, where’s Dad?

Mom: Reading in the bedroom where he always hides until dinner’s ready. I remember – Nixon against McGovern.

Me: And I remember Dad told you how to vote.

My mother nodded and in my memory she’s smiling, which was always her invitation to keep the conversation going.  So I told her about mainstream media exclusion of Latinos, and nobody knows anything about voting. I listed data about Millennial and Gen Z Latinx voters impacting the election, and how no one trusts polls, when she interrupted me.

Mom: Latinx? Y eso?

Me: It’s confusing. More confusing than keeping track of the national Latino vote. Which, by the way, is not a monolith. Daddy was SO emphatic that day.

Mom: Porque el Watergate y todo.

Me: That’s right! He was convinced it was a plot and only voting could save us.

Mom: Let’s not tell him about the Millennials. Y los otros.

Me: Gen Z. You’re right – no need to confuse him during Día de Muertos.

Mom: He should read his newspaper in peace.

I nodded, remembering when I was young, and Dad just didn’t understand us. I also remembered he didn’t try to change me. He had his way of thinking and I had mine. And it was ok. As long as I worked hard, “hit the books” and refrained from posting black light peace posters on my bedroom wall, he was cool. Dad was an autodidact who loved learning new things. Give him something to read and he was happy. Then I remembered I should have placed a volume of his beloved Encyclopedia Britannica on the ofrenda – M for millennial – when Mom interrupted.

Mom: You can do it next year. Give him volume Z. That should be very interesting.

Now I couldn’t resist asking.

Me: Mom, you never told me – did you vote the way Dad told you to? Or did you do your own thing?

The way she smiled at me, the way she winked, how she always did her own independent thing, even while Dad did his thing, that’s the way I remember her.  Oh, and her answer? If memory serves me right, she said, “M’ija. The Latino vote is not a monolith.”

Marcela Davison Aviles is a writer-producer and founder of The Chapultepec Group (tcginsights.com).

California’s Proposition 187 was a ballot initiative seeking to establish a screening system to cull out undocumented residents for deportation and to prohibit undocumented immigrants from using public health care and education services, among other public benefits in California. After the law was passed it was challenged in the courts and determined to be unconstitutional, in contravention of federal immigration law and Plyler v. Doe, a Supreme Court ruling that holds that states may not deny public education to undocumented children. In 1999, Gov. Gray Davis declined to appeal.

Prop. 187 was also known as the Save Our State initiative, a tag line which calls to mind another immigrant and a famous scene from a famous movie he co-wrote and directed: “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I’m speaking of Frank Capra, and George Bailey’s response to Mr. Potter’s exclamation that immigrants are a “lazy, discontented rabble” who need to wait and save their money before they are allowed to purchase a home. Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey delivers a response we are still asking today: “Wait? Wait for what?”

Prop. 187 did more than ask a question about entitlements and economic impact. It flipped the identity of our state — an identity that storytellers from tribal people to folk troubadours to gold rush settlers to Hollywood filmmakers shared — California’s identity is about sharing the land, about its stewardship, and our role as guardians of it and each other. Reality is a consistent disrupter of this California story, of course. If George Bailey asked why wait to help a person in need, Prop. 187 required us to ask: save our state? Save it from what?

California’s history is replete with the impact of settlement — the genocide of indigenous people, Spanish claims on territory and treasure, Gold Rush claims on territory and treasure, Manifest Destiny claims of white supremacy, territory and treasure, the forced relocation of immigrants and American citizens in order to preserve territory and treasure, the invention of digital technology which re-defined who controls territory and treasure. But with Prop. 187 Californians pushed back to reclaim the narrative — in essence we gave ourselves a second chance.

On the second try, through litigation, we asked and answered questions about international boundaries and the cost of public services, the value of education. The Prop. 187 narrative on both sides seemed especially fixed on immutable boundaries – the existence of a line that should or should not be crossed. But this fixation blurs the moral questions of the origin of the boundary and the meaning of belonging. The California Question of who gets a public education, in the words of anthropologists William New and Loucas Petronicolos, rested then on the question of who belongs to a republic — not our republic.

These are age-old questions. Philosophers and filmmakers (and I would argue they are the same) have tried to answer them, as well as citizens and politicians. To think like Emerson and Thoreau or Capra or Lincoln is hard work. It requires and acknowledges change, even transformational change, even transformational magic. This commitment to an idea of the civic culture — call it America, call it California, call it Alta California — looks to the future by seeking the best of ourselves. True, to find that best part we must confront the worst of ourselves. California’s investigation of these understandings — on belonging, on citizenship — didn’t begin or end at the juncture of Prop. 187. In other words, to have faith in something bigger than ourselves requires us to face the moral issues. A line in the sand doesn’t help a person in need.

Twenty five years ago Prop. 187 was California’s real life Capra moment. But the question California answered then is perennial: can we save our state from ourselves?

Marcela Davison Aviles is a writer-producer and founder of The Chapultepec Group (tcginsights.com).

This must be the question of the moment at the Federal Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) as the agency proposes rules to open millions of acres in California, including protected lands, to oil drilling and fracking. Lands impacted by recent proposed rules include hundreds of acres in the South Bay and even protected areas like Mt. Diablo State Park

The proposed rules are as dense as the phone book. But at least the phone book is user friendly. Reading these recommendations requires patience and detective work. The bottom line is this: these rules if fully implemented will make Texas’ output, with 311,000 oil wells, puny by comparison to the BLM’s dream of Petro-California.

The BLM rules open public lands and mineral estate across California’s Central Valley, Central Coast and the Bay Area to new oil and gas drilling. The Trump administration plan in Northern California is an increase of nearly 327,000 acres from an earlier proposal prepared under the Obama administration. The Northern California public lands earmarked are in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Stanislaus. Central Valley counties impacted include Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura counties.

What else is at stake here? Our connection to each other is tied to our relationship to the land. The East Bay Regional Parks District free publication, “Native Peoples of the East Bay” illuminates the profound intersection between humans and nature which informs East Bay life, including tribal communities. The Ohlone, Bay Miwok and Delta Yokuts peoples knew the natural world as we know our smart phones — with an intimacy that made the land a part of our humanity. And their frame of reference was, and is, one of reverence. Mt. Diablo, a state park where the BLM now seeks to drill, is where the Ohlone believe life began. The proposed rules would also allow drilling on land administered by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority — a vital sub-region which connects urban San Jose to protected wilderness.

Drilling would not only disrupt sacred sites — it slashes the interconnected nature of our Bay Area ecosystem. According to a 2002 report from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the bay is the largest estuary along the Pacific shore of North and South America and is a natural resource of incalculable value. Our Bay Area estuary is a confluence where fresh water from rivers and streams meet and mix with salt water from the ocean. Our estuarine habitats are abundant and diverse. San Francisco Bay sustains nearly 500 species of fish, invertebrates, birds, mammals, insects and amphibians. Moreover, two thirds of the state’s salmon pass through the Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, along with nearly half of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds along the Pacific Flyway.

It’s common knowledge that oil drilling is a dirty business — it damages the environment during collection and transport and produces environmental toxins, including carbon dioxide. The EPA reports fracking contaminates drinking water sources with chemicals that lead to cancer, birth defects and liver damage. This method injects a mixture of water and chemicals into rock formations to release oil and gas. It generates wastewater with dangerous chemicals that can leak to ponds, lagoons and underground aquifers. And what’s with the rush to drill, drill, drill in a state where we have to pay other jurisdictions to take our excess solar capacity?

What’s not commonly known is actual impact. Getting this information requires patience and a bit of detective work to locate maps within the BLM proposed rule. Fortunately local biodiversity advocates have published a map that makes it easy to see its footprint. Essentially, it’s a huge smudge covering both sides of the Salinas River, starting south at Avenal and ending outside of Concord.

Access to this data is essential for public understanding and feedback. True, notices are published in the Federal Register and on the website of the BLM. But it shouldn’t take a private detective or a rocket scientist to find and understand rules that, if implemented, will destroy the character of our region. Because if an entire ecosystem fails and no one is there to hear it, we’ll definitely feel it.

Marcela Davison Aviles is a writer/producer and founder of The Chapultepec Group. 

He was a gringo, six feet two inches, with black hair and blue eyes.  He loved his Mexican wife, his Mexican kids and Mexican hats. On the frontier of Sonora circa 1910, he was as inconspicuous as a revolutionary on horseback. I have this image of him, hiding out in that cramped space trying to be small, and Pancho Villa riding past a well which is wearing a sombrero.

My grandfathers came from different places and backgrounds — one was from New Jersey and one from Guaymas, Mexico. One left a farm in rural America to find work in rural Mexico. The other left a small port town for the city. Both had one thing in common — they loved the idea of Mexico and wore that idea, literally, to demonstrate their affection. I have two photos of them which I like to look at side by side. Each wears a classic Mexican “traje de charro” — a cowman’s embroidered suit. They look badass in these old photos. They look like they know it.

Badassness runs on the frontier, especially if the land involves turf wars over mining rights and railroad tracks. The railroad tracks in my family run between Guaymas, Mexico and Nogales, Arizona. In 1854, fights broke out in Sonora over the location of the railroad in Guaymas, over American control of the railroad and copper mines and who should be emperor. This confusion resulted in the Battle of Guaymas when a French count named Gastón de Raousett-Boulbon decided to attack Guaymas and crown himself king. His plans are foiled by a soldadera named Loreto Encinas de Avilés, who warns Mexican defenders just in time. The French Vice Consul, José Calvo, intercedes with Raousett-Boulbon to surrender, and hands him over to Mexican authorities. For this, Calvo is trolled by California newspapers who support the Count’s dreams of Manifest Destiny.

José Calvo is my great great great grandfather on my Mother’s side. Doña Avilés is my great great great great grandmother, also on Mom’s side. By the time William Davison, my paternal grandfather, finds work on the Sonora railroad it’s thirty years later and there’s a new cast of characters claiming to be emperor. That’s when Pancho Villa rode in to town to make sure no Americans were on the short list.

This true story about opposing sides ending up in the same family takes place where the Mexico/US railway began. If old family photographs anchor my memory of relatives I never knew, historical photos illuminate the reason behind our family quest for a unified cultural identity. Take the photo I discovered of the Yaqui warrior Cajemé, an indigenous liberation fighter also from Sonora. His name means “one who does not stop to drink water.”

Cajemé’s adventures took him to California then to Guaymas where, I discovered, he joined my ancestor to defend the port against Count Raousett-Boulbon. He was honored for defending Mexico with an appointment as “Mayor of the Yaquis.” His assignment: control his people under Mexican dominion. Instead, he united the Yaqui tribes into an independent republic and led an armed insurrection to secure their independence. In the end he was betrayed by members of his own community. Like the count, he was captured and executed by firing squad, but not before exclaiming, “Antes como antes y ahora como ahora. Antes éramos enemigos y peleábamos. Ahora está todo concluido y todos somos amigos.”(Before was before and now is now. Before we were enemies and we fought; now everything is concluded and we are all friends.)

Today fights are breaking out on the Sonoran border over the location of a wall, over American control of Mexican identity and who should be emperor. In his photo my American grandfather is leaning against a garden wall looking off somewhere, as if he’s daydreaming about the old days when he tried so hard to be Mexican. The photo of my Mexican grandfather shows him on a horse, looking confidently at the camera. It always seemed to me that he was very earnest in his Mexicanidad.  The photo of Cajemé was taken during his captivity. He’s smiling, maybe because he’s at peace, maybe because he didn’t need to prove anything. I saw that old photo of Cajamé and I thought about my grandfathers and all the times before, when I wondered who we were. I knew exactly then, where they were trying to go.

Marcela Davison Aviles is a writer-producer and founder of The Chapultepec Group (tcginsights.com).

I’m speaking of course, about James K. Polk, Abraham Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau.

One hundred and seventy five years ago, the civic culture of Pan America exploded over a land grab that forms the foundation, literally and figuratively, of our current debate about the southern border. American slave holders in Texas territory wanted land to preserve slavery. Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829 and had no intention of ceding ground. President Polk, himself a slaveowner, had his eye on the real prize — expansion of U.S. slave territory clear to Mexican California. And to achieve this Manifest Destiny, he needed a crisis to support declaring war against an opponent so weak militarily, financially and strategically it would never consider war against its northern neighbor. Polk ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor to move 4,000 American troops into Mexican territory to provoke Mexico — and in April 1846 that provocation was successful. Mexican General Mariano Arista’s response to Zachary’s incursion was one of the few Mexican victories of the war. Polk’s mischief achieved its goal. His formal war declaration was a fait acompli.

In Washington, debate raged. One newly elected congressman eviscerated Polk’s rationale with an argument grounded in fact, logic and history. Abe Lincoln’s famous “spot resolutions” demanded to know the specific place where Mexican soldiers shed American blood on American soil. There was no such “spot.” American soldiers had crossed into Mexican territory on purpose to goad Mexican reaction.

Abolitionists called Polk’s fake war what it was — a claim to preserve the economic interests of plantation farmers and the racial hegemony of white men. One prominent writer protested by refusing to pay his taxes and went to jail rather than support the government. Henry Thoreau’s masterful discourse on civil disobedience was his additional response to Zachary Taylor’s interventions.

Connecting the dots between the eras of Presidents Polk and Trump is not simply a tally of obvious comparisons. Under the surface issue of border security lies a truer concern with America’s ongoing identity crisis — the fact that we still work to find our better angels when dealing with each other and acknowledge our founding credo — out of many, one — was forged on the lives of indigenous people and slaves.

But history can help us remember the why of things and understand aspirations for our republic were not place-based and requiring barriers of entry — but formed on an idea, one embraced fully by politicians like Presidents Reagan and Roosevelt — the idea of America as a welcoming place, where a hand is extended to its good neighbor, and ports of call are beacons of hope. Our founding credo was forged on the lives of slaves and indigenous people, but we should remember this aspiration calls Cicero’s lesson of basic family and social bonds as the origin of societies and states: “When each person loves the other as much as himself, it makes one out of many (unus fiat ex pluribus).”

Politicians are not known for their empathy but statesmen are. Another American statesman used the power of memory to remind us of the awful consequence a lack of empathy creates. U.S. Grant, dying of cancer, didn’t need to falsify his memory of war, of Mexico, the Confederacy or the Union.  In Mexico he put love on hold and lost one of his best friends. As a general matter, his memoirs are blunt. Of the American intervention in Mexico he said, “ The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.” Grant fought to define the meaning of American identity. Today we debate the latest photo op at the border. But the real conflict is within ourselves.

Marcela Davison Aviles is a writer/producer and founder of The Chapultepec Group (tcginsights.com).

The teachable moments from Mexico’s recent quakes and Wine Country fires resonate, and not only because of our historical and familial ties. The combination of technology, human ingenuity and resilience which emerged as the ground shook and fire enveloped us provides wisdom for the next catastrophe.

But some truths are perpetual when disaster hits.

First, when nature slams us, the poor get hit the hardest. Data from the journal Nonprofit Quarterly compared damage suffered in Haiti from a 7.0 earthquake near Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010, to an 8.8 quake hitting Chile six weeks later. The Haiti quake killed an estimated 200,000 people. In Chile, the death toll was 525. The difference is measured in Haiti’s poverty.

The situations in Mexico and California was no different. The 2017 September quake killed nearly 400 and destroyed or damaged thousands of buildings. In Northern California, 42 were killed, with 8,400 structures and over 140,000 acres destroyed.

Massive amounts of aid poured into both areas, and reconstruction is underway. Having traveled to Mexico City and Sonoma in late October, I observed resilience everywhere.

Life was back to “normal” with preparations for Dia de los Muertos and Wine Country visitor promotions taking on deeper meanings of remembrance and determination — not just to survive but to live.

But the victims most challenged are those already struggling: the poor, disabled, elderly and children. In rural Jojutla, Mexico, half of its masonry buildings were destroyed. Thousands are living in tents donated by the Chinese government. Aid arrived slowly — in fact, it was surplus diverted from Mexico City.

In California, the two counties hardest hit by the fires are the two with the highest poverty levels among those ravaged: Mendocino and Lake counties. What these areas have in common: low-income housing systems that get people into homes but forget about insurance when disaster hits — and government outreach that never reaches those already on the margins.

Second, technology without common sense won’t deliver results in a natural disaster.

Mexico City has an earthquake early warning system which sets off sirens 15 seconds before a quake. This system, combined with local common knowledge, allowed thousands to evacuate their buildings safely.

“Evacuate don’t procrastinate” is the standard response there because of the soft soils in the region. Soft soil causes greater building instability; Mexicans know in these conditions it’s better to evacuate immediately.

In California, forest management professionals believe one cause of severe wildfires is fire suppression and lack of forest management. Historically, oak forests were regularly burned or allowed to burn by California native people to enhance the health of the oak savanna ecosystem.

These cultivated fires rejuvenate the soils but do not damage tree canopies. Without these traditional management practices, our oak forests have become overgrown and stressed. When fires do burn, they are more destructive canopy fires, rather than rejuvenating ground fires.

Beyond common sense innovation, the resilience of those impacted taught new lessons in courage and even humor. As the shaking continued, Mexicans poured into buildings to save lives and even filmed the seismic power enveloping them. In California, one victim used his chain saw to cut his family out of a burning car.

To catastrophe, Mexicans and Californians sent their best — ordinary people whose first instinct was to help and, afterward, to unite in advocating for improvements in land and building maintenance.

And in Jojutla, there’s a joke going around: If Americans need bricks for the building of walls, they have plenty of inventory.

Marcela Davison Avilés is co-founder and managing director of Camino Arts. She formerly led the Mexican Heritage Corp., which produced annual mariachi festivals in San Jose for many years. She lives in Alamo.

In 1947 President Truman visited Mexico City. No American president had visited the capital and thousands jammed the streets. One woman shouted, “Viva Missouri!” while the president passed and shook hands with the crowd.

Truman later told Mexico’s legislature he had never experienced such a welcome. In turn, he re-affirmed Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, making an unscheduled stop at Chapultepec Castle, Mexico’s historic military academy and royal palace.

Chapultepec is sacred ground in Mexico. Here, six military cadets died defending the castle in 1847 during the Mexican-American war. One of them according to legend, leaped to his death wrapped in the Mexican flag rather than surrender.

Here, Truman placed a wreath and bowed his head. With this one show of respect, the man from Independence did more to improve Mexican-American relations than any U.S. president in a century.

“Brave men don’t belong to any one country,” he said. I respect bravery wherever I see it.”

Truman learned a lesson that has escaped Trump. In Mexico, the art of the deal is understanding the nature of culture on both sides of the border.

Let’s start with some history. For example, there was repatriation in the 1930s of about a million people from the United States back to Mexico. The goal was to reduce the number of families and individuals on government relief. It’s estimated 60 percent of the people caught up in the Mexican repatriation drive were actually U.S. citizens of Mexican descent.

In the 1940s, America suddenly needed those Americans back as cheap farm labor, and the Bracero Program was created. It offered employment contracts to 5 million braceros in 24 U.S. states, becoming the largest foreign worker program in U.S. history.

And let’s not forget the U.S. invasion of Mexico. Both Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant opposed that war, understanding its “manefest destiny” was actually a plan to acquire slave state territory for the Union.

President Truman realized that, in Mexico, the art of the deal is about taking time to get to know your counterpart. You have dinner. You have a drink. Or two. Then, in a gesture that turned out to be worth 1000 dinners, Truman visited Chapultepec.

Which brings us back to that call between Trump and Enrique Peña Nieto. Since then, a threat to invade Mexico was excused as light banter and immigration round-ups ramped up.  Mexico’s response: cancellation of sugar export permits to the U.S. and sanctuary to highly skilled tech workers who find themselves no longer welcome in the U.S.

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray says reconciliation must be based on facts. Let’s look at the facts:

U.S. farmers need Mexico’s farm imports — more than $17 billion, according to U.S. government data. Those imports support American jobs. Now, Mexico is offering jobs, federal and state subsidies, education grants and favorable migration policies to skilled U.S. workers.

But facts need context to be understood. And context lives in history and heritage. In Mexico a special place, full of grace, provides both: the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where solace and protection are not bartered.

Here is where President Trump should go and contemplate history. This simple act of contrition would be worth more than 1000 presidential dinners. It would show respect and humility – just the sort of grace you’d expect from a good neighbor.

Marcela Davison Aviles is managing director and executive producer of Camino Arts and consulting Director of Humanities Programs for the FDR Foundation. She wrote this for The Mercury News.