Happy to announce this 2nd Annual Barrio Fest taking place in Fort Stockton, Texas, Sept. 14-17, 2023. It's really neat to see that the history of LULAC in Fort Stockton will be a focus of conversation as part of this. I have family in Ft. Stockton that's located in "deep" West Texas, if you will.
-Angela Valenzuela
This is a provocative Netflix documentary that I just saw that speaks to how people's consciousness can be totally determined or brainwashed.
When we speak of the harmful and damaging implications of textbook and curriculum censorship; not allowing women to be ministers, priests, or rabbis; campaigns against transgender youth; controlling sexuality and reproductive health—especially through the controlling of women's bodies through anti-abortion policies—this documentary paints a dystopian picture that illuminates the underlying heterosexist patriarchal logics that are regrettably and disgustingly implied in so many Texas policies espoused by our state's Republican Party.
Oddly, a story that begins in Utah, also played out near my hometown of San Angelo in West Texas in nearby Eldorado where relatives of mine live. Over the years, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) would come up in conversation due to ongoing, local—and ultimately, national—coverage. The FLDS is not the Mormon Church itself, but rather a branch of it that Mormon church members find objectionable and embarrassing. News coverage ultimately proved helpful with FLDS prophet, Warren Jeffs, getting sentenced to life in prison. At the time of his arrest, Jeffs had 78 wives with 24 among them being underaged.
Yes, enraging. It's also stranger than fiction. Do see the film.
To the specific points of censorship and book banning, these women could read although it only happened in the context of their highly-controlled and surveilled, self-isolated society. The patriarchs in this story justified their absolute power of women through religious dogma that kept them and their families perpetually in fear of not going to "Zion," or heaven. The books and magazines that were available to them were carefully vetted, even with specific pages ripped out by the patriarchs lest their girls and women get "corrupted."
I write this at the obvious risk of our Texas Republican patriarchs considering this a not-so-bad idea.
Clearly, the FLDS is what's corrupt. It reduces women to chattel, institutionalizing rape and violence. This is a world where women have no voice and are not allowed to be independent or independent-minded. In this terrifying world of forced dependency, particularly for the underaged, they get literally exchanged for their fathers' future wives as a cost for remaining in the good graces of "the prophet," as well as for going to Zion. Do read the great summary below from The Independent. There is also a helpful timeline of the organization here.
The documentary reminded me of Margaret Atwood's classic and best-seller, The Handmaid's Tale that is also a series by the same name on Hulu. As chilling as I found this book and series to be, I found the "Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey" story about the FLDS even scarier and intriguing because, however surreal, it's real.
-Angela Valenzuela
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is a new Netflix documentary about the FLDS
The man known as the prophet was arrested in a red Cadillac outside of Las Vegas. Warren Jeffs, the head of a polygamist sect, had been “living the high life”, a private investigator would later recall. He had been to Disney World. He had celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He had gone to strip clubs. He had worn “gentile clothing” instead of the clothes he expected his followers to wear. He had kept the company of his “favorite wives”.
At the time, Warren Jeffs was a high-profile fugitive, recently bumped to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. He had been charged in Arizona with two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor, and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. In Utah, he faced a charge of rape as an accomplice.
On 28 August 2006, a routine traffic stop led to Warren Jeffs’s arrest. The license plates on his vehicle were obscured. He and other passengers were pulled over. Warren’s brother Isaac Jeffs was driving; Warren’s “favorite wife” was in the front seat. Warren himself was “in the back seat, eating a salad”.
The arrest, which led to the first of Warren Jeffs’s convictions, is one of many gripping moments recounted in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, a new Netflix documentary dedicated to Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
The FLDS emerged when the Mormon church discontinued polygamy and excommunicated those who kept practicing it. It was incorporated under that name in 1991, though its origins can be traced back to the early 20th century. The group was originally located in Arizona, close to the Utah border, and later expanded into Utah and Texas, with communities in other regions.
Elements of the FLDS story are already familiar to the public. Images of women in long-sleeved, ankle-length pastel prairie dresses, their hair pulled back back in the same braided hairstyle, will ring a bell. (Some of the women themselves spoke to the media after a high-profile police raid of an FLDS ranch in Texas in 2008.) Warren Jeffs’s photo circulated when he became wanted by law enforcement, and when he was twice convicted on criminal charges. Former members who left the sect have provided firsthand accounts of life in the group, of the type of mind control deployed by Jeffs, and of the events that led to their departure.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey adds to these existing testimonies by painting a portrait of the FLDS as a structure of coercive control and systemized abuse, in which Warren Jeffs – and his father before him – made themselves into so-called “prophets” and weaved religious doctrine in service of their own domination.
Warren Jeffs’s name has become synonymous with the FLDS, but the movement had existed for decades, partly under different names, by the time he became its leader. Leroy S Johnson was the head of the Council of Friends (now viewed as an early iteration of what became the FLDS) from the Fifties to his death in 1986. Warren Jeffs’s father Rulon Jeffs took over that same year. He was known among members of the FLDS as “the prophet”, an undisputed ruler within the group.
Rulon Jeffs lived his years as the FLDS prophet much like Warren Jeffs later would, according to accounts given by former members of the sect. Rebecca Wall, a participant in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey who was raised in the FLDS, recounts being married to Rulon Jeffs, then 85, when she was 19. Her account is a scathing illustration of the power dynamics in which women and girls, evidently, were treated in the FLDS like something resembling currency, pawns in the sect’s political games.
“A man’s status depends on how many wives he has,” Wall says in episode one. “My dad – he had two wives, and he couldn’t figure out why other men were getting more wives and he was not. So my dad always felt like he was jilted. … He was always kind of frustrated. But he also had this host of daughters that could be given to other men. And it’s kind of like, ‘I’ll give you some if you give me some.’ Even though it’s never spoken that way, I think that’s the general understanding.”
People in the FLDS did not choose who they married. The way Wall recounts it, girls were given over to the prophet once it was deemed time for them to wed, and the prophet decided on marriages himself.
“When I turned 19, my father brought me to Rulon Jeffs,” she continues. By then, Wall says, it was known that Rulon Jeffs had a specific handshake he used with “girls who would later become his wife”. He shook her hand and squeezed it three times. “That meant I was supposed to marry him,” she adds. “My dad was so excited. For any man in the FLDS, to have their daughter marry into the prophet’s family, was a massive honor. And I think my dad felt like finally he was getting the respect that he was entitled to and that he deserved. But I was just like, ‘Ew.’ … I got married, and then my father got his third wife.”
In a book disputing his daughter’s account of the family's time in the FLDS, published in 2015, Lloyd Wall, Rebecca Wall’s father, stated that “there was no pressure or collusion” to force his daughter into marriage with Rulon Jeffs. “Rebecca does have a story to tell as her marriage to Rulon Jeffs turned out to be a nightmare,” he added in the book. “But the marriage and the horrible experiences with Rulon Jeffs cannot be blamed upon any family member.”
Rulon Jeffs died in 2002. His death was a time of confusion, recounted candidly in the documentary: Members of the FLDS had been taught that the prophet was immortal – literally. “I truly believed that any minute, he was going to sit up and be renewed,” Elissa Wall, who grew up in the FLDS and says she was forced to marry her cousin aged 14, recounts. “They closed the casket and there was this overwhelming fear inside of me. If they put him in the ground, how is he going to get out?”
Rulon Jeffs (left) and his son Warren Jeffs (right)
It could have been a damning moment for the FLDS, proof that a key part of the doctrine (that the prophet could not die) was false. But Warren Jeffs succeeded to his father as prophet, and, per Elissa Wall, began speaking as though he was “his father renewed”. He married his father’s wives. His ways didn’t sit well with some members. “I went to my husband, and I said, ‘Something’s wrong,’” Charlene Jeffs, who was married to Warren Jeffs’s brother Lyle Jeffs, recounts. “And he said, ‘Nothing our prophet does is wrong.’”
Warren Jeffs enforced stricter rules than his father. Members were to abstain from any form of fun. Lloyd Wall says a “big” change for him was having to turn in all his guns. But a lot of rules targeted women specifically: under Rulon Jeffs, they had to be “covered”; under Warren Jeffs, they were forbidden to wear denim, prints, or the color red. They were then expected to wear long underwear covering their entire bodies to their wrists and feet. Their hair had to be done and braided. The women listened, Charlene Jeffs says, because they thought this was their path to salvation.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is at its most powerful when it ventures outside the strict limits of the FLDS to look at the wider forces that allowed the group to keep going for decades, even as it existed in plain sight, with the knowledge of at least some of the local authorities. In a damning sequence, journalist Mike Watkiss, who investigated the FLDS for years, is seen, camera on his shoulder, telling a police officer in Short Creek (now known as the towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah): “Utah Constitution says that polygamy is illegal, and I guess there’s laws on the books in Arizona that say the same thing. Why don’t people get arrested here?”
“You know, I’m–” the police officer begins, then replies: “I mean, we’re in – we believe in plural marriage.” (That officer, Mica Barlow, was later reported to have written in a letter of support for Warren Jeffs while Jeffs while a fugitive: “I want to be an extension of you in the police department or whatever you would have me be.” In 2006, he was one of two men held in contempt of court for refusing to testify about Warren Jeffs in front of a grand jury.)
“People are entitled to believe what they want, but the law currently in the United States is that polygamy is not a protected constitutional right,” Roger Hoole, an attorney in Utah featured in the documentary, says. Yet, despite being illegal, it is “almost never prosecuted.”
“It’s hard to prove, and law enforcement and politicians are not very interested in disrupting families,” he adds. “I think most people in Utah, the mainstream Mormons – people like me – see polygamy as an embarrassment. But polygamy is really not the problem anyway. It’s the secondary crimes that occur in a closed religious society controlled by men. That’s when all sorts of mischief can take place, and that’s what happened with the FLDS.”
Rulon Jeffs (center) was the FLDS’s ‘prophet’ until Warren Jeffs took over
Former members of the FLDS said they obeyed the sect’s leader because they thought it was the path to salvation
A woman from the FLDS speaks to the media after a 2008 police raid of an FLDS ranch
Most of the men in the FLDS regarded women as “chattel”, Wallace Jeffs, one of Rulon Jeffs’s sons, says at one point. Members of the FLDS were taught that men needed to have at least three wives in order to reach “the highest degree of the celestial kingdom”. Then, a man would “basically become a god”.
“And what happens to the women? Do they become gods?” Wallace Jeffs is asked during his interview. He laughs, then says: “That is kind of a gray area. We were never taught what a woman becomes on the other side, other than a wife.”
Ruby Jessop, one of the participants in the documentary, says Warren Jeffs ordered her to be married to her second cousin when she was 14. “There had historically been underage marriages in the FLDS,” Hoole says, “but they took off on steroids under Warren Jeffs.” The “pattern”, he adds, “seemed to be that with a girl that was a little bit independent, the idea was to get her married young and pregnant, and she would be locked in.”
In 2011, Warren Jeffs was convicted in Texas of sexually assaulting two girls. He was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl and 20 years for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. This was four years after Jeffs’s 2007 conviction on two charges of being an accomplice to rape in Utah, for which he was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison. The Utah Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2010. By then, the Texas charges were already pending.
During the sentencing phase of the Texas trial, evidence reflected that Jeffs was “involved in conducting the marriages of 67 underage girls to FLDS men”, says Angela Goodwin, a former US Attorney Special Prosecutor. Jeffs himself, she adds, “had himself 78 wives – 24 of those wives were underage.”
Warren Jeffs is believed to still be running the FLDS and exercising influence on members from prison. Former members who have left the FLDS describe being estranged from their relatives still within the group in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. “Three of us are out,” Lola Barlow, who was in the group as a child, says. “The rest of everybody’s still in. I could just drive to their house and talk to them. But they won’t talk to me.”
Friends:
Visit the actual KLST San Angelo page to hear Uziyah's father's gripping
Yes, let's all hug our kids and grandkids. Let's also work for change.
-Angela Valenzuela
#RememberUziyah #UvaldeStrong #WeAreAllWestTexas
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Updated:
(KLST/KSAN)- The father of one of the young children shot and killed this week in an elementary classroom in Uvalde spoke during tonight’s prayer vigil in San Angelo.
“Enjoy y’all’s time with y’all’s kids because you never know… my son was innocent,” Sergio Garcia said.
Sergio Garcia is the father of 9-year-old Uziyah Garcia. Garcia said his son was loving and kind to everyone he met and reminded his family how much he cared about them.
“My son, he always wanted to make me proud and he did,” Garcia said.
Many across the Concho Valley gathered at the Tom Green County Courthouse to mourn the victims, including Uziyah. The community came together in prayer and showed their support.
Uziyah’s aunt, Leticia Garcia, said her family cannot wrap their heads around how someone could do this to anyone, especially children.
“The children just, I’m sure were so scared and were dealing with a lot and were calling for their parents and so it’s absolutely devastating that this is continuing to happen,” she said.
Sergio said his son was born in San Angelo, so this is where he will be laid to rest.
“He will live on in a greater place and we will all meet with him,” Garcia said.
Six mass shootings have occurred in Texas during Gov. Greg Abbott’s 7½ years in office. He has offered prayers and condemned each.
The murders of five police officers in Dallas were “acts of cowardice.” The killing of 26 in Sutherland Springs was a “horrific act.” The high school shooting in Santa Fe that took 10 lives was an “act of evil.” The slaying of 23 at an El Paso Walmart was a “senseless act of violence” while the shooting deaths of seven in Midland-Odessa three weeks later were a “senseless and cowardly act.”
The slaughter of 21 at an elementary school in Uvalde was a “senseless crime,” which, Abbott added at a news conference Wednesday, “could have been worse.”
In the past, Abbott has suggested state leaders could do something — would do something — to prevent the next mass shooting. That same call to action was missing from the governor’s remarks at Uvalde High School. Though at times his voice wavered in anger, Abbott made no specific proposals for the coming legislative session to address gun violence.
He raised no issue with the fact that the alleged shooter had been able to purchase two rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition without raising suspicion. He suggested mental illness drove the troubled young man to violence and called for increased access to health care.
"I asked the sheriff and others an open-ended question … ‘What is the problem here?’” Abbott said. “And they were straightforward and emphatic — they said we have a problem with mental health illness in this community and then they elaborated on the magnitude of the mental health challenges they are facing in the community and the need for more mental health support in this region.”
But Abbott also said authorities were unaware of any criminal or mental illness history of 18-year-old Salvador Ramos that could have identified him as a potential threat.
Abbott said there was “no meaningful forewarning of this crime” other than Facebook posts Ramos made minutes before the shooting that he was going to target an elementary school. The social media company clarified that these were private messages Ramos exchanged with someone else.
Abbott praised the “amazing courage” of law enforcement personnel, without which he said the death toll would have been higher. Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said a school resource officer “engaged” Ramos outside, yet did not fire his weapon nor prevent Ramos from entering the building through a back door.
As he has in the past, Abbott rejected calls for stricter gun laws, arguing that cities and states which attempt to limit access to firearms still suffer from gun violence.
“I hate to say this, but there are more people shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas,” Abbott said. “We need to realize that people who think, ‘Well, maybe if we implement tougher gun laws, it’s going to solve it,’ Chicago, LA and New York disprove that thesis.”
Abbott on Wednesday praised the Legislature’s efforts in the 2019 session to improve school safety. These laws, suggested by a task force Abbott had created after the Santa Fe shooting, improved mental health resources for students and made it easier for teachers to arm themselves. None restricted Texans’ access to firearms.
Some of the task force’s more ambitious ideas, like allowing courts to seize guns from individuals deemed unsafe to themselves or others, never gained support in the Republican-dominated Legislature.
“We consider what we did in 2019 to be one of the most profound legislative sessions, not just in Texas, that we’ve seen in any state in addressing school shootings,” Abbott said. “We will continue to discuss with legislators all the potential avenues and pathways we can take to make sure schools will be even safer going forward.”
Texas' recent string of deadly mass shootings has sparked public debate about gun rights — and a host of laws aimed at preventing the next one. See how lawmakers responded and how Texans felt in the aftermath with our timeline.
“I don’t know which is worse, going through the motions when you have no intention of passing commonsense gun reform after a tragedy or just deciding that that’s not even worth mentioning,” Golden said.
A spokesperson for the Texas State Rifle Association said she could not comment on reforms the governor hasn’t yet proposed.
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee in this year’s race for governor, angrily confronted Abbott at the news conference. O’Rourke, who has called for a prohibition on the type of assault rifle Ramos allegedly used, blamed Abbott for not taking meaningful actions after previous mass shootings.
“You are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said. “You are offering up nothing. You said this was not predictable. This was totally predictable when you choose not to do anything.”
Other Republicans on the stage denounced O’Rourke, who was escorted from the venue by police.
The Uvalde shooting took place 10 years after the only deadlier massacre at a U.S. elementary school, in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
That incident prompted Connecticut state lawmakers to pass some of the strictest gun control laws in the country. The legislation, which passed with bipartisan support, required background checks on all gun sales, limits the size of ammunition magazines and created a registry of suspects convicted of gun crimes. Then-Gov. Dan Malloy, a Democrat, said he did not believe the measures would stop all mass shootings.
“That, however, cannot be the test that determines whether America chooses to act or remain complacent,” Malloy said in 2013. “These measures will surely save many lives.”
Disclosure: Facebook has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Our visit to Uvalde's Town Square (see earlier posts by Emilio Zamora and me), where a shrine was set up to honor the victims, coincided with the time that Uziyah's family was there.
Wearing white, printed t-shirts with Uziyah's picture, represented as an angel, on them, they caught my attention. His aunt told me that Uziyah was from San Angelo and that his body had been delivered there. Quenching my own tears, I told her that I am from San Angelo and that I was really sorry at what had happened.
They remembered him as a truly delightful boy. They said that he had great faith in God and would always tell everyone, "God bless you. God bless you."
While referring to a class photo with the two fallen teachers, Ms. Irma Mireles and Irma Garcia, superimposed on it, family members, commented admiringly on how he always liked to be in front.
This experience fills me with so many thoughts and feelings. One thing that struck me is how we are all connected. "We are all West Texas," was impressed upon my heart. This is familiar territory and I got reconnected to it. And all I can tell you about that is that it's complicated.
West Texas has a history and a story that needs to be told (especially see Emilio's reflection on this). Another thing that struck me is that this is a family that prays. Having grown up in the church in West Texas, this was recognizable to me. Perhaps not all, but all that they shared seemed to align. How assuring. How helpful.
Prayer, meditation, Indigenous ceremony, and all the healing arts, provide great protection—especially when practiced daily—in this time of great need and vulnerability.
I myself am in deep prayer and meditation for all the children and families impacted. Action and advocacy often also have a positive impact on healing while motivating commonsense reforms. Gov. Abbott should most definitely call a special legislative session to address this matter alone. He should do this soon. He should stop playing politics and should understand instead that immediately calling a special session will contribute enormously to our healing. To not do so is to perpetuate this violence.
We are not solely living a moment that is "polarized," my friends. It is first and foremost a spiritual battle anchored in a culture that espouses harmful ways of knowing and being in the world, and with policies, rules, and regulations to match.
We must all humble ourselves so that Creator can work miracles in this time of great pain, suffering, and trauma for the families and communities impacted by this massive loss of life—all of whom were treasures, greatly loved and supremely adored.
How could they not be? They were brimming with life and purpose. Too young to be cynical, yet old enough to have exciting dreams for their lives and futures.
How could this not be? They had great teachers, too.
I am so honored and touched to have been blessed by Uziyah's family whose love for Uziyah is eternal.
It didn't have to be this way.
I trust that San Angelo will always remember you, Uziyah.
I know I will.
-Angela Valenzuela
#RememberUziyah #UvaldeStrong #WeAreAllWestTexas
