Tanya Coen

My Tribute to Michael (from 1986 – 1996)
 
Charming, Gift of Gab, Witty, Original, Cerebral, Edgy, Dyslexic, Passionate, Lover of Life -- Social Justice, Diverse Experiences, Cultures, People, Music, Food, Places, & Drugs (pot & hallucinogenics).
Michael was…a character (an understatement), charming and sexy, with a fast-talking style, brash, hip and hilarious with hundreds of unique sayings (a famous one: “son of a male whore”)-- I think he got from his parents & the working class Redwood City neighborhood he grew up in, and the local car club culture his brothers belonged to.  Everyone I ever met loved to be in Michael’s presence. Michael, you were one-of-a-kind (another  understatement). A working class hero turned intellectual. Unwilling & unable to be anyone but you -- isn’t that the ultimate goal of living a life true to ourselves on this planet. Life was social justice…and a party! And, you pursued both, religiously. There were stories from Greeley to Oaxaca of famous parties you’d thrown.
Michael, I was very privileged to have been able to spend 10 years with you. You were, are -- a profound part of my life. In those years we shared much adventure, passion, fun, novelty, and our own share of craziness. I am happy to hear that in the last 15 years you had found a deep contentment and happiness. I believe people come into each other’s life for a reason. That was an amazing time. But, it is nice to know that we both continued to evolve along our path.
To many people – you, Michael, were music! Home life in Greeley & elsewhere was a daily and endless sonic blast of music. You turned me onto sooo much…early R&B, World Beat,… and gave me a continuing & voracious appetite in music: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, The Bulgarian Women’s Chorus, The Slits, The Sex Pistols, Billy Brag, Celia Cruz, Traditional Cuban Son’s, Silvio Rodriguez, Pablo Milanes, Ruben Blades, Willie Colon, Afro-Pop: High Life, Ju Ju, Chimurenga -- Fela Kuti, Thomas Mapfumo, King Sunny Ade; early Hip Hop – Gil Scott Heron, Curtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, KRS One, Afrika Bambaataa, Public Enemy, NWA, Neneh Cherry, Sistah Soulja, Digable Planets, Brazilian Music: Milton Nascimiento, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Olodum, R & B and more, more, more: James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Van Morrison, George Clinton and Funkadelic, Sun Ra, Aretha, Ray Charles, Sam Cook, Little Richard, Bob Dylan, Leadbelly, Marianne Faithfull; Jamaican Music: Linton Kwesi Johnson and all the Greats, Tom Waites, The Pogues….And, to all of those of you that knew and loved Michael….this was literally just the tip of the iceberg!
We had a total blast doing our 10 years of research in Nicaragua, during the Nicaraguan Revolution, attending nightly C.D.S. meetings, spending hours drinking rum and passionately discussing the revolution and the state of the world at the Hospedaje Norma, walking the dusty, earthquake and war ridden, post-apocalyptic looking streets of Nicaragua, and even jumping off a train. We were in our element, along with hundreds of revolutionaries from around the globe.
Then, there was Oaxaca…always, always Oaxaca…from the birth of Tristan, to the many people you turned onto it, to your present years. It was hard to crack your bond with your beloved, Oaxaca. Guadalupe and Henet’s home welcomed us for years. Lebanese coffee with cinnamon and amazing feasts, The Zocalo, Linda Vista, our new friends – the transvestites, the group with Polio, street kids, all the Oaxacan crazies that we knew and loved, and the rotating group of other long term Oaxacan friends, and the Greeley “family” that would sometimes meet up with us there.
Food, how can I not mention food? Michael was one of the original “Foodies”. This was almost as much a part of Michael as music, celebration, and social justice. If we weren’t cooking it…we were seeking it out. You loved to cook multi-course feasts. My first taste of this was a 6 course Moroccan meal you prepared. On your 45th birthday, you cooked a Russian Meal, along with Borscht and Braided Saffron Bread. Vietnamese, Thai, Sushi, Nigerian, Ethiopian,… there was always some new recipe!
Michael, I’ve left out a lot…the books, literature, endless philosophical discussions, precocious Siobhan’s teenage years (sliding out the window by a sheet, and stealing my i.d….) -- But, the hundreds of people you touched can fill in a lot, too! You lived life….entered this world by storm and set an example on how to truly live life! Thank You, Dear Michael for having graced us all with your presence!  Love, Tanya
Tanya Coen
grapesofcraft@yahoo.com

From Alba

I feel so privileged for having met Michael Higgins and shared so many good and not so good moments. Someone here wrote that he loved to connect people, he did. He invited me and Adam to some of the greatest parties we have been to. And when we invited him to hang out with our crowd, he immediately started making new friends. He was always open to recreate world cuisines on his table, although the Brazilian banquet (a.k.a. the puking fest) will be legendary for years to come, that’s how bad it turned out for all those trying out the little balls of something deep fried in coconut oil.

Michael had a way of including everyone in his table, his conversation, his life. He gave us all a chance of being with him. He truly enjoyed us and we truly enjoyed him. He kept expanding our worlds.

We had the best of times at Angeles and Michael’s wedding, dancing in the mud, with Siobah and Tania...

He went to my first conference when I had just finished graduate school and asked me in front of the audience if I spoke Zapotec, a fundamental question to my so called identity regarding my first paper, there was no way for me to be inauthentic in his presence. I once told Matthew Gutman when he was teasing Michael of having retired, I said “once an anthropologist, forever an anthropologist”. Michael really appreciated that.

When I was making a mess out of my life, he said, “In my experience, the 20’s are a bitch”.

Even during the most difficult times being around him and Angeles made everything a little better for us.

We asked them to be godparents of our first child. They picked us up from the clinic on the craziest day of the swine flu after our son Francisco was born. And we toasted when we arrived. In one of his e-mails from Brazil, he mispelled “comadre” as comrade.

Recently, we were celebrating Lupe’s birthday, and Don, Jane and us were thinking of him and his way of keeping everyone on their toes.

He found something interesting about everyone he met. He took us on some unusual tours of the night life in the city,  he took Peter and I along to visit his old friends from his research on the newly urban Oaxaca of the 70’s, and they told us stories about him, as a young PhD student, we enjoyed them so much.

He was so funny, so clever, so generous and so loving. There is so much left unsaid...I will miss him very much.

From Jose Zapata Calderon

In hearing about the recent death of my good friend Anthropologist Michael Higgins, I could not help but reminisce about some of the contributions that he gave to me, my family, and to some of our community organizing efforts.  I met Michael when he was a professor at UNC and I had returned to organize in the communities of Northern Colorado after completing a B. A. at the University of Colorado in the 1970's.  When we reconstructed an old house in the Northern part of Greeley into a community center, Michael was there as a brother always offering his support.  I have to share that, in those times, I sometimes did not know where my next meal was going to come from.  Michael shared his meals as he shared his love for music from throughout the world.  When one of my students not too long ago visited him in Oaxaca, he joked that he had "taught me how to cook."  Mostly, he introduced me to the protest music and literature arising out of the seeds of struggle and sacrifice in Latin America.  Michael was always there as a colleague when I taught for a time at UNC and his outlook on teaching and learning have been an essential part of my pedagogies.  We dialogued on Paulo Freire and looked for ways to connect community-based ethnographic research to our classrooms.  Michael was always there when we advocated for immigrant rights or for quality of life issues. When Rose and I married, Michael was there.  He treated my sons like they were his.  When he retired and left to Oaxaca, we kept in touch.  His example of a professor who never lost touch with the community stayed with me as I pursued a PhD at UCLA (and eventually as a professor at Pitzer College).  When me and my family visited him in Oaxaca, he took us through the barrios so that we could meet the many friends that were now part of his extended family. We were so impressed with the young people, the viejitos (elderly), and the many families who, because of their deep respect for Michael, welcomed us with open arms. I remember Michael with his laughter and with his love for all that is good in the society.  While I am deeply hurt today -- I know that he would have said that we should not mourn.  And, as he would have wanted, we will continue to work to create the kind of just and equal society that he always promoted in his writings, e-mails, and in his international spirit.  His spirit is very much alive in all that I do, in what my family does, and in all that we will do in the future as it is emerging.

Jose Zapata Calderon
Professor of Sociology and Chicano Studies
1050 North Mills Avenue
Claremont, CA 91711-6101
(909) 607-2852  (909) 621-8479 Fax
 Jose_Calderon@pitzer.edu

Sunday, Feb 6, 2011

Dear Angeles, Siobhan, Higgins and Clemente Santiago family:
This day must be so terrible, I can't stop thinking of you all. I am standing beside you.
Love
Martha

Cicely & Marc Winter

Dear Ángeles, your daughters, and Michael´s children,

We were shocked and saddened to receive the news of Michael´s passing and send you our most heartfelt condolences. Even though we have accepted that we will be losing friends at an increasing rate now, hearing that Michael was among them was an unusual blow because he was so full of life, energy, and good will-- "todo bom!"--the positive forces which I like to think will keep life going.....

It was wonderful that Michael could have this sabbatical year in Florianopolis and I loved the photos of the excursion to the waterfalls. We deeply respect his ongoing work in support of the marginalized sectors of Oaxaca society and appreciated receiving his carefully selected articles on such a wide range of subjects. I feel sad to see his last mailing in my Inbox the day before he died. Rest in peace Mr. "todo bom!"

Love,
Cicely and Marc Winter

From Jane Poindexter

Dear Michael,

I remember the day you told me you were getting married. We were standing in the Alameda. With a big smile on your face, you said: "I think this time I finally got it right." And through the years I have been grateful that I knew Angeles’ actual name because if I had not, I might have thought it was "mi amor," because that is what you mostly called her. You were a man so in love.

I remember the wonderful times we all spent together like the time Siobhan came and you and Angeles, Don, Adam, Alba, baby Francisco, Rebeca and I met at the pool at the Hotel Victoria. Alba had just given birth to the beautiful Francisco. We talked about the Steig Larsson trilogy and how we were looking forward to the as yet unpublished third book.

I remember meeting your brother and his wife at the Casa Oaxaca and the improbable but apparently true stories you and he told of your parents. I remember another day at the Casa Oaxaca when you threw a surprise birthday party for Don, and how Angeles told hilarious jokes.
I remember what a good cook you were and those afternoons spent on your porch.

I remember especially your 64^th birthday party and the Russian food you prepared. You asked how I liked the borscht and I told you that you had not quite nailed it - your only culinary miss. You took it in stride. You never did sweat the small stuff.

I remember our little ritual. How you would tell anyone who would listen that I thought New York was the world’s capitol and how I would chastise you for being a Yankee’s fan. Really, Michael, a Yankee’s fan? It doesn’t square with your politics. And I remember how on any number of occasions you would look at Francisco and mutter quietly, almost to yourself, "he’s such a beautiful baby."

And I remember the last time I saw you. It was at the small party Don and I gave for you and Angeles at Don’s house just before you left for Brazil. You drove me home even though you were going in the very opposite direction. I told you that I hoped you and Angeles would have a wonderful trip and you told me that I had been a good friend. That was so important to me. Thank you for saying those words out loud.

I remember you, Michael. I remember your kindness, your wit, your intelligence, your generosity, and your openness to people from every walk of life imaginable.

And I know that this small corner of the universe that we call home is greatly diminished by your absence. I miss you.

Love, Jane

Greeley Tribune 4 Feb

Michael James Higgins:
January 17, 1946-February 2, 2011

Michael James Higgins, Ph.D. was a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado having taught anthropology for over 25 years. During his tenure as professor he served as the chair of the Anthropology department as well as the Black Studies department and the Women’s Study department. Dr. Higgins was a prolific writer authoring numerous scholarly articles and several distinguished books in the field of anthropology.

For over 35 years he did urban ethnographic research in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. His research focused on issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and social class dynamics among the urban poor and working class of the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. His most current book (2008) written with his wife, Dr. Angeles Clemente is entitled, “Performing English with a Post-Colonial Accent: Ethnographic Narratives from Mexico”. Residing full time in Oaxaca, Mexico he was currently working on a cultural literacy project among the inmates at one of the state prisons within the city. The Oaxacan community adored him and embraced him as an “honorary Oaxacino”.

Michael’s passion for equality of human rights coupled with his keen intellect and sense of humor gained him great respect and admiration among students and colleagues. He enjoyed music of all tastes and had an extensive library of the great musicians; extending from Miles Davis, John Lennon, Mercedes Sosa to Big Mama Thorton and Robert Johnson. He took his love for music and created a popular class at UNC ‘The History of Rock and Roll’ introducing students to such events as Jimi Hendrix playing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’. His popularity with the students was evident as his classes attracted on average up to 400 students.

He was well traveled, bilingual and in touch with the international community. His desire for social justice was echoed in the sentiment he expressed upon retiring from UNC. He had received the professor of the year award from the gay, lesbian and transsexual student organization on campus. He remarked that this was the most important award and the one in which he felt the most honored to be chosen for. He was loved by his students, his friends and his colleagues in whom his spirit for social change will live on in the work he inspired
them to do. He will be dearly missed while leaving a legacy of scholarship, human rights work and a dignity of character borne of truly caring for the concerns and needs of others.

As his friend and colleague, Jose Zapata Calderon eloquently said, “As Michael would have liked, we will continue to work to create the kind of just and equal society that he always promoted in his writings and in his international spirit. His spirit is very much alive in all that I do and will do.” For those fortunate enough to have known Michael, he lives on as a great spirit of life, love, compassion and integrity.

Michael is survived by his wife, Angeles Clemente, his three step-daughters, Rebeca Santiago, Jessica Santiago and Erika Clemente as well as his lovely daughter, Siobhan Higgins and son Tristan Higgins and family. He is the grandfather of two beautiful girls and the beloved brother of Ed Higgins and Frank Higgins. He is also the cherished friend to many people around the world.