texas book festival

A conversation with Sam Brower: Meet the man who helped nab polygamous prophetWarren Jeffs

One day more than 30 years ago, Sam Brower was the best man in his friend’s wedding. Three months later, he was carrying his friend’s body in a casket. Killed in a home invasion in California, his friend was the impetus for Brower’s long career in criminal justice and private investigation.

Today, Brower is known as the man who cracked open the secretive world of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). His work led to the arrest and conviction of prophet Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving a life sentence plus 20 years in a Texas prison for child sexual assault.

Brower details the investigation in his new book, Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. Here’s a preview of what the Utah-based private eye has to say.

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How did you gain the trust of the FLDS community?

The community itself is very distrustful, very isolated, very insular. It literally took years, baby steps, little bits at a time, getting to know somebody and then them having a brother or some other contact that would slowly begin talking to me. It was a very cumbersome process.

The conviction of Warren Jeffs was a huge feat, but how much will it really change within the FLDS community?

Even though Warren’s in prison in Texas right now, [the FLDS] are still doing the same things. They have this network and support of this crime syndicate and the same things are still going on…. Warren’s brother, Lyle Jeffs, has already taken over.

So it’s sort of like Al Qaeda or the Mafia in that respect?

It’s even more insidious than the Mafia. The Mafia threatens you with your life, but the FLDS threatens you with your family and your eternal salvation, and people that lose their family are without hope, and that’s worse than death.

The investigation must have been emotionally taxing on you. Did you ever want to give up?

It’s been an emotional roller coaster. I’ve been skewered by FLDS apologists, harassed by high-powered FLDS attorneys. I’ve had people try and run me off the road. I wanted to give up many times…. By the same token, I’m glad I did get involved, and I’m glad I’m on the right side of the table and helped expose it.

Now that Jeffs is in prison will you continue to investigate the FLDS?

My personality is such that, the harder they push, the more I want to stay involved. So I am. I am staying involved, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to turn my back on it.

Was it difficult diving back into seven years of material for the book?

The hardest part was not trying to figure out what to put into the book but what to leave out of it. There’s so much that’s happened, there’s so much that can’t be said at this time because there are ongoing criminal investigations.

What do you want readers to take away from the book?

My motivation was to…put this in the public face and make people aware of it. It’s catching on more in the West, but it seems like in the East it’s not their business as much. But in actuality, it’s everybody business. It’s child abuse, for crying out loud.

What shocked you most about the FLDS community during your investigation?

I’d heard of polygamy and what was happening to these young girls, but I had no idea how young they really were. His one victim in Texas was barely 12 years old. One of the things that was also a great revelation that came from everybody’s investigation was Warren’s priesthood journal that was found in Texas. It was voluminous. It probably had over 10,000 pages…. And there were computers and hard disks and flash drives and external drives and all this evidence chronicling Warren Jeffs’ FLDS criminal activities. That was so implicating for me. I’ve talked to all these people, but here it is in Warren Jeffs’ own words. It was a private investigator’s dream come true.

You’re Mormon, which often gets confused with fundamentalist Mormonism. How did that affect your role in the investigation?

I get it from both sides, whatever the group’s agenda is. Warren Jeffs’ attorney says that because I’m LDS, I’m out to get Warren Jeffs and all Mormons hate the FLDS. And other activists say that because I’m Mormon, I’m out to cover up what FLDS does. The fact is, I’m just like anybody else. Anybody with a moral compass that reads this book and finds out what’s going on within the FLDS is going to reach the same conclusions as I have.

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Brower will discuss Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints this Saturday at 3 pm during the Texas Book Festival.

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Bring on the rasquachismo

Irreverent Chicano art exhibit in San Antonio breaks the museum mold

Weird cactus sculpture at the McNay Art Museum

Photo courtesy of Salvador Jiménez Flores

“La resistencia de los nopales híbridos / The Resistance of Hybrid Cacti,” 2016, by Salvador Jiménez Flores.

Museums may largely be imagined with pristine exhibits and austere art, but San Antonio's McNay Art Museum is dipping into an inherently practical and irreverent Mexican-American aesthetic for its next exhibit. Rasquachismo: 35 years of a Chicano Sensibility celebrates art inspired by homes, lawns, flea markets, and more from December 19 to March 16.

Rasquachismo is a term referring to the often irreverent aesthetic of the underdog, derived from — and reclaiming — a term meaning "poor" or "vulgar." The words "resourceful" and "playful" also come up often in describing rasquache art. Think of camp or kitsch as similar, if not completely parallel, ideas.

Of course, intellectuals cannot resist trying to define this style that is inherently resistant to being nailed down. One of them, critic and scholar of Latinx art Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, coined the term in a 1989 essay called “Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility," which now serves as an anchor for the McNay exhibit.

"This outsider viewpoint stems from a funky, irreverent stance that debunks convention and spoofs protocol," Ybarra-Frausto wrote. "To be rasquache is to posit a bawdy, spunky consciousness seeking to subvert and turn ruling paradigms upside down—a witty, irreverent, and impertinent posture that recodes and moves outside established boundaries."

$Salvador Jim\u00e9nez Flores sculpture$ Part of the exhibit: “La resistencia de los nopales híbridos / The Resistance of Hybrid Cacti,” 2016.Sculpture by Salvador Jiménez Flores

In the case of the much more easily defined museum exhibit, this will mean centering San Antonio artists who work with DIY elements and who reference aesthetics and items found on city streets, in religious shrines, in graffiti designs, and more, often incorporating found objects. Fittingly, the works won't be bound to a single physical exhibit and will instead be scattered throughout the museum.

Some of the works on display for this exhibit come from the museum's collection, by artists like Margarita Cabrera, Chelo, Luis Jiménez, Yolanda López, César Martinez, Juan de Dios Mora, Chuck Ramirez, and Kathy Vargas. Some other works are on loan from elsewhere in San Antonio and other cities.

The works will also demonstrate the related and only slightly newer idea of domesticana. Artist and curator Amalia Mesa-Bains coined it in 1992 in response to Ybarra-Frausto's essay; it refers to "aesthetic interventions of women in the domestic sphere," as the museum summarizes it.

Nivia Gonzalez painting McNay A subtler piece: “Untitled,” ca. 1985-1995.Painting by Nivia Gonzalez

Ybarra-Frausto himself has given the exhibit his stamp of approval and has even loaned some works from his own collection. He helped shape the exhibit as a whole and has complimentary words to offer about the McNay.

“The McNay has always stood as an example of inclusivity and a celebration of diverse cultures,” said Ybarra-Frausto in a press release. “It is heartening to have [curator Mia Lopez] mount this exhibition in honor of that legacy and in celebration of our vibrant community, whose contributions to the cultural landscape are vast and significant.”

This will be Lopez's first show at the McNay, about a year after she was hired into the brand-new position.

“Rasquachismois not a cohesive movement but instead an ethos or aesthetic,” said Lopez in the release. “And to capture that spirit, we’re presenting this exhibition in a slightly different way.”

Just paragraphs after his initial definition in the landmark essay, Ybarra-Frausto points out the futility of putting it all into words; something that makes a museum exhibit both a fascinating attempt at the impossible and a fun way to keep turning the concept on its head.

Margarita Cabrera sculpture McNay A plant made of border patrol uniform: “Space in Between: Carrizos (Teresa Sanchez Garay),” 2010.Sculpture by Margarita Cabrera

"Rasquachismo is a visceral response to lived reality, not an intellectual cognition," he wrote. "To encapsulate a sensibility into words is already a short circuit of its dynamism. What follows then is a nonlinear, exploratory, and unsolemn attempt at tracking this irrepressible spirit manifested in the art and life of the Chicano community."

For more unsolemn attempts in less complicated language, Ybarra-Frausto and Lopez will get together on November 17 at 6 pm for a public conversation at the museum.

“This exhibition is a celebration,” said Lopez. “And it’s an exploration of how Chicano and Latinx art have embodied a spirit of resilience and defiance.”

The McNay museum is located at 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave. More information about the museum is available at mcnayart.org.

visual art mexican american culture