A Chicano version of a Renaissance woman, Pocha Peña (aka Sandra Sarmiento) is a filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist, activist, and podcaster living in Orange County. For a while, she also lived in San Antonio, Texas, my hometown.

When California went into lockdown on March 20^th, Pocha, with her ¡Dale Gas! approach to life, immediately began a quarantine journal on her website, Pocharte.  Pocha writes about a potpourri of topics such as her workshops on Zoom, her own version of a victory garden, and the challenges of sharing lockdown with a retired mom.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there’s also been an outbreak of conspiracy theories. Pocha loves to explore them as they are, she says, a deeply entertaining pursuit.  “Some folks favor crossword puzzles to keep their minds sharp. I like entertaining far-out notions that might relate to our everyday life.”

As for the coronavirus, Pocha says: “I’m partial to thinking that COVID19 was bioengineered but I don’t know by whom. My theory is that the virus will be used to usher in a cashless society and possible jubilee. It’s a conservative position. There are some wilder theories out there, like those shared by Q, Ground Zero, David Wilcock, Corey Goode, Benjamin Fulford, and David Icke.”

According to 14^th century conspiracy theorist, Gabriele de’ Mussi, the Black Death that devastated Europe was the result of biological warfare. De’ Mussi claims that the Mongolian army catapulted plague infected cadavers into the Crimean city of Caffa. The survivors fled to the Mediterranean basin taking the plague with them. For the next five years, the Black Death would continue to kill obliterating c. one third of Europe’s population.

Being an advanced civilization, we no longer need catapults. We have airplanes. And irresponsible heads-of-state.

Related: Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa

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