Hispanic Fanatic

I was well into young adulthood before I realized that I had once been an official at-risk kid.

Bear in mind that my childhood – except for a disastrous turn on the monkey bars when I was five – wasn’t all that risky. But by virtue of being a Latino kid in a lower-class neighborhood (see my earlier post on this), I apparently was thisclose to indulging in a life of crime, drugs, and promiscuous sex. It all sounds very boyz in the barrio, but mostly, my childhood and pre-adolescence was about “Galaga” and “Friday Night Videos.”

The temptation to join a gang was minimal for me. I assume this is because the few gang members I knew were all idiots. They never said anything funny or clever. They just slouched around in perpetual poses. They were, to be blunt, pretty fucking boring.

It didn’t take great moral courage to avoid hanging out with these dullards. Mostly, it just took a better offer, which I found with the geeks and oddballs whose company I preferred.

If the perpetual idiocy of the gang members wasn’t enough to keep me away, there was always the official initiation. Bear in mind that I never actually witnessed one, so this may all be urban myth. But more than one vato told me that the induction to the gang was as follows:

Established gang members surrounded the inductee and pummeled him for minutes on end. If the guy tried to defend himself, he was showing disloyalty. If he cried out, he was a pussy. Either way, they beat him harder, and he wasn’t allowed in the gang. If he could take a throttling, however, he was one of them, and he enjoyed all the benefits of membership, which I guess included a meager cut of the drug money and a better position on the corner where they hung out.

Even as a kid, I couldn’t understand why I would let people beat me up, especially if they were supposed to be my friends. I might get my ass kicked (would probably get my ass kicked, in fact), but I wasn’t going to just take it. Far from appearing tough, I thought these guys were cowards.

My attitude toward such compliance has persevered across time and cultures. It’s one of the many reasons I never joined a frat in college. All the hazing those rich kids in Greek-lettered sweatshirts performed on each other may have been less violent (or not), and it was certainly more socially acceptable. But it’s still made up of guys willing to be humiliated just to be accepted by older, stronger alpha males. I always found that sad.

After all, what’s the difference between taking a punch in the gut from the top gangbanger or choking on warm beer because the senior brother forced a bong down your throat? The chief difference seems to be that one guy’s parents paid tuition for the privilege.

Of course, I’m not much of a joiner. So when I make my inevitable millions and retire to a life of leisure (oh, it’s coming; just you wait), I won’t be applying to any country clubs. I won’t be clamoring to be let onto exclusive golf courses or into private dining rooms.

Mostly, that’s because the whole class-apart thing seems, well, pretty fucking boring. But it’s also because those kinds of places exist solely to keep other people out. The hazing, in this case, is economic, but otherwise the members might as well be in a street gang.

At my day job, we recently had a brainstorming session. We had to come up with ideas for an industrial video to illustrate abstract psychological concepts, which is primarily what I write about for my company. It’s a niche living.

The videos are set in white-collar environments, and we try to make them as diverse as possible. This is why each vignette is so perfectly balanced in regards to gender, race, and ethnicity that viewers are forced to marvel at this workplace nirvana of cultural harmony.

Still, it has led to some borderline deceitful behavior. For example, our last Hispanic character was played by a very dark Jewish man. We simply couldn’t find a local Latino thespian.

In any case, we were discussing casting for the latest video when the Bitca informed us that we were running short on older, white male actors. It seems that we’ve used them all in previous videos.

I found this shocking. How can you run out of old white guys? Is there a shortage that I haven’t been informed of? Are they endangered within the general population?

We discussed having an open casting call, and this caused me to picture hordes of white men in business suits, hanging around parking lots, all of them just waiting for that truck to drive up and offer them acting gigs for the day. The men would jostle each other for the opportunity to be trabajadores, and they would climb into the back of the truck, where someone would hand them fake IDs and tell them the job was cash only, under the table. And then they would sweat under the hot lights of the set, avoiding the suspicious glares of the director and sound technicians and boom operators. Then they would do it all the next day.

Ultimately, it’s true: these guys are just taking the acting jobs that no one else will take.

I know little about my other aunt, except that she died in a hail of gunfire. I never met her, and I’ve only seen two or three pictures of the woman in my life. She was killed with her husband in 1981, when the civil war ravaging El Salvador was in full, game-on effect.

Aunt #2 was not targeted for death, as opposed to her brother (Uncle #1), and had tried her best to stay out the homicidal mess that had engulfed that country. But logic tells us that a war that killed tens of thousands of people could not have been confined to soldiers and guerrillas. My aunt was among those civilians who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The details of her murder are sparse, vague, even contradictory. News that comes out of El Salvador is often like this.

But the story I heard was that Aunt #2 and her husband were driving down the road near their village. The couple’s destination or errand remains unknown. They came upon a government roadblock that had simply not been there the day before. Whether they failed to slow down quickly enough, tried to run it for some unfathomable reason, or just made inappropriate eye contact has never been determined.

The soldiers opened fire, and the truck skidded off the road. The couple, shot multiple times, died in each other’s arms. When my family claimed the bodies, the soldiers admitted that they had made a mistake, and they offered a curt “lo siento” for gunning them down.

The murder left their only child, Cousin #7, a two-year-old orphan. He soon came to America, where my mother adopted him. In an ironic twist, he now lives in El Salvador (more on this in a future post).

And that’s basically all I know about Aunt #2. To be sure, I’ve heard bits and pieces about her over the years. I’ve heard that she was a bit of a wild child and a gifted fabulist. I also heard that she loved fire ants (of all things) and could sew well. But I could be wrong about all of these things.

My grandmother rarely speaks about either of her murdered children. They are not even ghosts to her. They are reference points to a long-ago life – one that has a tenuous connection to the old woman living in the cold American Midwest today. In my presence, my abuela has acknowledged her dead son and daughter only when pressed, and she refuses to clarify or elaborate or instigate any discussion of them.

Similarly, my mother can offer only scattered information. When Aunt #2 died, my mother had not seen her in years – such are the gaps incurred within immigrant families. So she can offer only scant insight into her little sister’s life.

As such, my conjectures about her personality or the strength of her character would be misplaced. And after my experience writing about Uncle #1, I’ve learned that even well-honed family stories can buckle and alter over the years. The facts get smudged when the principles are gone, and honest attempts to portray people accurately (which is what I’ve attempted) sometimes lead to mistakes or disputes.

In truth, for most of us, it is only a matter of time before we exist only as a mysterious name and some fleeting snapshots, long-distant ancestors reduced to a jumble of letters in a box on the family tree.

So I stand no chance at capturing the vitality of Aunt #2, about whom, as I’ve said, I know little. Instead, I will offer this most basic of eulogies: rest in peace.

Many Americans take great satisfaction, sometimes bordering on maniacal pride, in claiming that their European ancestors came here and learned English quickly. According to some, these immigrants’ boots were still wet from the spray of the Atlantic when they ditched German, Swedish, or Dutch. The thinking is that European immigrants rapidly mastered English in a sink-or-swim environment that demanded that they leave their mother tongues behind. The follow-up to this assertion is inevitably, “Why can’t Latin American immigrants do the same and learn English quickly?”

It’s a fair question. There’s just one problem. The central thesis – that European immigrants swiftly adopted English – may be wrong.

Two researchers at the University of Wisconsin – Madison have published a study showing that America has a long history of (dare I say it?) multiculturalism. The researchers are Joseph Salmons, a German professor, and Miranda Wilkerson, a Ph.D. graduate in German.

Their study shows that until the late nineteenth century, and even into the early twentieth century, many German immigrants to that fine state still had not mastered English.

Germans made up that era’s largest immigration wave to Wisconsin, which is the chief reason that the researchers focused on them. The researchers add, however, that another factor for this emphasis was because the Germans “really fit this classic view of the ‘good old immigrants’ of the nineteenth century.”

The researchers plowed through census data, court information, school records, newspapers, and all the other minutia that academics salivate over. When they were done, they had a linguistic record of German immigration to Wisconsin from the 1830s to the 1930s.

Their conclusion was that many immigrants felt no need to learn English at all, much less quickly, and that some of them, in the words of the researchers, “appeared to live and thrive for decades while speaking exclusively German.”

In fact, as late as 1910 – decades after the initial wave of European immigration – German speakers still accounted for more than 20% of the population in several Wisconsin counties. Some second- and even third-generation residents (yes, even many born and raised in the United States) still spoke only German as adults.

The researchers point out that “after fifty or more years of living in the United States, many speakers in some communities remained monolingual.” The researchers added that “this finding provides striking counterevidence to the claim that early immigrants learned English quickly.”

So apparently, whole swaths of America’s heartland were overrun by people speaking devil languages (i.e., all languages except English) for decades. This is not exactly the instantaneous assimilation that we have been led to believe took place.

By the way, my lovely wife is descended from German immigrants, so I’m not exhibiting anti-Prussian bias or indulging in Bavarian bashing. My point is that Hispanic immigrants are constantly told that they’re not as bright or as determined as European immigrants who mastered English in a week, tops. The additional implication is that speaking Spanish is – if not illegal – certainly an affront to American values.

The irony is certainly powerful. Right wingers claim that their ancestors needed to learn English quickly to survive, and that modern immigrants have been coddled and refuse to adapt. However, the reverse may actually be true: European immigrants could keep speaking their original languages with few negative effects, but contemporary immigrants are economically screwed if they don’t pick up the local dialect as soon as possible.

According to the researchers, many of those hard-working Gunthers and Schultzes of the past were “committed Americans. They participated in politics, in the economy, and were leaders in their churches and their schools. They just happened not to conduct much of their life in English…. There was no huge pressure to change.” Speaking only German “did not act as a barrier to opportunity in the work force.”

It’s a different story today. People who come to America and don’t learn English are doomed to perpetual lower-class status. Certainly, every effort should be made to ensure that residents get a grasp of English as soon as possible. I would argue, however, that insulting contemporary immigrants, indulging in fear mongering by claiming they won’t learn, and mythologizing a past that may not have existed are not the most effective ways to do this.

By the way, if it worries you that a church in your neighborhood has occasional services in Spanish, take another look at Salmons and Wilkins’ study. There, you can find out about the Lutheran Church in Wisconsin that, after much debate, added services in English.

They did it in1929.

In honor of the new year – and the beginning of what so many people are convinced is a modern Era of Good Feelings – I’m going to unleash a positive story on you. It strays a bit from my focus on the Hispanic experience in America, but Mexicans are involved and it’s uplifting and everything, so I thought we could afford it.

Here’s the story.

It was the early days of World War II (for readers of the Millenial generation, that was the one with the Germans). A Mexican diplomat named Gilberto Bosques Saldívar was stationed in France.

In his position, Bosques Saldívar issued visas to refugees to help them escape persecution. He did more than this, however, and at great personal risk. He also provided the refugees with housing and chartered ships that would take them to Latin America.

Bosques Saldívar saved an estimated 40,000 Jews and other refugees from the concentration camps. There is some speculation that his efforts lead to the establishment of whole Jewish communities that endure to this day in parts of Latin America.

For his trouble, the Nazis arrested Bosques Saldívar and his family, holding them for about a year. The Mexican government won his release, and he returned to his country to continue a long diplomatic career.

His efforts earned him recognition as “the Mexican Schindler,” which sounds like the punchline to a joke about Hispanics and/or Jews but is actually quite the compliment. The guy lived to be 103 (!). But unfortunately, his work has only been recognized posthumously.

Recently, the Anti-Defamation League presented his heirs with an award on his behalf. The organization said Bosques Saldívar was “a shining example of human decency, moral courage and conviction, and his actions highlight the less well-known initiatives of Latin Americans who helped to save Jews during the Holocaust.”

It goes to show that, regardless of where you live and what your background is and what others may think of you, a Latino just may be your best bet for help.

Happy New Year.

The natural question that arises is, “What did you get for Christmas?” Well, my favorite gift of this past holiday season was the razor-sharp Chinese ornamental dagger that I received. Nothing says Christmas like a dragon-decorated metal blade that can slice off fingers with one swipe. It’s just that cool.

In any case, I’m back from vacation, and I will try to squeeze in one more update before 2008 dies its inglorious death. Otherwise, I will have fresh posts as soon as 2009 arrives.

Meanwhile, and continuing my tradition of posting non-sequitur videos whenever I take extended breaks from the blog, here is a clip of a musical prodigy named Sara. She’s a pre-adolescent girl who likes to jam to “YYZ” by Rush. Check it out, and see you soon.

Like much of America, I’m taking the next week off, so there will be a temporary hold on new posts. As implied in my previous two posts, I’ll be drinking with old friends before Christmas, drinking with the cousins on Christmas Eve, and probably drinking something with someone on Christmas Day. When I am through with all my holiday cheer, I shall post more shenanigans. Until then, have a Merry Christmas.

Oh, I almost forgot: Peace on Earth, goodwill toward everyone, and harmony among all the races and nations of the world. Yes, feel free to indulge in some of that until I get back.

My family has expanded to the point where they are simply too many people to buy Christmas presents for. So we’ve decided that, from now on, gifts will be purchased only for the children. Partly we’re doing this to reject the grotesque materialism of the holiday season. But mostly, the economy is crashing around us, and nobody wants to go broke buying gifts for adults who don’t need any more knickknacks.

I’m curious if this next generation of children will be subjected to the same rules and rituals that the cousins and I grew up with. At first, the system was inflexible: first came Midnight Mass, then the presents. The youngest kids required naps, often in church, but we were all awake at 2:00 am to open gifts. It helps that my family is composed overwhelmingly of night people. Successive years of whining pushed up the gift-opening ceremony, to the point where we exchanged presents around 10:00 pm and enjoyed them before heading off to church.

In any case, before any gifts were opened, Aunt #1 always asked us to explain who Mary and Joseph were, why they were on the road, what the innkeeper said, and whose savior arrived in the manger. It was a study group for Christianity 101, and Aunt #1 filled in the blanks and embellished the more miraculous elements. She did this every year –- the same quiz with the same answers. But it was vital to her that we understand the story of Christmas. The youngest cousins gave the bulk of the answers. The older ones hung back, like wily veterans who had given their peak performances long ago.

The presents were then handed out, with the accompanying rule that everybody had to have at least one gift before anybody opened anything.  Each year, we gripped our presents in crazed anticipation until the last person received a gift. Only then, when it was verified that everybody had a present in his or her hands, did the shredding begin.

The sound of wrapping paper being ripped to death filled the room, and exclamations cascaded around the house over shouts of thanks. It was a crazed wrenching open of boxes and flinging of ribbons. It was a blur of hands and shower of sudden confetti over tumbling objects. And every now and then, mixing with a bellow of “Cool!” or the rapid tittering of the authentically thrilled, came the sound of young girls quite literally squealing with delight.

Then it was off to Midnight Mass. We stomped off snow as we entered the church. The holy water felt odd on our reddened faces, and we didn’t unbutton our bulky coats until we found a pew to take over, because we always had to sit together.

Our church was lit up with hundreds of candles, and the band gave revved-up acoustic meringue versions of “Cascabellas” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The mass started with a processional of parishioners dressed as the three wise men, Mary and Joseph, and assorted shepherds and angels. Usually, a neighborhood teen mom’s baby represented Jesus. For some reason, a knocked-up Latina’s infant was often the default symbol for the Christian messiah in the annual service.

After the mass, we drudged into the bitter cold, gave final hugs and holiday blessings, and went home to sleep until noon.

Today, we more or less skip the mass. Sometimes, the celebration gets going late because we have to account for work schedules and in-laws and other details that we could skip when most of us were under twelve and could fit into one car. And some of us won’t even be there. We live in different states or even different countries now.

Still, I hope that at some point, Aunt #1 will call a halt to our games or conversations or gorging or whatever we’re doing. Then she will sit in front of the tree, call the children over to her, and ask them to tell her the story of Christmas.

Like many Hispanic families, we celebrate on Christmas Eve. As kids, the cousins and I loved this arrangement because we didn’t have to toss and turn in bed while wrapped presents taunted us with the delayed gratification of Christmas morning. But now, we’re grateful for the nighttime celebration because we can recover from our drinking, and sleep in the next day.

As a child, I thought everyone’s holiday consisted of a house crammed with family and friends of the family or friends of friends of the family. In those times, chaos was a friend and bedlam had to take a number. Children bounced off the furniture and yelled jokes over the booming stereo, which alternated between tejano jams and warped LPs that blared the pop music of the day. The adults mixed margaritas while new attendees entered to festive shouts among a whirl of snow. I assumed that everybody’s Christmas was a raucous house party.

We played games, of course. But our activities weren’t quaint, Dickensian formalities where everybody sat with hands folded and chuckled at the outcome. Instead, we started boisterous rounds of “Life” or “Candyland” or whatever was available, making up our own rules because no one had the patience to read the directions. And regardless of what we were playing or watching or doing, ten different conversations started among us.

As adults, most of our Christmas games begin with an inebriated demand or shouted inspiration, and contests end when another, better game starts or a cousin declares, “I win and you all suck!” At any time, a heated match of “Clue” may draw to an ignominious conclusion when a mojito splatters the board, or a hand of poker dissolves into frenzy when everyone begins openly cheating.

The feast has altered over the years. As kids, the announcement that dinner was ready provoked us to rush the kitchen like the bulls of Pamplona zeroing in on a chubby tourist. Because there was no line or system whatsoever, everyone crowded into the hot room while reaching over, around, and past each other. Drinks were mixed up, plates were tipped, and hips were checked. But we got what we wanted and danced around one another until retreating to the dinner table or the couch or a folding chair or just a wall.

Today, we all chip in to help. Cousins bring food to share in an adventurous potluck. We pile our plates high with tamales or Puerto Rican rice or ham or lasagna or Aunt #1’s special turkey with mole sauce. Who knows what will be served?

We uncork the wine bottles and pop open beers. Most important, Cousin #1 has long had the responsibility of mixing the tequila sunrises. She performs this task with a focused intensity, hunched over like she’s defusing a ticking bomb. The constant flow of beverages is far too vital to be assigned to amateurs.

It isn’t really Christmas, of course, until our abuela throws a fit. Each year, she denounces the food as inedible, even if we made a separate dish solely for her (often something that she consumes every other day of the year). The first few holidays, someone brimming with Christmas spirit would try to cheer her up. By now, however, we barely notice when she storms off. It’s tradition.

Everything leads up to the opening of the gifts. But I’ll post more on that later.

Latinos are still coming down off our post-election high. After all, the mainstream media anointed us a crucial voting block in President-elect Obama’s victory.

Well, the good news keeps flooding in. As evidence of our newfound clout, we can now say that we’re number one in a very important sociological category:

Hispanics are officially the top victims of hate crimes that are “motivated by ethnicity or national origin,” as the FBI puts it.

Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you… well, not you, per se. But we couldn’t have done it without that small percentage of racial supremacists out there (which is most certainly not you, otherwise you would not be reading this).

Just how overwhelming is the Latino presence on the hate-crime index? According to the FBI, Hispanics made up almost two-thirds (61.6 percent) of victims in this category – so in your face, Asian Americans!

Now the first disclaimer to this enlightening statistic is that blacks are still number one in the racial category – remember, race and ethnicity are often two different things. Also, the statistics only cover through 2007, so it’s possible that some other ethnic group has surpassed us as objections of scorn in the last year.

But I doubt it.

Recently, we heard about a group of teenage boys in upstate New York who, according to police, wanted “to find Latinos and to assault them. They were actively seeking victims.” The guys succeeded, killing an Ecuadorian immigrant who made the mistake of walking down their side of the street. At a court hearing for the lynch mob, a prosecutor quoted the leader of the thugs as saying, “Let’s go find some Mexicans to fuck up.”

This apparently is a worthwhile goal in some parts of America.

One might ask why there is so much hatred of Hispanics. I don’t know… maybe it has something to do with the psychotic level of rage focused on Latino immigrants, most of which has a basis in xenophobic fears that have been jacked up by demagogues looking to score cheap political points.

Actually, I’m sure that’s all just a coincidence.

Regardless, I’m surprised that we’re still the favorites. In this post-9/11 world, I thought Middle Easterners were the primary objects of fear and loathing. But it wasn’t a very long ride at the top for the Abduls and Muhammads of America.

Irrational fears that every Muslim is a terrorist have been supplanted in these tough economic times. Now we’re back to the irrational fear that a Latino is going to steal your job.

It proves that in dark days, some Americans find comfort in returning to the classics.