Hispanic Fanatic

Let me give a quick thanks to Cousin #3 for her comment on my post “Cousin #1.” She clarifies an error I made and also makes some great points about the importance of societal priorities… and how they’re often fucked up.

But since we’re on the subject of family, now is a good time to introduce you to the grandmother.

Three-quarters of my grandparents died before I was born or so early in my life that I have virtually no recollection of them. So my only real experience with grandparents is my maternal abuela.

I met my grandmother when I was eleven, when she moved to this country against her will. All through my adolescence and early adulthood, she rarely passed on an opportunity to remind everyone that she had never wanted to come to the United States and that it was her troublesome daughters who had brought her to this frigid nation.

She is now pushing ninety, and she has lived in America for almost one-third of her life. Her birthday is October 31 (Halloween), and when she discovered that American kids dress up like ghosts and demons and devils on that day, she took it personally.

Despite her advanced age, she is absurdly healthy, leading my family to the conclusion that we have good genes and tend to live a long time if nobody shoots us. It’s true that she limps more noticeably because of a hip injury from decades past. But even with this mild handicap, helping her down the stairs is pointless, as she is likely to slap away the hand of someone trying to guide her. It’s a bit of a metaphor.

Her stubbornness is legendary and shows up at predictable moments. For example, it isn’t really a family Christmas until she throws a fit. Each year, she denounces the food as inedible, even if a separate dish has been made solely for her and is something that she consumes every other day of the year (usually dark-meat chicken). Then she goes to sit by herself on the couch while everyone else eats and drinks and laughs. The first few holidays that she pulled this, one of the cousins or someone brimming with Christmas spirit would try to cheer her up. By now, however, we barely notice when she limps off in peevishness. It is tradition, and it usually means that we can open the presents soon.

Food has also been the source of a few run-ins that I’ve had with her. When she came to America, she brought her old-world ways with her, which included a belief that men can’t – and more importantly, shouldn’t – ever cook. My mother tried to explain to her that things were different in America and, as a single mom, she needed me to step up and occasionally prepare my own meals. This scandalized my grandmother, who dismissed the whole argument of men in the kitchen with a curt “Sin verguenza.”

And yes, if you take her out to dinner, she will complain that the food is cooked specifically to kill her.

Her drive to be judgmental is, in culinary matters at least, somewhat justified. She makes magnificent pupusas, which are a Salvadoran delicacy so amazing that I feel physically sorry for anyone who has not had them.

Making pupusas are a link to her previous life in El Salvador. However, asking her about this former life doesn’t reveal fascinating insights about another culture or a deeper look at our family tree.

Instead, it usually just provokes her to spit out some fact about the area and follow it up with a list of townspeople whom she hated or are probably dead. Then she waves her bony hands and declares the conversation finished.

Indeed, when she visited her homeland for the first time in decades, she summarized the trip with a shrug and the condemnation that everyone in El Salvador had become morbidly obese.

She has outlived two of her children and all of the men in her life. As one family member has stated, “You’re supposed to live long enough to annoy your children. But she’s lived long enough to annoy her grandchildren.” Actually, she is now a great-grandmother, so perhaps she will let a third generation know exactly what she thinks of it.

Despite her perpetual grumpiness, my grandmother did have one moment of moral clarity and bold defiance. That moment, however, deserves a post of its own, so I will address it in the future.

Instead, let me relate the fact that about twenty years after being dragged into America kicking and screaming, my grandmother learned that the war in El Salvador was over and that she could safely go home to live out her remaining years. My mother and aunt told her the news with the expectation that my abuela would be thrilled to return.

But my grandmother looked them right in the eye and said she didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about. America was her home, and she had no intention of returning to a sweltering land with dirt roads. She denied ever denigrating the United States, and she said it was crazy to think that she would ever want to leave.

“Por que?” she said, and returned to cooking her pupusas.

Let me draw your attention to my previous post (see below), in which I said that pandering to Hispanic voters was no more egregious than what other has been done for other groups for decades. And then a few days later, McCain picks Palin to be his running mate, in what is surely one of the most obvious ploys to pick up a voting block (ie, pissed-off women) in modern history. So my point stands.

All this leads to a natural question that has, no doubt, been vexing Americans of all creeds and beliefs for lo these many weeks: Who will receive the Hispanic Fanatic’s endorsement for president?

Yes, the media is breathless with anticipation. After all, the highly coveted Latino vote apparently depends on which Hispanics come out swinging for the candidate of their choice.

Obama has picked up the Latino seal of approval of everyone from Bill Richardson to J. Lo. Meanwhile, Daddy Yankee made waves recently by endorsing McCain, thus becoming the first Republican Latino rapper… which he will probably remain for all time.

Daddy Yankee is getting a lot of, shall we say, negative feedback for his choice. The dreaded “sell-out” label has been thrown his way, and his very status as an authentic Latino has been called into question.

This is beyond sad. It’s insulting and counterproductive.

While I certainly don’t share Daddy Yankee’s enthusiasm for the establishment, his political leanings don’t cancel out his status as Hispanic. One would think that Latinos would learn to avoid this type of baiting after seeing African Americans tear themselves apart over whether black Republicans were Uncle Toms or not. All that debate did was entrench people further into their ideological trenches and fray bonds among whole communities.

The stats show that Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, but this is no longer the iron-clad lock that it used to be. Even Latino liberals should view this development as a good thing. At some point, Democrats will stop assuming they have this segment of the population wrapped up, and they will address us more directly. It’s already happening in this election (hence the charge of pandering).

Of course, let me point out that Obama has picked up at least one more significant Latino endorsement. The Vatosaurus is all for him:

I’ve been on this kick lately about the importance of children in Hispanic culture. I’ll complete my trilogy of rants on this subject (for now) by pointing out that while the overall national rate of teen pregnancy has declined, it has actually increased among adolescent Latinas.

One supposed reason for this is the tremendous grip that the concept of family has upon Hispanic culture. Young Latinas are apparently so baby-crazy that they just can’t wait for something as trivial as, say, a high school graduation before they get to reproducing.

Along those lines, I’ve heard the excuse that Latinas skip birth control because they believe it implies children are not important or that taking the pill means that they’ll never become mothers.

“Girls hear that they shouldn’t have kids, and they interpret it as a rejection of their goal to be a parent,” some earnest sociologist proclaims.

This rationale presupposes that a teenage Latina cannot comprehend the difference between such basic concepts as “now” and “later.” I would argue, however, that nobody is that stupid.

So what are the real reasons for the overactive ovaries of Hispanic teens? I certainly can’t answer that definitively.

I have some educated guesses however. I would argue that the importance of family and children is indeed a factor (as seen in my previous post). But there’s more to it.

Higher rates of poverty, which still afflict the Hispanic community more than other groups, are often correlated with teen pregnancies.

Old-world thinking from immigrant parents also plays a part. If mom and dad had their first kid at sixteen and cranked out twelve babies, then waiting until eighteen seems positively nun-like. The subtle, and occasionally overt message of many immigrant parents is that there is nothing wrong if little Maria gets knocked up.

And let’s not forget the influence of the Catholic Church, with its strong hold on Latino culture. Religious dogma can easily convince some pent-up adolescent that condoms are Satan’s Isotoners.

All of these reasons are not as blame-free or reassuring as the lame excuse that teen Latinas are simply confused about when to have babies. These reasons are part of the culture, and until they are changed or at least addressed, Hispanic girls will continue to answer to “mami” far too often.

The email was unexpected, even alarming.

It read, “I book guests for an Hispanic television show. We’re taping a program on Latino bloggers, and we’d love to have the Fanatic appear. Please let me know if you’d consider being a part of this show.”

Obviously, I replied that I was interested. What red-blooded American living in our reality-show culture of a society could pass on the opportunity to appear on television, which is the very pinnacle of existence?

In truth, it should be clear to everyone that if I really wanted to be a celebrity, I wouldn’t be a writer. I would be a rock star or, at the very least, a pathetic hanger-on to some washed-up actor (whichever is easier).

So it wasn’t about my getting my fifteen minutes. My only motivation was to publicize the blog.

I agreed to talk to the booking agent to see if I was a good fit for the show’s topic. After speaking with this very nice, albeit fast-talking woman from New York, I found out that I would appear as a panelist on the show, via satellite no less. I would debate, banter, cajole, and confront the other panelists on live television. It sounded good to me.

Later, I did some research on the show. The publicity for the program refers to the hosts as “multicultural journalistic powerhouses,” which sounds pretty damn cool. Of course, it also sounds like the hosts are Latinos who have been exposed to excessive radiation.

In any case, I was excited to appear on the show. This would be my television debut, unless one counts the myriad times when I was a teenager that I snuck into the background of a hapless reporter delivering an on-location news story. This time, I had no plans to stick out my tongue and wave rabbit ears behind someone’s head. Otherwise, my maturity level would probably be identical.

Alas, the producers decided that my blog’s subject matter didn’t quite fit the show’s theme, so I won’t be appearing. They broke the news to me via another unexpected email. In less than twenty-four hours, my small-screen debut went from genesis to untimely death. After my brief flirtation with fame, it is indeed a bitter pill to go back to a life where I cannot introduce myself with the phrase “as seen on tv.”

Nevertheless, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before some other television program recruits the Fanatic. And when that day comes, it will be a foreshadowing of my future multimedia presence, when I’ll be exchanging bon mots with Jon Stewart, snipping with Bill O’Reilly, and slapping high-fives with David Letterman.

Can’t you just see it? I know I can.

A few years ago, I ran into the sister of my childhood friend (a guy who I briefly thought was my cousin, but I was confused) shortly after his wedding, where I was a groomsman, but he doesn’t have children yet, and…

Let me start over.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Hispanics are more likely than many Americans to back up the phrase “family values” with something approximating an actual valuation of family. This is in contrast to the way the term is usually employed, which is as political code for “I don’t like gays.” As I also mentioned in that post, there are positive and negative aspects to the Hispanic prioritization of family.

For starters, Latinos tend to have more kids, although the rate has started to decline and line up with other ethnic groups in America. Still, Hispanics are well-known, even stereotyped, for having bigger families than most Americans. This tendency to be awash in newborns has been brought up in debates about illegal immigration, studies covering teen pregnancy, and news reports regarding America’s changing demographics.

But are Latinos actually more obsessed with children than other subsets of our culture? Or is the higher birthrate just a fluke of statistics? I can only speak from personal experience. As such, I offer the following anecdotal, completely unscientific evidence.

Some time ago, I was at an ATM when a woman tapped me on the shoulder. Let’s call her Monica. When I was a kid, I was friends with her brother, a guy I’ll call Nelson. They were related, through their father’s marriage, to some of my cousins (see my post on “Cousin #1”). Using child logic, I figured that made us family. They were Puerto Rican, so we certainly looked related.

The last time I had seen either of them was at Nelson’s wedding, about a year previously. To my surprise, Nelson had asked me to stand up at the ceremony, which was odd in that we had barely seen each other since adolescence. He was clearly feeling nostalgic and/or needed another guy to even out the bridesmaid count.

In any case, after the reception, I immediately lost contact with him again. So I was surprised when Monica approached me.

I asked her how Nelson was doing in his new marriage, and a dark frown crossed Monica’s face. I expected her to say that they had separated or the wedding had bankrupted them or they had both gotten into heavy drugs. At the very least, I thought she would say they had gone on a cross-country bank-robbing spree (as young lovers are prone to do).

But Monica just shook her head and said, “Well, no children yet.”

I waited for her to go on, but this was the extent of her update. The status of their marriage could be summarized in this one statement, and this single sentence was also the reason that Monica looked so dour.

There were no children yet.

The guy had been married a year. But so far, he had not knocked up his wife, and this caused his family extreme agitation.

I could not relate to this, so I just nodded in sympathy as if Monica had said, “They were lost at sea.” Our conversation ended, and I walked away, wondering if I would ever see them again or if Nelson was – even at that moment – impregnating his wife in accordance with all good and proper Hispanic social mores. I still don’t know if he ever punched it through.

There are myriad reasons why the Latino drive to reproduce seems to outpace that of the general population. Perhaps I will address the cultural, religious, and sociological reasons for this in a future post.

But for now, I’ll just mention that I don’t have any kids.

First off, let me admit that I have used the word “redneck.” For whatever reason, this term (an obvious racial prejorative) seems to have enough cultural connotations to remove it from outright slur. The fact that many Southern whites wield it like a badge of honor also helps lessen its impact.

But I’ve never called anyone a cracker. The difference, of course, is completely arbitrary, and I don’t expect plaques from humanitarian organizations to award my great, great sensitivity.

But it seems to me that if I’m going to ask white people to refrain from verbal hooliganism, it’s only fair that I don’t turn around and refer to an Anglo person as white trash because I’m, you know, dark-skinned and stuff.

Notice that I’m not afraid to use these terms, like my head will explode if I say, “gringo.” Let’s not get hypersensitive. But it would indeed be sad if I thought I was being edgy by calling someone a honky. That’s not daring or insightful. It’s just lazy and dismissive.

By the way, before accusations of political correctness are hurled about, let me head them off by pleading for the long-overdo retirement of that term. Those two words haven’t meant anything since the late 1990s, and even then they were empty sloganeering that could be (and were) applied to everything from liberal orthodoxy to angry stand-up routines to the New York Jets offensive line. Nothing is politically correct or incorrect anymore.

In any case, I offer a deal. I will try to avoid terms that could be interpreted as a slam on white people in general (eg, the aforementioned cracker, honky, etc) if Anglos refrain from attempts to prove their hipness or street cred by throwing around the S and W words like confetti.

It’s perhaps unclear what we’re talking about. So let me clarify.

The S word is spic.

The W word is wetback.

Neither of these terms is as vivid, as ugly and jarring, as the dreaded N word, which is powerful enough to provoke discomfort even in its euphemistic form (when it comes to dehumanizing insults, blacks have the advantage, or disadvantage, over Hispanics).

But I’m proposing this because I’ve noticed that some white people seem to think these terms are harmless, or even endearing. I’m sorry to tell you that they are not. In fact, calling a Latino a spic is a damn good way to get your ass kicked all over the place, even as you shout, “But I’m down with brown! I’m down with brown!” in appeasement.

In essence, I’m providing a community service by pointing out that these words are not ok. Trust me, it might help you avoid a tense, culturally awkward moment. And we all have enough of those anyway.

So do we have a deal?

I’m continuing with profiles of my family (Hispanics, one and all) by moving on to my mother’s brother, henceforth known as Uncle #1.

It’s important to note that I never met Uncle #1. He died almost thirty years ago, while he was still a young man.

He was a teacher in my family’s homeland of El Salvador. Uncle #1 was married with three kids (Cousins #2, #4, #6 – whom I will write about in future posts), and he existed comfortably in a war-torn land – an anomaly of course.

He established such a stellar reputation as a passionate, intelligent educator that he was named Teacher of the Year for the entire country. The black-and-white photo of him shaking the Salvadoran president’s hand maintains a place of honor in my mother’s home to this day.

Despite his prestige and status, he was vocal about his discontent with the Salvadoran government. Most people in his situation would have kept their mouths shut and refrained from dark asides about social injustice or rants about economic exploitation.

But Uncle #1 had the crazy notion that people should know what was going on. His insistence on educating poor people attracted the attention of El Salvador’s death squads.

These militia groups had figured out that the biggest danger to their campaign was the leftist virus of literacy. They realized that if campesinos learned how to read, they would get their hands on degenerate books that claimed they had rights or that the landowners exploited them or some other outlandish idea.

So they encouraged Uncle #1 to stop educating the poor. This encouragement took the form of a savage beating.

However, he didn’t back down in the face of threats, and as opposed to almost everyone who ever lived, he risked his life for what he believed was right –- the kind of person who gets holidays named after him or whose name is etched in rocks and said in reverent whispers. At this point, he encroached on hero status. He was the tenacious man who could not be bullied or bossed.

Still, the line between martyred idol and anonymous victim is thin in places like El Salvador. And his fierce ideals and refusal to bow down meant little to the men who abducted him in the middle of the night and shot him multiple times. The death squad then mutilated his body as a graphic warning to others.

Some members of my family wonder if he died in vain. My viewpoint is that it is impossible for people to die in vain if they have lived their principles, and if those principles improved the lives of others. Both of these are true of Uncle #1.

After Uncle #1’s murder, my cousins moved to America. His oldest son, Cousin #2, says that he still feels his father’s presence at times.

Cousin #2 was a small child when his father died, and he has said that his final memory of the man is riding on his shoulders as they cut through a field. I was not there, obviously, but I can picture Uncle #1, striding forward with his laughing child on his back and the sun shining.

He is unafraid, and he believes in the future.

This year is my twentieth high school reunion (let’s hear it for the class of ‘88!). Or I should say it would be my twentieth reunion, if my class were actually marking the occasion.

A couple of my good friends are ostensibly in charge of organizing the event, but their enthusiasm for a celebration has ranged from apathy to outright hostility (one of my friends said that he “could give a piss less about a reunion” – ouch). Considering these responses, and the fact that it’s already late summer, I doubt I’m dressing up and sucking in my stomach to hobnob with people I haven’t thought about in two decades — alas.

I’m not exactly sad there will be no reunion. But the fact that it’s not happening provoked me to leaf through my old yearbook for the first time this century. I was struck by something that I had never noticed before.

Most of the people I went to school with had names that fell into one of two categories.

There were the Meyers, Millers, and Schultzes – good hardy Germanic stock, usually tall and/or big.

There were the Zelewskis, Swiecichowskis, and Kocorowskis – Eighth-generation Polish kids.

The exceptions, in turn, usually fell into two subcatagories:

There were the Radovancevics, Stojsavljevics, and Videkoviches – basically, the Serbs (my hometown has the biggest population of Serbs outside Serbia).

There were the Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Carters – obviously, the black kids.

As odd as it seems, I had never noticed the lack of Hispanics in my school. We had one Martinez in my class of three hundred or so. Even I didn’t stand out back then, because I had a different last name (see my earlier post on this).

I don’t know if my awareness of this fact is because I’ve embraced my Hispanic identity more over the last twenty years, or if I simply was more focused at the time on teenage obsessions like girls, music, and girls.

Or maybe I was a unknowing pioneer in my city, a stray Latino who was a harbinger of a more diverse, multicultural future. I’d like to think that this last option is the truth, and that the class of ’08 has so many Hispanics that the place is up to five categories of names.

But to verify this theory, I would have to wander the halls of my old high school, and I don’t believe anyone wants to see an unaccompanied Gen X guy skulking around, asking random teenagers racially loaded questions. No, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.

Regardless, perhaps it’s for the best that I’m not having a reunion. I’d probably just spend the time talking to the friends I’ve stayed in touch with (defeating the purpose of a “reunion”) and scouring the event for that Martinez kid so that I could share my insight. And I just know that, eventually, a group of aging jocks would get hammered and start singing “Welcome to the Jungle.”

So yes, perhaps it’s all for the best.

My friend Nichole has again captured haunting imagery that depicts… well… something about how Hispanic culture continues to thrive in America.

This gargantuan fellow was spotted outside a Mexican restaurant in a mall. He was busy promoting the “Corona lifestyle” – which sociologists have theorized is identical to the “Budweiser lifestyle,” but with little slices of lemon thrown in.

The restaurant promised “authentic Mexican food.” I have to agree that there is no better way to promote one’s authenticity than by dragging out a huge dead-eyed mariachi with a symbolically tiny trumpet, strapping him into a walker that implies he can shuffle around the mall at will, and placing him in front of the establishment to surprise, delight, and/or terrify first-time customers.

Actually, that all sounds more like the Dos Equis lifestyle.

In any case, I encourage you to bring any other oddball pictures or images that say something about Latino life to my attention. It doesn’t matter if they’re offensive, deluded, self-righteous, insane, creepy, or bizarre. I just want to hear about them. So comment on this post, or send images to hispanicf@gmail.com with the heading “Fanatic image.”

Otherwise, I will depend upon Nichole to come though with more shots. She obviously has an eye for such things.