El Sabor Mas Rico...
Paul Rodriguez once said, “Racism is stupid, nobody chooses what color they’re going to be… some of us just get lucky.” While I can’t completely agree with this statement – by default, my race is human first – I must say that color brings a blank canvas to life… see Monet. Do you recall ever using the white crayon? Didn’t think so. I’m not sure if Paul was talking about simply being Mexican or Mexican on the northern side of the Rio Grande. Truth be told, Califas is my home, therefore my cultural doctrine is of a northern blend… firme.
Up until about the age of twelve, I never thought about race. I never imagined a spot on the globe without Mexicanos on it… I used to watch Univision with my parents and ask, “Is Cuba in Mexico?” I thought all latinos were Mexican – just different shades from different regions… the dark ones from Oaxaca, the light ones from Guadalajara, and so on. In some form or another, we’re all from the same place – comparable barrios in Harlem and East of downtown L.A. are proof to that. I never thought a city could be completely white or black, actually completely one thing. I imagined every American city having a sweet concoction of pinto and black beans – with a side of rice, baklava for dessert and Bob Marley jambalaya representing the rest of my peoples – one love gumbo…
“I’m coming straight out Monte! Crazy mother fucker named Lucio, from the gang called…”
I moved to El Monte at the age of 13, while at the gates of adolescence and with a mentality jaded by a devastating divorce. What-me-worry? Negro please… Zapata blood ain’t nuttin’ to fuck with. Mind you, my grandfather’s uncle fought with Pancho Villa in northern Mexico during the early 1920’s – protecting campesinos, raiding haciendas, killing gabachos and such…you know, the good ol’ days. While in grade school and living in the semi-burban city of Baldwin Park I used to visit El Monte almost every weekend – a large percentage of my family had migrated here - I never liked it though. I used to think, I’d hate to live here, everybody curses like a mug and has a bit of a gangster wit about them. Tupac was right, “…cuz everybody in L.A. got a little bit of thug in em.” I had enough sense to feel ill about shit like that – at the time my reality consisted of weekend baseball games, secret crushes, long bike rides on my BMX, wrestling moves on my little sisters and Nintendo. Life changes and this discomfort soon became my reality… all for the better – I can take that notion to the grave.
I mention the five mile transition because it was significant in the scope of establishing my identity as a Mexican baby/toddler/mocoso/teen/so-called adult/hecho mendigo living on the northern side of an imaginary border that millions cross in the hopes of a humane life for themselves and their offspring, only to end up in homeless shelters, battered tents in strawberry fields, prisons, and barrios amongst other places. El Monte’s as much of a centerpiece to the Mexican immigrant struggle as is East Los Angeles, Santa Ana, and Norcal agricultural towns… that’s why I feel lucky to be from such a place, to lay my head on a pillow in the 91732 zip code. Of course, there are the exceptions we call tio tacos and coconuts (you know white on the inside, brown on the outside), that tread to other worlds known as Orange County, Brentwood, the Godforsaken Valley… anywhere North of the 210, West of the 5 freeway and South of the 91…but like I said they’re the exception. Que gacho.
One must think, but why have this perspective? We’re capitalists’ damnit, we’re supposed to progress. It’s simple… In Vanilla Sky like fashion, “Without the bitter, the sweet ain’t that sweet.” The social infrastructure of this state and country for that matter is not supported by the governmental/corporate ideology and is even more damaging through policy… those in power are the scariest, since dogs are only dangerous on your side of the fence. It’s not easy to accept the reality in which we live in when folks of color are marginalized, oppressed and neglected. Katrina anyone? Hence, “making it” is even harder when the odds are stacked against one since birth. Don’t believe me? Ask the son of a slave, ask Native American kin... Seriously, wouldn’t YOU like a head start at the beginning of every race? Colonization and capitalism have caused consciousness to regress from a human perspective… all European traits. “We didn’t land on Plymouth rock…,” and so on.
But still…
I wouldn’t trade the struggle of my peoples for a comfortable home in Suburbia USA, I wouldn’t trade the city view from Boyle Heights for a swimming pool, King Taco for Outback Steakhouse (white folks actually love this shit!), Don Francisco for Johnny Carson, Legg Lake for a golf course, I wouldn’t trade the cultural richness of my Humbert Avenue apartment for the wealth of a shareholder, tamales for meatloaf (good grief, meatloaf), tequila for scotch, Chicanas named Fabiola for white girls named Kelly (oh my gosh!), brown skin for (insert anything here), rancheras for country, J-Lo for Madonna… oh wait, um, I take that last one back.
If I had the conscious choice to shop around pre-birth at the mall-o-cultures, I’d do it over again… I’d drop in the same store and ask for the same suit, like a Batman re-run. Porque no ay nada mas rico y bello que ser Mexicano y de Califas; ser yo.
If you could only taste it...
I live in a world where cholos are the new age bandits of the Mexican Revolution, where Frida Kahlos hide in stucco homes near freeway off-ramps, donde Saturday morning serenatas are those of a cumbia hymn, where laughter, love and a cold beer facilitate a well deserved pachanga, where love escapes our breath by way of Chente songs, where children find happiness within the walls of a pinata. Where a Chicano strolls though the streets of his barrio and becomes overwhelmed in the deepest of appreciation by the beauty of his people, his culture, his reality… where inspiration takes flight through mental notes and a blog named after my stomping grounds.
C/S,
- Lucio
posted by Lucio Rodriguez at 11:19 PM
3 Comments:
Perhaps the greatest gift in life is the ability to articulate ones experience. Often, it's only until we're old and nearing our end that we begin to reflect on our life and come to appreciate who we are and where we come from (or regret...if you're one of the unlucky ones). You, at such a young age, have stopped and asked your self the hard questions we avoid until we're forced to do so.
Thank you for taking the time to share your reflections. The beauty of your words and expression leave me (and many others) wanting more. It's not often that the Chicano/human experience is expressed so powerfully, vividly and beautifully. Keep it up...our voice must be heard by writers like you.
spifler,
i love the fact that you are listening. i can hear you doing it when i read your words. i feel like i can hear you searching for the right word, the right metaphor, the right simile to capture the tone of what you want to say, what you want us to see and feel as we read your words. it's good stuff, and good that you are listening and good that you take your time when you write in order to say what you say so clearly. (i'm impressed.) i especially liked this final paragraph.
funny too that i so identify with what you are talking about and feel such an alien to it at the same time. your spanish words often leave me at a loss and at the same time, i;d have it no other way. i liked it when rodolfo anaya wrote that way. i liked it when garcia-marquez did that throughout 100 years of solitude, (and i liked it when lorca did it in his poemas.) how many words have i learned that way, and how much more flavor did a story or an essay have because of this simple device.
anything more i have to say about this will be on my blog. thanx for making me think about it.
late.
Richard Pryor once said, while recounting a trip he'd taken to Africa to rediscover his roots and walking around the busy streets of Nairobi "When I got to Africa and saw real black people, I looked at my skin and realized that somebody had been lying to me [about what real black is]" and then went on to explain. "A voice inside me asked: 'what do you see?' " and after a bit of an internal struggle he realized.."I saw people -- just people."
Similar to your childhood, my worldview was more inclusive than the one being handed to me by my surrounding world but when I got to my teens, a decision had to be made because, well, reality has a way of getting up in your face...
I grew up in an area that was established when the first wave of English got here toting "teks to wrek" (fuck Plymouth Rock, Jamestown was where the Manifest Destiny shite REALLY cracked off, even though the Norwegians had cruised by centuries beforehand). As a child I was always surrounded by buildings, monuments and lore from (elders) that pointed to a hideous past that nobody really wanted to talk about because it was just to painful -- both whites and blacks evoked a bit of shame for the roles that their forebears played first in coastal garrisons, then in riverside settlements and later around the big houses of tobacco/ sugar plantations all over the south. That intrigued me, so I dove into books and started to study it myself.
Despite the unsavory way that most of my ancestors were brought here via the middle passage (some of them were white and arrived under more benign circumstances). I learned about sepia-toned heroes like Nat Turner; red-hued she-roes like Sakajawea (b/c Lewis and Clark would've gotten nowhere fast if she, with a baby in tow, weren't around); and white dudes like John Brown, who got chitty-chitty bang-bang on the abolishionist tip at Harper's Ferry. This nation's tale is truly a mixture color but history's written by the winners, yo.
I found in my readings that black slaves stuck in the "New World" had a similar word for gabachos -- they called them "toubab." Toubab was a stealer of spirits, snatcher of souls and wreaked havoc wherever his melanin-deficient face appeared. That perception proved prophetic and is easy to discern if you dip your toe in the proverbial pool of "the way it be" right now, since those times and (more than likely) hence. But all of that's neither here nor there because, truth be told, the struggle's bigger than any of us and the whole concept of race was (and still is) a blunt-edged tool of diplomacy that, to me, rings hollow on the way things will inevitably be. We're all from the same place -- East Africa, son -- and all the "skin diversity" is what makes us beautiful.
On the evolutionary side, the human being's very existence contravenes the odds. The homo sapien infant is the most helpless of ALL mammals when it's born but still we're here -- in spite of ourselves. We're capable of creating such beauty while simultaneously laying waste. On one hand there's the Pyramids of Gizeh, Angkor Watt and Teotihuacan...and then there's shite like the Crusades, the middle passage/ slave trade, the Trail of Tears, Hiroshima/ Nagasaki...and the current ignorance of what's going on in the Sudan...(these are but a few examples in both cases).
Having said all of that...
This entry of yours reminded me that while I've closed the chapter of being a prophet of rage, I won't forget my past either. Just recently I've started ascribing to the LTFS philosophy on life/ living and getting on: "Life's too fuggin' short." Sitting/ standing around pointing out the obvious is cool but to adopt provincial attitudes about what up/ what it is. We all must learn, as even the oft-maligned avatar Malcolm X did, the only way we're going to get to the future is arm-in-arm (sometimes with arms to quote B. Marley). If we do not, it will be at our own peril and right about this time, I won't cotton to a "this or that" mentality -- that's been the through line of our stay on the planet. I'm ready to learn from my/ our mistakes and move the fugg-on, yo, be adventuresome and travel down the path that few want to tread. To be certain, I'd LOVE a head start at the beginning of the race but then maybe not -- I'd imagine that life, while easier and smoother to negotiate to be a BORING one...I'll circle back to quote Daddy Rich (RIP):"it's hard enough just getting through the day without chokin' a mother-fugga..." besides idle hands/minds are the devil's workshop...PAYCE!!!
CeeP.
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