To the generosity of the Mexican people. [View All]

My mother is old now. She’s 78 and for years the only help she’s had has come from the Mexican community here in East San Jose. Probably, mostly from undocumented people. I‘ve never worried about her for a moment up here on her ranch alone and there’s probably nothing short of knowing Mexican culture that could ever allow me to trust anyone so far.

In my family, gratitude for the Mexican people goes back a long way. We are not from Mexico. My mother’s family is from El Salvador. Her parents were a marriage of the oligarchy and the military, my grandmother a planter’s daughter and my grandfather an officer with a knack for politics.

Long story short, my grandfather served under a dictator so crazy and so brutal that he’s still talked about today. And my grandfather led an unsuccessful coup that put Papi in house detention for about a year only because executing him would have been a political risk.

The fun part is that he escaped out of El Salvador by getting his security detail drunk and disguising himself as a chauffer. He drove straight to Mexico. Somehow, my grandmother followed him with five kids, a grandkid and her mother in law. On buses, all that way. I still don’t know how she did that.

In any case, when he landed in Mexico, he set about contacting the Mexican president who at the time was Lazaro Cardenas, a real progressive. Cardenas did things that must have infuriated the US and European powers -- like nationalizing Mexico’s resources and redistributing land and eliminating the death penalty. His Wiki entry says that he never used bodyguards or security. I don’t know if that is true but he seems to have been respected among the people.

Cardenas offered my grandfather a commission in the Mexican Army. He’d get to keep his rank. Of course, the offer was declined and instead, Gen. Castaneda gratefully accepted surveying work in Baja (that may or may not have needed to be done) while he and his compeers figured out how to oust the dictator and his party. Which they did eventually.

But, all of that pales beside this point: between the time my family fled to Mexico and the time my grandfather was able to contact President Cardenas, they had nothing. No place to sleep, no money to buy food with, no way to stay in touch with anyone. There was no net or cell phones in 1938 and Cardenas already had his hands full. They survived on the goodwill of the poorest of the poor in the slums of Mexico City, who extended their hospitality to this group of strangers. My mom says that but for the commie pinko nuns in that parish, she wouldn’t have eaten at all during that time which, as far as I can tell, was weeks, not days. You can be very alone in a city. And yet this big family was somehow taken in and incorporated by that community, just as they were, until they were able to manage on their own.

In all, the family spent about 7 years in Mexico City. And when they were preparing to return to El Salvador to be part of the new administration, most of their friends didn’t believe them when they were trying to say “good-bye”, which is not unreasonable. But when my mom and her brothers and sisters left Mexico, they took with them a love of Mexico and of the Mexican people that sixty years on has never diminished. And that love and regard has been passed on.

So when I read these slurs and fears and judgments about Mexican people, I can’t process them. Because I know third, second and first hand who these people are. And sometimes, I have to wonder if La Raza Cósmica, “the cosmic race” which has incorporated within itself all the races, all the bits of DNA that came to this continent, isn’t lending itself out a little bit to unite this fragmented country, lending a little dignity, a little extra love of family and community, a little tolerance, a little humor. We could use all of those things right about now.

* * *

"Negrita de mis pesares,
ojos de papel volando.
Negrita de mis pesares,
ojos de papel volando.
A todos diles que sí
pero no les digas cuándo.
Así me dijiste a mí;
por eso vivo penando.

¿Cuándo regresa mi negra?
Que la quiero ver aquí
con su rebozo de seda
que le traje de Tepic."

-- El son de la Negra