Giving Orange County a Brown Face

by Yolanda Morelos Álvarez
contributor

Note: This is an article from 2002. Since the publishinig of this article Ms.  Álvarez has become the inspiring force behind the founding of the Orange County Mexican American Historical Society (OCMAHS) which has a growing digital collection of historic photographs of Mexicans in Orange County. The collection strength is in twentieth century images. Of which, undoubtedly contains her collection “Fire in the Morning”. Ms. Alvarez has been featured in National Public Radio. Her writing contributions to Orange County Latino in 2002 are republished here as we prepare for our June, 2007 relaunch.

I used to be good at minding my own business, but not anymore.

I have driven all over Orange County in search of historic Mexican neighborhoods with names like La Conga, Alta Vista, La Jolla, Colonia Juarez, Logan, Delhi, La Manzanilla, La Colonia Independencia, Hollywood.  Sometimes I find them and sometimes I am too late; they have disappeared.

What remains of the life of these Mexican-Americans communities plowed under the never-ending Orange County development project are the stories and photographs, intact in the hearts and minds of elderly citizens who have lived through times I can only imagine.

My own attempt at reconstructing this history is assembled in a traveling historical photographic exhibit called “Fire in the Morning.”  A portrayal of the lives of Mexican-Americans raised and—contrary to popular thought—often born in this county, it reveals a way of life that was simultaneously rich and poor, joyous and tragic.  Stories are included that explain briefly the agricultural strike of 1936, the mass deportation of American citizens of Mexican descent during the Depression, trips over the Grapevine to work in Fresno and Bakersfield, riverside dancing and picnics at Sycamore Flats (by Green River) and Jamaicas, some colonias famous for their grand festivities.  These stories add to the historical vision presented.

The photographs, in varying shades of browns and blacks are full of people of all ages, and tell stories waiting to be told.  Beaming faces adorn barefoot children standing tall and proud for a class photograph taken in the 1930s, classmates who attended a “Mexican” school, one of fifteen segregated schools operating in Orange County…Segregation here?  In the Deep South, something we know of course… but here?  In Orange County?

After doing some research on my own, I learned that the immigrants from the Midwest and South brought to Southern California their institutionalized ways of treating the cheap labor force, which included a segregated and unequal education.  If someone takes a Chicano Studies course at college, they might learn of this ignominious history.  Yet ask a typical grade schooler—high schooler, even—and most likely they would have never heard about this.

Why not?  All students learn of the injustices of slavery, the segregated water fountains for example.  But why haven’t students been taught that we “Mexicans” (what all of us of Mexican heritage are called, born here or not) were not allowed to use the pool except the last day of use before it was cleaned?  Or that “we” were permitted to see movies at the theater as long as “we” sat in the balcony?  Or that certain restaurants would not serve us because we were “Mexicans”?

The history of our region becomes so much more interesting when I learned that four school districts were taken to court to end segregation March 2, 1945. The parents of students from the cities of El Modena, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster joined forces to end what was an educational system that relegated “Mexican” students to what amounted to a vocational education instead of studies that would have prepared the children for high school.  Gonzalo Méndez, William Guzmán, Frank Palomino, Thomas Estrada and Lorenzo Ramírez filed suit against the exclusion of Mexican children solely because they were of Mexican or Latin descent.

These parents, who were represented by Los Angeles attorney, David C. Marcus were victorious in February 1946 when Judge Paul McCormick ruled that the segregation of Mexican pupils was a violation of California state law and of the Fourteenth Amendment.  McCormick pointed out that in El Modena, seventh graders scored higher than their contemporaries did in the “white” school in standardized achievement tests.  The argument that “Mexicans” would hold back the white students was simply not true.  But predictably the school districts appealed the decision.

Many organizations submitted amicus curiae briefs (Friend of the Court) in support of desegregation: Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP, the American Jewish Congress, the Japanese American Citizens League, National Lawyer’s Guild, and ACLU combined to write a third, and California Attorney General sponsored a fourth.

April 14, 1947 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld McCormick’s decision.  This was truly a victory for the Mexican Americans in the state of California.  (Although examples exist in California in which school districts did nothing to change the status quo.)  It was also an important precedent to the Brown v Board of Education case in 1954 and deserves national recognition.

And yet this story isn’t told in Orange County, much less the nation.  Intrigued by such gaping omissions in my own education, I am determined that my children will learn a fuller truth about the existence of Mexican-Americans in Orange County.  I do not accept the view of us as docile Mexicans, but it is a stubborn perception that continues to exist among some of the population.  It is important that examples in our history highlight a courageous people who fought the dominant majority for justice and won.

In a sense, the exhibit, “Fire in the Morning,” attempts to present a fuller picture of Mexican Americans and the challenges the communities had to face.  There is something special about having lived in the scattered Mexican neighborhoods or “colonias” of the county that makes people say with fondness and pride that they are from Santa Anita, or La Paloma, Travelers, or Campo Colorado.  In spite of the poverty from very low wages, the richness is in the heritage, the close-knit nature of the people who lived the joys and tragedies life had to offer.

The stories of our elderly can open up an understanding that helps us to appreciate their and our own strength, intelligence and determination.  From the story about the second grader (now in his 70s) who gets kicked in the shins by a teacher for speaking Spanish, to the big wedding at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Santa Ana, there are thousands more stories waiting to be shared.

No book or file exists in any Orange County library history room that named all or most of the Mexican colonias of Orange County.  Because of this, I continue to go about the county to interview Mexican-Americans who have the stories of Orange County to tell from their own viewpoint.

The exhibit has been touring the county for one and a half years and is currently at the Bryant Ranch Museum in Yorba Linda.  It then moves to the Orange Library and will continue on to Irvine City Hall which will host it in September.  A portable exhibit visits schools and special events.
Of the various comments in the guest book, many are revealing.  “I never realized there were Mexicans back in the early years”… “I cried to see the familiar faces …” “it’s about time”…”reminds me of East Los Angeles” and finally from a Vietnamese woman, “nice to see other immigrant stories told, it’s important for us all to stick together.”  And one person wrote, “this is only the ‘tip of the iceberg.’”

I Sing the Nation Brown: Richard Rodriguez and Latinos as the End of Race

by Gustavo Arellano
Editor-in-chief, emeritus

W.E.B Dubois famously predicted at the dawn of the 20th century that its most urgent concern would be “the problem of the color line.” There’s been little progress in solving it a century later, the dissolution of colonial empires and scientific theories on race notwithstanding. But Richard Rodriguez thinks he has the answer to Dubois’ prophecy: Latinos.

In his latest book Brown: The Last Discovery of America, Rodriguez doesn’t examine real-life Latino lives so much as take Latinos and their most associated skin tone as a metaphor to show how race can be overcome in this country. To Rodriguez, the sanguinary diversity of Latinos—“la raza cósmica” (the cosmic race) as the Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos called them—makes them the ultimate solution to the ingrained racial vista of the United States. Heavy in ideas, outlandish in its arrogance, yet ultimately vindicated by its radical hypothesis, Brown has the potential to serve as a starting point for a much-needed racial dialogue for the coming century.

Throughout Brown, Rodriguez interchanges “Latino” and “brown” as metaphors with dazzling results. “Brown as impurity. I write of a color that is not a singular color, not a strict recipe, not an expected result, but a color produced by careless desire, even by accident; by two or several,” he writes in the preface to the book. He then proceeds to tell in the next nine chapters’ different ways in which Latino/brown has influenced the United States, changing everything from America’s relation to the world to its imperialistic outlook of East/West to North/South to-most importantly to Rodriguez-the racial divide.

The book is strongest when Rodriguez-emulating Whitman and Baldwin with his lyrical, introspective prose-expands on his Latinos-as-the-eradicators-of race thesis. When he actually speaks about what the Latino community is as opposed to what it represents, though, the book falters. Brown’s one chapter exclusively devoted to Latinos drowns in self-righteousness and snootiness as Rodriguez abandons intellectual dissemination and comes off sounding like Barbara Coe with lines like “I marvel at the middle-class American willingness to take Spanish up.”

But Brown is saved when Rodriguez finds his thesis of the Latino/brown promise amongst-of all the people on Earth, how weird is this?-Richard Nixon. Walking around the lame Nixon Library (“The guards are spooky, their walkie-talkie vigilance suggests only crackpots visit this tomb,” Rodriguez wryly notes), Rodriguez finds in the young Nixon the tragic truth of the American racial life. He remembers that when Nixon fumbled and sweated his way through his 1960 debate with John Kennedy, “I saw what many other Americans saw that night: Harvard College will always beat Whittier College in America. The game is fixed and there is nothing to be done about it.”

Rather than attempt to help his kind (the working class, not “whites”), though, Nixon apparently betrayed his “people” by classifying people in five racial groups in 1973 (of which “Hispanic” was the most prominent) because it was politically expedient at the time to allow affirmative action to flourish under race rather than class. Within this bureaucratic decree (O.M.B. Statistical Directive 15, to be exact), Rodriguez argues, Nixon also unwittingly laid the seeds of race’s destruction because there was no way such narrow classifications could survive America’s ensuing multicultural madness. Especially that of “Hispanic”: “Mayan Indians from the Yucatán were directed to the Hispanic pavilion which they must share with Argentine tangoistas, Colombian drug dealers, and Russian Jews who remember Cuba from the viewpoint of Miami.” All of this thanks to whom Rodriguez only half-jokingly refers to as “the dark father of hispanicity” and who might ultimately turn out to be our greatest civil rights reformer.

Brown embraces Latinos not for who they are but what they symbolize: the impurity in America’s traditional black/white dichotomy that will probably do away with the country’s most pernicious problem. The book makes a convincing case that America can no longer afford to think of itself in racial terms-all thanks to a people/color that the United States set its eyes on subjugating but is now the other way around. “And I am left”, Rodriguez writes from his home in San Francisco, “sitting inside, deconstructing the American English word for myself-Hispanic [<sic>]-by which I celebrate my own deliverance from <cultura>; the deliverance of the United States of America from race.”

BROWN: THE LAST DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, VIKING PRESS, 231 PAGES, $24.95

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Gustavo Arellano is the Editor in Chief for OC Latino. He is also a contributing writer for the OC Weekly.

 

Maria and Me: An Homage to the Image

by Adriana Alba-Sánchez
Editor, emeritus

Maria Felix died last Monday. I found out upon getting home, after I kicked off my shoes, flopped down on the couch, and turned on the tube to see Vicente Fox standing somberly next to an oak coffin between vases of long Calla Lilies and surrounded by a hoard of politicians, celebrities and cameramen. It took a while before I realized that all the escandalo was because Maria Felix was dead.

As expected, for the next couple of days Spanish Network Channels have paraded one homage after another to the Mexican Icon. Article upon article has already been written about her film career, her numerous lovers, her arrogant political commentary, her art collections, her life in Europe, the elite circles she ran with; so I don’t want to go there. I want to write about Maria and me. No one has covered that angle yet.

My father was always a big fan of all films that came out of Mexico’s “Epoca de Oro.” When I was a child, it was a Sunday ritual to go to the local video store and come home with a stack of black and white films that featured Mexican men in full splendor-on top of a horse with two guns swinging from their hips and a mournful ranchera dancing out of their throats. I don’t remember the first time I saw the sickle shaped brows that arched above those infinitely dark eyes staring down Pedro Armendariz, Jorge Negrete, or Pedro Infante. It was before my mind developed the ability to organize memories and images, but the flaming rage and relentless pride that glowed from the depths of her gaze had a haunting and contagious flicker.

This admiration for the black and white image that graced the screen of our thirteen-inch T.V. was a reaction to a deep suspicion. At that young age I was looking around trying to figure out what it would mean for me to be a woman. Everything that I saw and heard in real life was teaching me that woman’s role was to find a man and be a mother. Women (especially Mexican women) were supposed to be delicate and nurturing, accepting and always loving. Our power was that we kept men’s worlds in meticulous order–washed, ironed and folded neatly in their drawers.

I must have been ten the day I turned to my mom and declared, “I want to be like Maria Felix when I grow up.” My mom responded to my articulated desires with, “Esa vieja es una vulgar.” To her she was vulgar because Maria was vicious and always ready to strike any “canalla” that tried to impose his rule on her. She smoked and dressed like a man in movies, she led wars, she ran her own ranchos and had a deep voice that demanded nothing less than full command. She was not the “Patron’s” dutiful wife. She was La Patrona, (or the boss) in the fullest sense of the word. She was not a Mexican Marilyn Monroe, simply oozing with sex and filled with bubbly giggles. She was not blonde and never played delicate or helpless women like the ones I saw in telenovelas every day. La Doña never lowered her eyes for anyone. If that type of independence signified vulgarity, I wouldn’t mind the notoriety.

In real life she really was arrogant and self-righteous as hell. Quick to criticize everything around her, she once even went so far as to call Subcomandante Marcos a clown and the Zapatistas “Indios apestosos.” Her elitist rhetoric offended me. I felt angry and betrayed, let down. I had to learn to take her for what she really was: a Mexican post-revolutionary creation, much like the PRI. She got rich by playing the heroine that symbolized nationhood in 20th Century Mexico. She was propaganda!

I know that now, but I still feel the same knot in my stomach when I see her in “La Generala” or “Enamorada.” From that image of female rebellion I learned that my biology was not my destiny. The fact that I was born with ovaries did not mean that my life would have to be marked with self-sacrifice and sufrimientos.

There are images that come about in our lives that are transformative. They are initially shocking and hauntingly linger inside of us. They are representations of deep inner desires; some truth we feel born with and remains buried until we are able to somehow connect it to something outside of our own skin. Such was La Doña to me.

 

Libraries for Latinos? Not in Santa Ana

A half-editorial, half-reporting, all reading report

Bruce Jensen
Contributing Writer

A four-block walk in downtown Santa Ana was all it took to get me hooked.  The city seized me around the shoulders and pulled me close, roaring ¡Órale, hermano!  Ya has llegado, güey, pos make yourself at home!  Can I get you something?  You want a cheve?

In the downtown core I felt a pulse, action, movimiento.  The sidewalks were crowded and music came pouring out of damn near every open door.  You could smell empanadas and find fresh tortillas and see Y tu Mamá También for a $3.50 double-feature ticket—without subtitles. Within five minutes I had a half-dozen local Spanish-language newspapers tucked under my arm.  There was even a pupuseria in this pluricultural paradise, and nearby was a truly happening bookstore-café-neighborhood nerve center.

Pásate, compa, a donde tu chambita.  Let’s check out the pinche library

That’s why I was in town: a job at the Santa Ana library.  What drew me into public librarianship, see, was my dissatisfaction with the service that so-called linguistic minorities usually get—or rather, don’t get—from their libraries.

Back in ’98 while in the hinterlands of Oregon, amidst Mixtecs and Zapotecs who were evidently too short or too dark to matter to librarians, I launched an informational website that’s been growing ever since.  Later I went back to grad school (little-known fact from this hierarchical field: without a master’s degree in Information Studies, you’re not called a librarian) at UCLA, because there I could study public libraries that sit in Korean and Russian and Central American neighborhoods.

When I heard of an opening in Santa Ana I jumped all over it, aware that the 2000 census had identified it as the Spanish-speakingest city in the country, a place where fully three-quarters of the residents use Spanish at home.  A “minority language”?  Not here.  I could just imagine the exciting, groundbreaking work being done by a library in such an exceptional town.

The phone interview went well—well enough that they rewrote the job description to fit my background and did a brief pro forma posting.  My wife and I decided to put up in Santa Ana a week ahead of the final interview so we could start to get a feel for the place.  I’d take the job, I told her, only if we both felt comfortable living a short walk from where I’d work.  A librarian should be part of the community, and no way was I going to drag my paychecks out to Fountain Valley or Anaheim like some highly paid guest worker.  (Oh, did I mention that a librarian gig in Santa Ana starts at around $50K a year, plus all the icing?)

 

Vente, carnal, y mira nomás qué chula…

As I approached the building, part of Santa Ana’s impressive civic center, I felt giddy anticipation.  Meeting a new library is always fun, and the city’s ambiente had me wondering what would be inside this library, so well positioned was it to be a cultural touchstone for its community.

Then I actually went in.  The pulse that throbbed outside had gone flatline.  In what should have been a busy time of day there were few readers.  They and the staff seemed to be moving underwater.

The signs were mostly in English, many of them carelessly taped up and forgotten with their corners curling away from the wall.  Rolled-up posters rested atop shelves; stuff was lying around at random.  Some decorations in a glass case still displayed their Big Lots price tags.

I lingered near a reference desk, just an anonymous patron, eavesdropping on my prospective colleagues who chatted away as if there were nobody around.  The librarians were in the middle of a sleepy conversation devoted to badmouthing an absent co-worker.

I made my way over to the Spanish-language collection—a small part of the library, mind you, in this city where most people use Spanish.  It’s a vintage collection that any library U.S. could be proud of, provided that library is in a backwoods town somewhere near the Canadian border.

Of the eight free newspapers I’d picked up downtown not one was available at the library.  Neither that day nor the other two times I visited.  But, hell—they weren’t giving away the OC Weekly, either.

In the days that followed I walked and rode buses to visit the two neighborhood branch libraries.  Even though their book collections left a lot to be desired, at least those branches didn’t have the same end-of-the-world dreariness that prevailed downtown. 

Still, if I wanted timely, relevant reading matter in Spanish, none of the libraries could rival the typical Santa Ana tortillería.  Library as community information hub?  Not in this town.

Dig this: Thirty years ago Roberto Haro worked as a librarian in Sacramento and East L.A.  He spent five years doing what few of his modern-day colleagues would ever bother to do—he went out, sometimes in disguise, and asked people in the neighborhood what they thought about the library.  Now he’s Dr. Haro, professor of Ethnic Studies at SFSU, but back then he was a bibliotecario dedicated to fingering the reasons why so few Latinos regarded the public library as their own.

This street-level ethnographic research is great stuff that’s never been equaled in Libraryland, where Haro’s work has long since been forgotten. Fueled by Movimiento optimism and his fierce passion, Haro imagined the day when raza would rise up to protest racist, classist library service.  He was dreaming; experience shows that nobody gets organized to complain seriously about libraries unless they have plenty of time on their hands.

Fast-forward to 1998, when the American Library Association ran a census of librarian ethnicity and gender. Guess what they found?  The figures are even more extreme than you might imagine: in public, college, and school libraries alike, the percentage of Latina/o librarians is on the order of two to three percent.  Even in places like Santa Ana.

C’mon, don’t laugh; this isn’t funny. 

If you’re looking for signage in Spanish, or public service staff who really knows the language, where would you go first—the public library or the K-Mart across the street?   Why the hell is that?

Some libraries do better than others, and mind you, the situation in OC as a whole is not as awful as it is in many other places.  The county is even home to one of the most committed and accomplished activists, Latina or otherwise, in U.S. library history: Elizabeth Martínez, former director of the American Library Association as well as the OC and Los Angeles public library systems.  But most of my friends and colleagues, when I asked them about Santa Ana Public Library, alluded vaguely to its “problems.”  That often means money, certainly.  In this case though things might go rather deeper. 

In 1990 the LA Times reported on a “mutiny” at the library.  Employees called the director, who’s still in charge, a “Hitler,” and one vowed that if he had a gun he’d blow the guy’s head off.  The staff printed up caustic buttons and wore them at work until the director issued a memo telling them to knock it off.

His side of it?  The staff was afraid of change.  It’s not implausible.  A classic librarian joke goes something like this:

Q: How many librarians does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Uhhh…change?

The way Santa Ana Public Library does a disservice to its community is nothing unusual.  The rationale, too, is familiar and has a lot to do with who librarians are, and aren’t.  “I don’t speak English,” Pablo Picasso is supposed to have said, “but that does not mean that English doesn’t exist.”  A wildly unbalanced collection that slights the languages people are speaking outside reflects a library’s desire to make those people stop existing—at least, they won’t be darkening the library’s door.

Library dinosaurs still haven’t picked up the clue: any business that ignores and insults its biggest customer base might as well soap the windows. Though libraries don’t have to satisfy stockholders, the unspoken truth is that without real community support they invariably languish in another kind of bankruptcy.

My interview?  It began well, with a language test.  The first question was about library philosophy, and without thinking about it I uncorked a rollo that would’ve had Fidel Castro gasping for breath.  On an on I went, about libraries’ important role in helping newcomers adjust to the surroundings, their responsibility to furnish comprehensible information about health and law and opportunities, about the library as the richest egalitarian source of entertainment and facts and diversion that we have going, the one place where we’re all welcome regardless of what’s in our pockets that day.  That means (I continued, starting to get warmed up) that the library has a duty to tailor its offerings to the folks moving in and milling around outside; it’s irresponsible to keep serving the same old faces the same old way…

The interlocutor wrote a high score on her sheet and looked me in the eye: don’t be nervous about the rest of the interview, she said: “They need librarians like you.”

Thus buoyed, I walked in to face the Human Resources guy and the mid-level librarian who were my real interview panel.  Way too confident, and still in a philosophical mood, I treated the interview like a collegial conversation.  I subtly criticized some of what I’d observed at the libraries and speculated about other ways of doing things.  Not the smartest approach; the order of the day was meek, non-boat-rocking subservience.  Gradually I woke up that I had genially talked myself straight out of a job.

The city’s HR professionals haven’t gotten back to me just yet, but it has been two months since my interview so I figured I’d better find something else to do. The next chapter in the SAPL saga, however it reads, won’t include me, but in any case it’s not going to be librarians who solve the system’s problems.  No, that comes down to the library’s owners: the people who pay—whether they know they pay or not—for those books and magazine subscriptions and those displays from Big Lots.  That is to say YOU.

Librarians seldom meet anyone but satisfied customers.  The people the library ignores, you see, don’t come in.  It doesn’t much matter if those people represent a majority of the citizenry.  None of this is gonna change until somebody calls the libraries on their shit because the librarians are not about to call their own shit on themselves.  The librarians will just keep doing what’s comfortable and what earns them pats on the butt until it’s time to collect on that sweet pension.

Try it.  Just you and a few friends.  Call your library on their shit, and in two languages.  The result might be a pleasant surprise.  A lot of librarians (and this is gonna shock you) aren’t all that tough.

A little organized griping from just a few library owners packs a bigger wallop than you’d expect.  If some santanenses were to get together and make enough noise, they might be surprised–after some initial kicking and screaming—what they can squeeze out of their library.  If not, well…there’s always Reuben Martinez’s bookstore…or the newspaper rack outside El Metate.

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Bruce Jensen is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Críticas magazine.  His carefully crafted boberías have recently appeared in books like The Changing Culture of Libraries, Alternative Library Literature 2000-2001, The Power of Language/El Poder de la Palabra, and the upcoming Revolting Librarians Redux.

 

Getting to the Truth of MECHA

Sometimes call it for what it is and Get Spat Upon

by Benjamín Escobedo
Editor, emeritus

I‘m sitting in front of my computer staring hypnotically as the icon blinks repeatedly at my sullen face, reminding me of how I went wrong as a writer. I was supposed to do a story on MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), the Chicano student organization that has chapters in high schools, colleges and universities throughout the country. I was supposed to do an article on the history of MEChA in OC and how it differs (if it does) from anywhere else in the country. I was supposed to do something, anything, regarding this group.

Then some individuals at Berkeley MEChA (the militant chapter-more on that later) went and stole an entire press run of a newspaper by some conservative students simply because they dared to criticize MEChA. Now all MEChA’s have been instructed not to talk to any media, even if the media member is a proud MEChista who got his butt whipped during the heyday of the Pete Wilson resistance. This same organization that I once put my ass on the line for failed to return my numerous phone calls or e-mails. I can understand giving people some time, but one month, come on!

So here begins my story, so here begins my confession.

Mechistas have been wreaking havoc all over the U.S. ever since that fateful year of 1969 when MECHA was founded amongst the rise of the Chicano movement. Ever since then it has been a blur, from the beginning of the La Raza Unida Party to the stealing of newspapers on a university campus. In between these events, we can find some accomplishments. The rallies and protests of Proposition 187 and Proposition 209 made a great impact on the community. Although both propositions passed, MECHA’s vigorous opposition to the propositions brought something to the state of California that the Republicans are combating futilely to this day: the Latino Democratic electorate. MECHA has also shed light on the inherent inequity in the present American system regarding its treatment of minorities and its imperialistic bent. We can also talk of the many hunger strikes, fundraisers, and mentorship programs that day by day, MECHA has accomplished.

But the question remains: what has MECHA accomplished in Orange County? Better yet, what have they accomplished in general? As far as I have seen and experienced, almost nothing at all. All of Orange County MEChA’s accomplishments, if any, have come within their respective campuses and benefit only themselves. They preach community every chance they get but they are seldom seen in the community. For example, Cal State Fullerton’s chapter has a reputation of being self-serving and openly hostile towards those that it deems not “Chicano enough” for them. One individual, Ron Gomez, was once kicked out of a MEChA meeting at Fullerton for mentioning the name of a local Chicano activist with whom the chapter had a history of enmity. “I went there to ask them to help out in a community issue and someone noticed that the man was part of the issue”, Gomez recalls. “They immediately started accusing me of being evil just because I associated with him. We really needed their help and they lagged on us only because of our involvement with the activist. That’s not a community organization; that’s a good ol’ boys club.”

Like many organizations, MEChA has had its share of internal problems since its inception. Santa Ana College’s chapter fell to pieces after another organization, ILSA (Independent Latino Student Association), started recruiting heavily. ILSA can also be found at Cal State Fullerton where this same problem happened 10 years ago. A Santa Ana college alumni and former MEChA member, Elva Plana, states that ILSA came at the right time. “ILSA recruited heavily”, Plana said. “They took three quarters of our members.” Plana also added that the campus and the community were ready to embrace something new and fresh, due mostly to perceptions of an intolerant MEChA.

Santa Ana College is also the place which gave me the most trouble. I spoke to a member there and they informed me that they would get back to me in a couple of days; it has been two weeks since then. I even tried to speak with the Chicano studies professor, Angelina Veyna. Once again, no response (see a pattern developing?).

This is at the local level; at the national level, it is worse. MEChA as a national organization is one of the worst bureaucracies in the Third World. Every chapter has its own version of a big brother. They start with local chapters and then grow to county level, regional level, state level, and the national level. That is where the power lies to be able to write position papers against certain individuals and to bar a certain chapter to be recognized by the different levels.

This is also where a MEChA media blackout usually originates. MEChA has always been wary of dealing with the media and with good reason; historically, MEChA has been viewed as racist, either by the media, people in general, and in some cases by Chicanos themselves. It all goes back to the Plan de Aztlán (the founding document of MEChA) in which it states the intention of taking back the lands that were annexed by the United States in 1869. The document written in the 1960’s refers, “…the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories…foreigner ‘gabacho’ who exploits our riches and destroys our culture.” The history reference, which happened in the 1500’s, is true but the times have changed. We have gained rights and accessibility because someone fought and bled for these rights. It should also send a message to MEChA that they should update their documents because we are in a different time.

I cannot sympathize with MEChA on this subject; they need to revise their documents to be able to move forward. While some members have openly called for a revision of the offending language, the old guard steadfastly refuses. A classic case of the struggle between revising the racist documents and staying with them is in the Berkeley chapters up north. UC Berkeley has two MEChA chapters, both recognized but one is more militant than the next. Internal struggle all over again. The two chapters went through ideology strife and decided to break into two. The story mentioned at the beginning is some of the latest problems facing MEChA. The latest reports have them completely denying the story. I hope it turns out for the better because that is the last thing they need.

In trying to get interviews with people, certain people have told me that maybe they think I am not ‘Chicano’ enough and therefore not worthy of an interview. I know that is not the case: I was involved with MEChA at Pasadena City College and at Orange County’s Chapman University. Or they’ll say something along the line of not wanting to talk to an individual who writes for a ‘Latino’ publication. I seriously doubt that also. Or they say that they are students and are very busy.

Now you must think, if they are so busy, how do they find time to argue with one another at their meetings? Anyone can take fifteen minutes out of his or her day to answer some of OC Latino’s elaborate questions. Thank God that I wasn’t the Orange County Register or the Times; they probably would have thought they would be burned at the stake. It is not often that a fellow member who writes for a publication has the opportunity to interview you. I have never encountered that, my fellow members were too busy complaining about the media. They had their reasons for that. For example, during my time at Pasadena we had invited a Chicano band recommended to us by a member. The groups’ rapper would go out on a tangent and would speak in between songs. During his ’so called’ inspirational words to the high school students in the audience, he managed to throw in some racial slurs against people of European descent. That led to us being glorified in our school newspaper, if you catch my drift.

As we go back to the notion that they only accomplish things affecting their campus is very true. The documents and members scream community but their screams only go as far as inside its campus. As chapters they do not accomplish many things in the community, but as individuals with an education who can make a difference in the future. In the end, MEChA fails and the community wins.

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Benjamin Escobedo is an Associate Editor, Online for OC Latino.

 

Attack of the Tomato King

The Story of How el Rey of Mexico’s New Democracy was Dethroned

Gustavo Arellano
Editor-in-chief, emeritus

Late August 2001, PICO RIVERA

The grandstands at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena are half-filled with people on a sweltering Southern California Sunday afternoon as the smell of dirt, dung, and sweat that is unique to a rodeo permeates the nostrils. “Half-filled” at events usually signifies failure, but for the members of the benefit associations of El Cargadero and Jomulquillo, “half-filled” is a resounding success.

Thousands of miles away from their tiny ranchos that are nestled next to each other in the Zacatecan highlands, expatriates of El Cargadero and Jomulquillo make up the vast majority of the 1,000 or so people in attendance. However, the jomulquillenses and cargaderenses are not here to listen to music or to see the roping of bulls that is taking place inside the ring.

Sure, there’s a <banda> playing the favorites corridos of the two ranchos— “Lino Rodarte”, “Lucio Vazquez”, “El Corrido de los Pérez”, and countless other songs particular to Zacatecas. And scheduled to perform later in the evening is hometown heroes Banda La Auténtica de Jerez (the munincipality that both El Cargadero and Jomulquillo are from), one of the most popular bandas around. But the people are here to see el Rey and, it’s not ranchera icon Vicente Fernández.

The crowd is waiting for Andrés Bermúdez, popularly known as el Rey del Tomate (The King of Tomatoes), who this past summer made history as the first naturalized American citizen to win an election in Mexico. Bermúdez is a citizen of two countries: the Jerez that lies in the southwestern region of Zacatecas and the Los Angeles/Orange County Jerezan community that played a major role in his electoral victory as the mayor of Jerez and which eagerly awaits his arrival. He has not forgotten their help and is paying a visit to his northern Jerezan constituents to thank them.

About an hour and a half after 4PM (when he was scheduled to appear), Bermúdez finally arrives. With the brassy notes of the traditional Mexican ceremonial song La Marcha de Zacatecas as background music, Bermúdez rides around the dirt ring on a horse waving to the cheering crowd. He recognizes some people and offers personal salutations. But mostly, the crowd is made up of his townspeople reveling in the fact that one of them is now making history in both Mexico and the United States. As Bermúdez circles around the dirt ring, the announcer tells his life story and the crowd—who is already familiar with his rags-to-riches story—goes wild.

In a couple of weeks, everyone will be infuriated with the actions of the Mexican government toward Bermúdez and by proxy, Mexican immigrants that live in the United States and are clamoring for representation in Mexico. And in 2002, Bermúdez is back in his home-away-from-home in Northern California, vowing never to return to Mexico. But right now, here in Pico Rivera, everyone is happy. The scene is nearly identical to his historical campaign, a campaign that can still be considered the dawn of the New Immigrant Order of Mexican government but now also serves as an ignominious reminder that corruption still reigns in Mexican politics.

***

JEREZ, ZACATECAS, MEXICO: EARLY JUNE, 2001- Jerez is a city of colonial urbanization. Centuries-old buildings on one-lane cobblestone streets go in tandem with new SUV’s and the graffiti of the Zaragosa gang that plagues the city. But the municipality of about 40,000 inhabitants (which includes the actual city of Jerez and more than 75 ranchos) is bustling. Democracy is in the air as the campaigns for the first elections since Vicente Fox’s victory in the summer of 2000 enrapture the populace. The streets are filled with banners and flyers promoting various stern-looking candidates for the presidency of the municipality of Jerez. But one banner stands out: a bright yellow one promoting a chubby, dark-skinned man with the slogan, ”<Si allá lo logre, aquí con tu voto lo confirmaré>” (If I achieved it over there (the United States), with your vote I’ll do it over here, too).

The candidate is Bermúdez, born in El Cargadero (a rancho about 20 minutes away from Jerez proper) and owner of a life story familiar to lovers of Horatio Alger. After growing up in El Cargadero, Bermúdez’ family moved to Tijuana in search of a better life but to no avail. As the situation worsened, Bermúdez and his pregnant wife were smuggled into the United States in the trunk of a Cutlass Supreme by a young hippie in 1973.

After spending a short time with the El Cargadero community in Southern California (where over 1,000 <cargaderenses> live in the city of Anaheim alone), Bermúdez moved to Winters, California. There, Bermudez worked his way up from a field hand to a labor contractor. He later invented a tomato-planting machine and made millions, earning his famous nickname—”El Rey del Tomate.” Bermúdez’ life has taken many turns, from the poverty of El Cargadero to his current millionaire status. Never once during his trek, though, did he ever imagine running for political office in Mexico. But, after visiting Jerez on vacation a couple of years ago, he was left with no other option.

“When I came back to visit Jerez and invest money, I saw the same poverty that I had left”, Bermúdez says as he prepares for another night of campaigning. “Everything was still horrible, if not worse. How could I just leave things as they were? I couldn’t let a professional who had never worked a day in their life in the field do it.”

So Bermúdez—who hadn’t lived in Mexico continuously in almost 30 years—joined the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática), intending to run for the presidency of the munincipality of Jerez (a combination of the American offices of mayor and the Board of Supervisors). He easily won the primary for the PRD’s candidacy during the winter of 2000, becoming the party’s official candidate.

Bermúdez quickly won a devoted following despite some local rumblings over his immigrant status. “I don’t care if he hasn’t lived here for a long time”, a young boy of about 17 with crooked teeth says while loading banners onto a truck. “What’s great about him is that when he joined the PRD, he immediately made it clear he wanted to help out Jerez and nothing else. He’s not in it for personal glory.”

Bermúdez’ immigrant status would come back to haunt him. A week before his scheduled Sept. 16 inauguration, the Mexican government declared the Jerezan mayoral race results invalid after it was “discovered” that Bermúdez had not lived continuously in Mexico for the past election year. This revelation—which barely registered a blip on a US media that was Bermúdez-crazy during his campaign—would go on to nearly start an armed revolution in Jerez.

But at this point in the campaign, while the elections are about a month away, Bermúdez’ immigration status or the toppling of the Mexican state is not an issue. The most salient aspect for Jerez right now is Bermúdez’ generosity. Legends are already forming around this man who seems to be from a spaghetti western, appearing everywhere in an all-black ensemble of jeans, tejana, shirt, jacket and boots.

Some girls relate a story that they asked Bermúdez if he knew where they could get 5,000 pesos (roughly $500) loan to help fund a church festival. Without blinking, according to the girls, Bermúdez pulled out his wallet and gave them 7,000 pesos with no strings attached. Another legend (this one more dubious) says that President Bush himself made a call to Vicente Fox asking that Bermúdez be allowed to run despite his immigrant status. His campaign is barely starting and he is already turning into a folk hero. “People will vote for him because he is from <el rancho>”, says an older man. “Even with all his millions, <no se le ha quitado el chúntaro> (the backwardness has not left him).”

***

A caravan of about 15 cars and trucks filled with a motley crew of charros, students, professors, and campesinos weaves through the Jerezan countryside in search of more votes for Bermúdez. The rancho vote is crucial to Bermúdez. The city vote, which is mostly PRI and PAN, hates Bermúdez and “his kind.” But rancheros—which make up the overwhelming majority of the population of Jerez—love him <because> of his distinctly non-political ways. And, most crucially (as the future will portend), nearly all Jerezans in the United States come from the ranchos and also support him.

The caravan reaches Los Félix, a rancho about 15 minutes away from Jerez proper and the entire town is out to see Bermúdez—all 30 people. About an hour before his arrival, Bermúdez’ troops had plastered the town with flyers and a truck wove around Los Felix’s dirt roads playing a recorded message announcing Bermúdez’ imminent arrival. The classical American democratic ethos has reached rural Mexico; the atmosphere is not current American electoral corporate politics but rustic, profane, but most importantly, of the people.

It is obvious Bermúdez is not a politician as soon as he gets out of his chauffeured black truck. Politicians bask in their own glory when people wax poetics about their various accomplishments; Bermúdez sheepishly looks down as if embarrassed by his own record during his introduction. “Every time I speak before a crowd of people, I sweat”, he confides in me as he is handed the microphone.

He starts his speech as he does nearly all his speeches, with a disclaimer. “I’m not a politician; I’m a farmer. I come from a place where you put up or shut up. In the US, if you don’t produce, you get kicked out.”

As he fumbles with the microphone and his words, Bermúdez outlines his strategy and beliefs for a better Jerez. For starters, he promises to donate his monthly salary (35,000 pesos, about 3,000 dollars) to the poor and take away 10% of his staff’s salaries towards the same cause. He wants young men and women to go to college with government-paid scholarships and proposes starting a daily bus route from Jerez to Zacatecas (the capital, about 2 hours away) to send people to the state’s only university. Bermúdez also vows to use his agricultural connections in the United States to bring relief to the farmers in drought-stricken Jerez.

But he saves his most important comments for people like himself—immigrants or prospective immigrants. “I want no more immigration away from Jerez”, Bermúdez states emphatically. “We must make opportunities here so that our young people do not leave for the States.” At the same time, he does not forget the importance of the immigrant to democratic reform in Mexico. “Mexicans abroad should be able to vote”, he says. “By giving them the right to vote, corruption in Mexico will end since most of the people in the States hate the status quo.”

But Bermúdez underestimates the power of the status quo. Despite the rise of democracy in Mexico, the ruling hegemony still has a stranglehold. The PRI—desperate for a victory, any victory after the debacle of 2000—worked hard to discredit Bermúdez during the election and after the election results, ultimately succeeding. The person who finally turned Bermúdez in was not a PRI-ista, though, but one of his fellow Jerezan PRD-istas—Ismael Solís. Not surprisingly, after the Mexican government invalidated Bermúdez’ victory, Solís declared himself the new president of Jerez.

Solís’ coup did not sit well with Jerez’ residents. A state of civil war ensued on Mexico’s Independence Day, but it wasn’t of the revolutionary fervor of Hidalgo and Morelos fighting the Spaniards. The new revolutionaries were Jerezans demanding democratic responsibility, shouting “¡Bermúdez o nadie!” (Bermúdez or else!) while occupying the mayoral palace vowing to burn down the century-old building unless Bermúdez was reinstated. A bunch of ladies from El Cargadero beat up Solís when he visited Bermúdez’ hometown attempting to explain what had happened. Even Zacatecas’ governor, Ricardo Monreal, decried the stolen election but ultimately supported Solís when it became politically acceptable to do so.

Mexicans are used to last-second political trickeries, but what most appalled Jerez was that it happened to <their> man, a man that is reflective of Jerez’ increasingly transnational atmosphere. Bermúdez’ charisma and message appealed to his campaign workers from the start and, indeed, had captured the heart of the Mexican people ecstatic at supporting their binational Moses.

“The PRI, like imperial Rome was big and came down, so change is possible”, says Rubén Sánchez, a professor at the Universidad Autonomita de Zacatecas, as Bermúdez wraps up his Los Félix speech. “The good about the recent (presidential) elections is that Fox beat the PRI, the bad is that Fox does not represent the rancho. PAN is the party of the Spaniards, who believe in the Divine Right Theory—only they can rule.” Sánchez then points to a gaggle of youth that are busy handing out flyers to the people of Los Félix. “I’ve lived through it all in Mexican politics. This is serving the youth as experience and will show them that democracy is beautiful.”

As Bermúdez finishes his speech and prepares to leave for the next rancho, a pack of dogs begins to fight in front of them. Contemplating the ensuing chaos for a bit, he offers this explanation: “That’s the PRI. They’re too busy fighting each other to sense the changes around them.”

***

BACK TO PICO RIVERA– Bermúdez finally stops shaking the hands of his fans and sits to watch the rodeo as the sun sets in Pico Rivera. But there is one final treat: a corrido composed in Bermúdez’ honor. The stadium quiets down as the singer for La Auténtica sings the lyrics.

The corrido tells Bermúdez life story, his election victory, and how proud Jerez—both the city in Zacatecas and the expatriate community—are of him. That this concert is even happening attests to the importance of Mexican immigrants in the United States and to Bermúdez’ victory.

Earlier in the year, the Federación de Clubes Zacatecanos, an organization of social clubs representing the various ranchos that now call California home, sponsored a debate in Los Angeles featuring all 7 candidates for the presidency of Jerez. Bermúdez won everyone over precisely because of his non-political ways. After the debates, many of the Southern California Jerezan benefit associations made a concentrated effort to get out the vote for Bermúdez, some going as far as organizing caravans returning to Jerez to vote.

The immigrant push resulted in Bermúdez’ impressive victory (Bermúdez won with 43 percent of the vote; his closest opponent had 33 percent) and confirmed his own analysis: Mexican immigrants can change Mexico for the better. These same clubes also rallied around Bermúdez as he fought the election invalidation. Many of the club presidents went down to Jerez immediately after finding out about the stolen election. Their considerable financial power and importance to the Jerezan economy guaranteed them a spot in the negotiations over Jerez’ presidency.

After much legal wrangling, Bermúdez and his camp grudgingly agreed to drop his contention of the invalidated victory. Solís was to remain as mayor for three months and afterwards, the PRD would be able to appoint a new candidate. But when the three months came, Solís insisted in keeping power, leading to yet another armed revolt in Jerez by people clamoring to have the man who was democratically elected and symbolized a new Mexico finally put in office. Ultimately, Monreal (who is rumored to have ambitions for <los Pinos> in 2006) and the PRD abandoned Bermúdez in order not to upset the status quo.

Bermúdez must live in Mexico for a full continuous year to be able to run again, but he has vowed to not even help his hometown. In the meanwhile, he plans to act as a voice for the new Mexican nation, a country of transnational men and women who remain Mexico’s only hope for salvation—even if Mexico continues to deny them a rightful place in guiding the country

***

The corrido finishes. It is nothing special and if anything, José Alfredo Jiménez is probably spinning in his grave over it. But no one seems to care. Even though La Auténtica is just beginning to warm up, most of the crowd disperses, heading for an air-conditioned haven. They could care less about music; all they wanted to see was their king Bermúdez, a king without a throne but with a following that proves he will never lose his reign.

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Gustavo Arellano is the editor of OC Latino and covered the Bermúdez campaign for ultimately no one. He feels that Mexico owes its very existence to immigrants

 

The Ultimate Worthlessness of Cinco de Mayo

by Gustavo Arellano
Editor-in-chief, emeritus

Cinco de Mayo is worthless. There, I said it.

It’s not pointless because it serves the nationalist project of promoting pride in one’s country and its heritage. And for this reason, it’s not stupid since it has worked like a charm of making Mexicans out of all of us come May 5, even if the extent of commitment for México lindo y querido is drinking Corona instead of Budweiser.

But it is worthless.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo is worthless because it commemorates a supposedly grand victory that ultimately meant and did nothing. Sure, Zaragosa and his troops held off the French that glorious day in Puebla in 1862 but it didn’t drive the frogs away for good; indeed, this humiliating defeat convinced them that they needed more troops. The next time the French and Mexicans fought (a year later), the French whipped some Mexican ass and ushered in the era of the French occupation under the Hapsburg Maximillian.

I do not mean to diminish the actual event itself, since the ragtag Mexican army crushed what was considered the finest military in the world at the time. Nevertheless, celebrating Cinco de Mayo is like remembering Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” for the charging part while conveniently forgetting the massacre at the end. It’s like celebrating <los niños héroes> for jumping off the tower at Chapultepec Castle while forgetting the reason why (and btw, counter-legend has it that it was American troops who threw those boys from the tower). Call it bravery, call it resistance; I call it ignorance and self-defeatism.

To celebrate the blip of Cinco de May in the ultimate struggle that didn’t do much to stop the French onslaught is to continue the peculiarly Mexican fixation of harping over our losses.

We bemoan the Conquest nearly 500 years after the fact, simultaneously outraged that the Spaniards slaughtered and raped the inhabitants of Anahuac and angry that Montezuma acquiesced so quickly to Cortes. The outright theft of half of Mexico 150 years ago because of Santa Anna’s moronicies gets Chicanos so caught up in misery they actually start comparing themselves to Palestinians (Palestinians! As if someone who speaks horrid Spanish, has parents born in Jalisco that are descended from Europeans and Mexican Indians, and who hasn’t lived a day without potable water can logically compare themselves to people who have lived in the same parched spot since the time of Christ). The PRI bilked us dry year after year. Díaz sold us out to the Americans. That pretty-boy vendido De la Hoya beat our national hero Chávez—twice. Loss is in all Mexicans’ mind in one way or another, as is the bitter thought that there was nothing we were able to do about it and we can’t change it even if we tried.

Cinco de Mayo merely continues that. Cinco de Mayo isn’t a victory at all, as much as we try to tell ourselves and others that it is. The French occupation of Mexico was successful even if we did drive them out. We taste it every morning in our pan dulce, listlessly practice it in our quinceañera waltzes, and praise it to high heaven in whenever the mariachi violins begin their pizzicato coda. Cinco de Mayo is a painful reminder of our failings in trying to confront those who would colonize Mexico and our constant carping over it.

Let’s start getting rid of this fatalistic streak by stopping the Cinco de Mayo celebration. Napoleon III was an egomaniac who during his lifetime began France’s imperialism in Indochina and Africa in the hopes of emulating his uncle (for a great portrayal of how loony the Third really was, check out Claude Rains’ hammy performance in 1939’s Juarez). The Maximillian-Carlota duo that ruled Mexico with a velvet glove is best remembered as two pitiful royals desperate for the adoration of their subjects. Yet we celebrate the memory of their conquest every fifth of May by claiming that we defeated them. If only that were truly the case.

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Gustavo Arellano is the senior editor of OC Latino and didn’t even get to Cinco de Mayo’s takeover by American beer companies, though he made a slight allusion to it (last sentence of second paragraph).