What is it like to be the symbolic Mexican at work? (see article below) People may ask you if you speak Spanish at home; or do you eat lots of tacos; or they may tell you your English is very good. They might say "but you aren't like the rest of them" (my neighbor told me that once).
Someone (who is Mexican) asked me recently what my parents thought when I decided to get "closer to my culture." I was struck by the question because at the moment I didn't have an answer. It was true that I didn't speak Spanish until I was an adult (and still don't perfectly), and that I went to a school where there were only three other Latino kids. But at home things were different. I ate more beans, rice, and tortillas than anyone else in the family. In fact they all made fun of me because I liked beans so much. As a little kid I was in love with the Mexican singer Miguel Aceves Mejia (shown above left). I even talked my parents into taking me to a concert of his at the Houston Music Hall, when I was six years old. I came back telling my friends I was going to marry Miguel when I grew up (I didn't know he was married already).
I can't say I knew what the words meant, when he sang. But I got the gist of things, and it made me very happy. Especially the mariachi arrangements by Ruben Fuentes. They were awesome.
I imagined I was his girlfriend (see video below)
My family was not the perfect always happy family, but we knew who we were. My Dad never let us forget that he was born in Mexico, that Benito Juarez was a Mason, and an Indian; and that he (my father) could never run for U.S. President because he was not an American born citizen.
Perhaps they weren't surprised because in their minds, my insides always stayed Mexican, even if I was born here, even if I only spoke English. They knew I could be both Mexican and American at the same time; two completely different identities blended together, like so many other Americans.
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Readers Share Thoughts on Immigration
Hector Tobar -- Los Angeles Times
March 16, 2009
When I was a boy growing up in Los Angeles circa 1970, I did something that brought dishonor to my people.
I tossed a hamburger wrapper onto the parking lot at a fast-food restaurant. This caused my mother to snap that I should never litter because "when people look at you and see black hair and brown eyes, they think you don't have any manners."
The word Latino had not yet entered the California lexicon. Hispanic or Hispano was used only by bureaucrats and academics. But my mother and I were not Mexican Americans, the only ethnic label most white Angelenos might have attached to us.
My parents were from Guatemala, a country that at that time had contributed few immigrants to the city. We were newcomers, and it was important to make a good first impression.
A generation or two later, with waves of immigration under our belts, we guatemaltecos, mexicanos, salvadoreños and other sons and daughters of Latin America are way past making first impressions.
Some people think we're strutting around Southern California as if we own the place. They are intimidated by our great numbers, our seemingly exotic ways and the Romance language that often flows from our lips.Your humble columnist, with his surname and annoying tendency to quote people who speak Spanish, is seen by some as a symbol of this "foreign" presence. Never mind that I am, like millions of other Latinos, a proud citizen of the United States.
In the eyes of one Times reader, I am this paper's "de facto Mexican columnist." for complete article
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