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| Josie and Andy, a long way from Mitic and Huejucar, Jalisco, 1947 |
I m
ust have
been young, under five-years-of-age when I first heard the Spanish
word “mandado,” vague, mysterious, never specific. I’m thinking about it now
because I’ve reached the same age as my elders who would tell me they were going on “Un mandao,” some type of "mission" in my young mind, and we couldn't ask "where?"
Growing up, I spent a lot of time around my Spanish-speaking grandmother, aunts and uncles,
many of them migrants from Mexico, or maybe “refugees” is a better word, since
they fled the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the brutal tyranny
of the Diaz regime, his corrupt authorities, and the soldiers, rebels, and
bandits who raided ranches and villages, like Mitic (Mee-teek), my ancestors' ranch, taking whatever they pleased,
including women. The church wasn’t much help. Mostly, its hierarchy sided with
the government, seeing the rebels as Godless heathens and Porfirio Diaz as
God’s representative on earth.
My grandparents, like many refugees, brought only what they could carry or stuff in suitcases. It must have been a punishing journey, six-children in tow, the oldest barely
ten-years-old. From Mitic, they traveled by coach to catch the train in Aguascalientes, crossed the border at El Paso del Norte, then caught whatever transportation they could, even wagon, and, sometimes, on foot. They stopped so my
grandfather could find work, make a little money, and continue their trek to
Los Angeles, where they had family in Santa Monica, a place they knew was near
the coast, and employers chomped at the bit for cheap labor.
My uncle, Yndalecio Gonzalez,
“Andy” to us kids, used the word regularly. “Voy por un mandado,” he’d say,
only he’d pronounce the word, “mandao,” swallowing the last syllable, like a
Spaniard from Andalucia, those who rode with Cortez when he conquered the Aztec
Empire and later flooded into the wilds of Nueva Galicia, which later
became Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, Michoacan, and Jalisco, Andy’s
birthplace, home to many light skin, blue-eyed Mexicans, after soldiers and settlers rid the hills and valleys of the Texcuexes who had lived there for generations.
Andy
would usually go alone, but sometimes he'd surprise me and take me with him, like if I needed a haircut, Charlie, the barber, would take care of me. It was a short four-block walk from Andy's home on 12th Street, in Santa Monica, up Michigan to 14th Street, north to Olympic Boulevard, a small business section, with a market, barber shop, pool
hall, bar, and café, where everybody spoke Spanish. Strangely, that corner hasn't changed much. The pool hall is still there and a funky restaurant, Tacos Por Favor, exposed pipes running along the walls, and a few spider webs in the corners.
I enjoyed when he stopped
at Gallegos Market and let me pick a toy from a rack filled with plastic
packages, inside each packet, a cheap, colorful gadget. He’d usually buy pan dulce, fresh corn tortillas, and whatever my aunt, Josie, told him she needed. Today, the location
of the original Gallegos Market is an overpass above the I-10, the Santa Monica
Freeway. The Gallegos family moved the store, turned it into a deli, a few blocks north on Broadway. If memory serves, the Marquez Market was also on Olympic, a few blocks east on 17th Street, and a few blocks farther east Casillas Market, near 20th Street.
If Andy (funny, we never called him "Tio" or "Uncle," he preferred plain old Andy) told
me I couldn’t go on his “Mandao,” I knew he was stopping by the pool hall for
a beer and to talk to his friends or maybe going for a longer walk to one of the other markets on Olympic.
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| Both Mexican and American |
In the
1950s, my childless aunt, Maria Josefina, "Josie," to us kids, and uncle would offer my parents some much needed relief
by stopping by to pick me up and take me home for the night. I was the oldest
of five kids. You bet my mom jumped at the offer. Sometimes, I stayed a night
or two, and often for the entire weekend. My aunt and uncle’s house became
my sanctuary, where I was an “only child,” fawned over and given free reign of
the old homestead.
The Espaza family lived next door. Joe and I became quick friends, until the freeway took his home. As teenagers, we weren't supposed to like each other because we were from different towns, which I always thought was stupid. I didn't adhere to someone else's rule of the jungle. How could I not be friends with kids, like the Felix, Rivera, Yanez, and Juarez, who were nearly family?
A young couple, looking for cheap rent, my parents lived in different Westside communities. We rented a shack at the bottom of 22nd Street, down from my grandmother, renting from a woman I only remember as Chavela. My aunts, Lupe and Micaela, lived up the street. Eventually, though, my parents bought a home in West Los Angeles, my
dad’s hometown, bordering Santa Monica, where I still spent much of my youth. Santa Monica, in those days, was a beach resort, a cool respite for those escaping the inland heat, and a place whose dry climate drew many East Coast and Midwesterners to it beaches, looking to recuperate from various respiratory illnesses, like
tuberculosis.
My grandparents, Eusebia and Nicolas Gonzalez, managed to buy their home, on 22nd Street, in the 1920s, near the town’s two brickyards, major employers of Mexican labor, and where many workers toiled for years breathing in tiny particles of brick dust. More than a few succumbed to “miner’s lung,” like my grandfather, Nicolas, once a rancher's son, who died in 1940 or so, his last years suffering from emphysema and coughing up bits of his deteriorating lungs. The handkerchief he'd worn around his face, for years, offering little protection against the massive red dust cloud he'd enter each day.
As a
toddler, I spent much time at my grandmother’s home, a palace in my childhood mind, but pictures show more of worker's shanty at the top of the hill,
on 22nd Street, just off Olympic Boulevard, surrounded by other shanties inhabited, mostly, by friends and relatives, like the Sotos, Garcia's, Guajardos, and Romos, families from other ranches not far from the San Juan de Los Lagos, a sacred center for pilgrims from all over Mexico.
It was in Jalisco’s highlands, "Los Altos," the people called it, a real battle front during the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War of the 1920s, where the Church fought hard to keep its grip on power over the land and its people, especially in the countryside, in villages and ranches, which writers describe as a medieval existence. Women and girls dressed in black. There was little music, and no dancing or touching, even holding hands, forbidden, and the people had to stop to pray whenever the church bells tolled throughout the day.
Though my grandparents' generation believed they were coming temporarily to work, to weather the clouds of war, and return, most never did, their children integrating into American life, Mexico a world away. Though family lore has it my grandfather had kidnapped my grandmother to marry her, he always wanted to return. She never did, savoring her freedom. Though her children all attended mass regularly, I don't recall my grandmother doing the same, and she preferred light-colored print dresses to the black many of her friends and relatives continued to wear.
Almost in their fifties when they married, my aunt, Josie, the oldest, and who would have probably been content as a nun, and uncle, Andy,
purchased a charming one-and-a-half-bedroom home, just west of Woodlawn Cemetery, a mile from my grandmother’s house, which Josie visited often. Their home was closer to the ocean. Some days, I could smell salt
and fish in the air, to a kid with a wild imagination, more invigorating than
pungent.
Every Sunday, no excuses, Josie would take me to church, St. Anne's, the good Father Woods, the pastor, at the time. In the afternoon we'd walk to Ocean Park, see a movie, stroll along the boardwalk and stop at Top's, a greasy spoon, at the corner of Lincoln and Pico, to share one of the most delicious pastramis in town. We usually took the bus home, if we were too tired
to walk, Andy's pastrami still hot when we arrived home.
Back in the
40’s and 50s, Santa Monica was a worker’s paradise, a segregated existence between the laboring and wealthier classes, who lived farther north, above Wilshire Boulevard and into the foothills, all who usually met up at the Promenade on 2nd Street, to shop at Sears, J.C. Penny, and the various boutique stores along the street, and share three theaters, the Majestic, the El Miro, and the Criterion.
In those days, living
close to the ocean wasn’t the big deal it is today, where people pay millions for a small plot of land near the beach.
In those days, people didn't concern themselves with being shoe-horned into a
small cottage or frame home, shivering through cold, foggy, overcast days, in
winter, and humid days in summer, the smell of mildew in closets, sometimes
mold growing in corners.
For laborers, like the Mexicans, Oklahoma and Arkansas dust-bowlers,
Japanese, and smattering of African Americans, it was more about being close to the work site than close to the ocean. Back then, the land was less developed, still a lot of open land, and workers' neighborhoods scattered throughout different communities. After Abbot Kinney’s canal
fiasco, the discovery of oil in Venice, oil derricks shot up everywhere, and property
values crashed. Beatniks, bikers, and drunks took up residence along the
boardwalks and arcades, the Westside's beach communities weren't so glamorous.
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My grandmother, Eusebia, holding me, a newborn
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My grandparents’ Santa
Monica neighborhood was a true barrio, nearly all its residents Mexicans, not
as integrated as other neighborhoods. The majority who lived
there came from the old regions in Mexico, major centers of transportation and commerce, from Zacatecas and Guanajuato, where the Camino Real originated, silver and gold discovered in the 1600 -1700s, preceding California’s gold rush by centuries, all the way to Guadalajara, the administrative and financial center.
Many Mexicans who came north were skilled cowboys, tradesmen, masons, carpenters,
miners, ranchers, and railroad men. Some had been travelling back and forth
from Mexico to Alta California for decades, following the trails
of indigenous people who had made the journey generations earlier.
In one
journal, the Franciscan friar, Crespi, wrote about his expedition stopping to
rest at an Indian encampment on a bluff about one league from the ocean, where
a spring provided the villagers with fresh drinking water. Historians concluded
the friar’s description sounded much like the spring that flowed on the campus
of University High School. The friar wrote how the springs reminded him of the
tears St. Monica shed for her wayward son, Augustine, “las lagrimas de Santa
Monica.” The name stuck. The flow of water, now blocked, still flows underground on the high school grounds, known as Indian Springs.
*****
Mandado is
a complex word, with origins in the noun “manda,” which means a promise, a
gift, to bequeath, or a religious vow. Then there’s the verb “mandar,” which is
more of an order, a command, or decree. It can also connote “to dominate, to
start, to deliver, as in a blow, or to throw, as in 'throw a stone.'” Cubans and
Chileans use the word to say “leave” or “go away.” In Mexico, Argentina, and
Uruguay it can mean to offer a drink, or to undertake an errand, as in my uncle’s case.
When I returned from Vietnam, my mother told me, while I was away, she had flown to Mexico City to make a "manda," a pilgrimage, to visit the Virgin and pray for my safe return from the war. My mother never realized how her "manda" may have pulled me out of a few jams, true miracles.
I wonder if
in my uncle’s mind, when he said “mandado,” it could have meant so much more to
him than it meant to me, an English dominant and Spanish deficient American
kid. When he told me he was going on a “mandado,” and I couldn't go, to me, it meant he was off to see his friends at the barber shop or pool hall. After, he'd return with a bag of pan dulce, tortillas, maybe cotijo cheese, that smelled
awful, or sometimes a rock-hard cylinder of chocolate he’d boil to make hot
chocolate, which I’d take a knife to and cut off a slice to eat, like
Hershey’s. Sometimes, our elders pass on rituals without even knowing it.
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|
a funky neighborhood, even a smog check business |
Today, in
the mornings, as I’ve retired and passed my uncle’s age, I've adopted his ritual. I go each morning for my own
mandado, because of a car, my range farther than his. I might drive to a
different part of town, Mar Vista, Palms, Venice, Rancho Park, Culver City, and Santa
Monica, just to wander about. Often, though, like this evening, I walked along Venice
Boulevard, two blocks from my home, past a motley assortment of storefronts, a smog/auto repair shop, a tattoo parlor, a hairstylist, art gallery, a Pho noodle
shop, and a nondescript apartment complex.
On the next blocks there are Middle Eastern, Himalayan, East Indian, South American, and Mexican restaurants. Sometimes, I just walk, listen, gab, and
gaze, but other times, like today, I was on a mandado, an errand, like my uncle Andy, and I stopped at the Camaguey Market for fruit, milk, and oatmeal. The checkout girls all know me.
Originally
a Cuban grocery store, Camaguey, what the local kids call, “Cama-gooey,” now
caters to Latinos of all stripes, college students, Muslims, Hindus, and some Africans, exotic spices hanging on one rack.
There’s a butcher in the back, carne asada, marinated, and ready to go. There are all kinds of fruits and vegetables, not just
bananas but plantains, nopales, cut up in a bag or a de-spined leaf. Near the counter, there is a wall of ointments and salves, candles in glass
imprinted with the Virgin Mary, and some stuff that might be used in Santeria
ceremonies, and at the rear, two women cook Brazilian food.
Next door
to Camaguey, is the Venice Bakery and Restaurant, in business now thirty-plus years. I bought two bolillos, and a
treat, today's special, fresh tamales. "I'll take uno de cada uno," I told the girl, who spoke both Spanish and English, fluently, so went back and forth between languages. The bakery carries warm breads, freshly squeezed juices, pan dulce and a Cuban desert, pastelitos de guayaba, tres leches, choco-flan, all sorts of cakes and muffins. The restaurant serves a fusion of Cuban, Mexican, and
Central American cuisine. On weekends, it's hard to find a place to sit.
When I
moved into the neighborhood, in 2000, on my early mandaos, I noticed the Bakery was a meeting place for
older Cuban exiles, who sat out front, seemingly, all morning, drinking coffee, slapping down
dominoes, and talking vociferously about whatever was on their mind, sports, politics, even about Fidel and his brother, Raul. I
wouldn’t doubt some of them had been at la bahia de los cochinos, the Bay of Pigs, in the
early 60s. One or two might have even been Cuban spies, picking up whatever
intel they could send back to Havana. No matter, they’re all gone, now replaced by a strong contingent of Mexicans and Central Americans, college students, and locals.
So, when my
uncle would tell me he was going on a “mandao,” he might or might not have meant an
errand. It could have been more like a foot-cruise, since he didn’t really
like driving and kept his light blue 1953 Chevy, spotless, in the garage. Maybe he'd take a wayward stroll, or
an exploratory expedition into a different neighborhood, what my friend Michael
Sedano calls, “A walkabout,” in the Aussie "outback" tradition.
He might
have gone on an unplanned stop at a friend’s house for a sip of brandy. He may
have just wanted to walk around the local park, Memorial Park. Maybe he just
wanted to breathe in the cool, afternoon ocean air, and reminisce about the
past, about the family he left behind in Mexico years earlier, a poor village
of Huejucar, in Jalisco, where he returned only once to visit and vowed never to return.
I know it’s what I do as I walk, go for my mandao, reminisce about
the past, maybe more than I’d like, but I don’t want to forget about the future,
even if only for one more day, the end of the line not so far as it once was but just as bright, maybe brighter.
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