Where Tradition Comes to Die

by Daniel Cano

                                                                                 

Tradition and Ritual in Chiapas, Real or Imagined

     How far should we go to carry on the traditions of our elders? When my mother taught me lessons about life, she’d often tell me that was how she learned them from her mother. As the second generation in the U.S., both my parents inherited many traditions from their Mexican parents, but they also began moving away from other traditions. Is the United States the land where traditions come to die?

     My grandparents were born in Mexico, in villages they can trace back hundreds of years, before the Spanish arrived. Reluctantly, they crossed the border into the United States, a long trip in 1920, refugees escaping violence and poverty of the Mexican Revolution. It was a difficult decision leaving behind their families, friends, land and culture. On the day of their departure, as they loaded their kids onto a horsedrawn wagon, my grandparents probably realized it would be the last time they'd ever see their parents again. That couldn't have been easy.

     Their destination was Los Angeles, a foreign land near the Pacific Coast, where they joined other paisanos and relatives who had, over the years, made the same journey, some going as far back as when Mexico still owned California.

     Once my parents’ families were settled in the new land, the children started school, learned English, found work, and began seeing themselves as Americans. When they reached adulthood, my parents’ older siblings, those born in Mexico, spoke with no discernable Spanish accent when speaking English. Their teachers did a good job trading one language for another. If anything, my father’s brothers spoke with more an American working-class drawl. When I came along, everyone spoke to me in Spanish, mostly baby-talk. Once I was ready for kindergarten, I only heard English, except when speaking to my grandparents.

     As a kid in the suburbs of Santa Monica and West Los Angeles, I had a mix of friends, Anglos, Japanese, and other Mexican kids. Like the generations before us, we saw ourselves as Americans, even though, deep down, we had Mexican roots. By the 1950s, we’d been sufficiently acculturated, and except for the carefully orchestrated Bracero program, there was little immigration from Mexico in those years. I only knew of two families who migrated from Mexico. Our customs were rock ‘n roll, hamburgers, and American athletics, more than anything else. None of us, as teenagers, played soccer or listened to Mexican music, but we did eat Mexican food, a lot of it.

     We celebrated religious traditions, baptisms and confirmations, but no rituals outside the church. Inside those sacred walls, we were bombarded with rituals, the mysterious Latin language, the incense, the communion wafers, water sprinkled on our heads, standing and kneeling, First Fridays, Sundays, and of course, Christmas and Easter. Even though they made sure we attended Sunday mass, my parents usually stayed home.

     I don’t remember any Chicano families celebrating Cinco de Mayo, quinceaneras, or even Mexican Independence Day, the 16^th of September, the most popular celebration of my parents’ generation. Nobody sent their kids to learn Mexican folklorico dances. Nobody had ever heard of Aztec dancers or the burning of incense, not even among the elders of my grandparents’ generation. Even gone was the annual celebration of barbecuing a pig in an underground fire pit, too much damn work.  

     Come to think of it, my grandmother, Eusebia, raised on a ranch in Jalisco, dropped many family traditions. When my grandfather died, she dressed in black for only a short time then returned to wearing colorful printed dresses, a would-be scandal in her Mexican village of Las Palmas. The family matriarch attended mass on Sunday only when she felt like it. She’d stay home and cook for anyone coming to visit then sit down and watch her wild animal shows on television.

     By then the family had separated, two of my aunts had moved to the eastside with their husbands and families. My eldest uncles, Joe and Chuy, would sometimes stop by my grandmother’s home on Sunday afternoons to visit, but they too had their own families and couldn't make it every Sunday. Once a year, the Gonzalez clan would gather for a reunion at a neighborhood park. My dad’s Cano clan had already shed any semblance of customs, traditions, and rituals. Attending the UCLA, USC football game became the most important tradition in town, that and waiting for don Viviano to push his pan dulce cart to the neighborhood park each day in summer.

     Even today, other than celebrating birthdays or some religious ceremony, my family, like many American families, has kind of skimped out on traditions and rituals, too time-consuming and lot of work. Usually, the women catch the worst of traditions – because of the food. When men create traditions, they often want a big meal to go along with the ceremony, but it’s the women, usually, who end up at the store buying the groceries then into the kitchen to cook, out in the dining room to serve the meal then back into the kitchen to clean up, while the men sit in front of the televisions in another room and let out a roar when their favorite team has scored.

     Maybe it’s just that I am not much of a traditionalist. After three years in the army, I had my fill of tradition and ritual. So much of what goes on in the military is symbolic, ritual, and tradition, even killing other human beings. We’ve created our own mass sacrifices, so we shouldn’t complain about past indigenous groups making human offerings to the sun. The military does it all the time, and each year, it develops more efficient ways of killing their enemies.

     When I hear the younger generation rail about the importance of tradition, I’m not so sure I agree. Traditions and rituals, to me, are very conservative traits. They have their place in small societies, where people really do need to depend on each other to survive. I remember the book Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, where, in rural China, a woman who has committed adultery drowns herself in the village well. They say her female animalistic desires brought shame on not only her family but on the entire village, so, as the myth goes, the gods will not be happy with her or the village until she is punished. None of the villagers wants to suffer days of draught, floods, or locusts. To appease the gods, the villagers punish the woman and her family. However, nobody knows if she really did commit adultery or was raped by an influential man of the village, and she must never utter his name. Either way, she gets her revenge by contaminating the village’s drinking water with her dead body.

     Right, I’m not so sure about tradition, dances, and rituals. If you want to celebrate with a bit party good, go for it, but don’t say it’s tradition. Personally, I think tradition is overrated. Aztec dancers and incense burning does nothing for my soul. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the entertainment but don't feel much psychic purification. Besides, incense makes me congested.

     When my granddaughter recently told me she wanted to have a big party to celebrate her daughter’s first birthday. I told her good but not to work so hard at it. She’s already under a lot of stress. She said it’s about tradition. Well, when my mom hit a certain age, she had no problem parting ways with tradition. I told my kids and grandkids to start their own traditions.

     It reminded me of a story I heard about a mother who cut off a couple of inches from either end of a ham before putting it into the cooking pan. When her husband asked why she cut off the ends of the ham, she answered, “Because that’s how my mom always cooked her ham.” 

     One day Grandma came to the house and the husband asked why she cut off both ends of the ham before cooking it. Grandma answered, “Because that’s how my mom always cooked her ham.” One day Great-Grandma showed up for dinner, and the husband asked her why she cut the ham at either end before cooking it. Great-Grandma answered, “Because we were so poor, I couldn't afford a cooking pan big enough to hold the ham, so I’d cut it off at both ends to make it fit.”

     This story has been told in so many ways for so many reasons and lessons. For today, I think it’s appropriate when we consider “traditions” and how they are created.