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| University High School, Los Unidos, West Los Angeles, 1940s |
My mother and her older siblings were the children of Mexican immigrants,
refugees fleeing the violence of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, seeking a better
life in
el norte, not the United States, just
el norte. If one understands history,
there was a difference in the Mexican mind.
Of all her brothers and sisters, only she and her older sister, Antonia “Toni,”
were born in the U.S., in Santa Monica, “natural born citizens,” paradoxically,
and politically, different from the rest of her family, "naturalized citizens" or "legal permanent residents."
In 1920, when the Gonzales family arrived, there were no strict
immigration laws between Mexico and the U.S., to speak of, no such thing as "illegal" immigration. People crossed to the other side whenever they desired, to work, to
visit relatives, or to shop and return home, all for one-cent, if you wanted to use the bridge. In 1917, the federal government imposed a
eight-dollar entry fee, along with passing a literacy test, mainly targeted at European and Asian immigrants, who were seen as threats to American businessmen, farmers and
shopkeepers, who wanted to eliminate the competition. U.S. business, pretty much, spread open a "welcome mat" to cheap Mexican labor.
At El Paso, if
you didn’t mind getting wet, you could avoid the fees and paperwork by walking
across the river, no big deal. There was no immigration enforcement. Mexicans viewed the federal immigration fees more as a convenience to use the border crossing
and stay dry. American contractors even visited Mexican villagers recruiting workers.
In fact, all the way up to the 1970s, people crossed the border as agents
watched to make sure no one was carrying anything illegal or dangerous. Remember,
sneaking in firecrackers was the rage. If you could get in a cherry bomb, you
were king.
After a while, maybe the early 1980s, during the trumped-up “War on Drugs,”
things got tight, and agents asked to see driver’s licenses. That was about it,
until politicians realized “immigration” was a good campaign issue, used first in
the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when unemployed Americans wanted
answers and politicians had no clue. Economists say a country’s financial stability,
usually, has little to do with governments, Republican or Democrats but more to
do with the ebb and flow of industry and commerce, as well as reckless business practices.
Politicians could never blame the captains of industry for unscrupulous
business practices and reckless gambling on Wall Street, so they blamed it on immigration,
particularly Mexican immigrants, and deported thousands of Mexicans, including
some Mexican Americans, who had been in the country for years, working and
paying taxes, all documented in Decade of Betrayal, by Francisco
Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez, and again, in 1940’s when a plane loaded with
Mexican farmworkers flying to a deportation center in El Centro, California,
went down, crashed, and burned outside Coalinga. The newspapers identified the
pilots flying the plane, but they didn’t mention the name of one passenger, as
if hiding the tragedy from the public. Somebody got the bright idea to bury
them in a mass grave some place in Fresno. Woody Guthrie captured that tale in
his song, “Deportees.”
My mother’s family settled in barrio
of frame houses, more like shanties, two miles from the Pacific, where there
was plenty of work in the brickyards, beanfields, and packing sheds, low-paying
jobs Americans didn’t want.
Raised on 22nd Street, just
off Olympic Boulevard, in the late 1930s, she recalled her neighbors, one Anglo
man, a businessman, who lived in a largest home, a white house at the corner,
two or three Japanese families, one African American family, and rest, friends
and relatives who hailed from the same towns and villages from Los Alto de
Jalisco.
The Mexicans followed the path laid by families like the Marquez and
Reyes, who left Jalisco in the early 1800s, settled first in Los Angeles, near
the Placita, then Santa Monica, where they built their ranchos and acquired acres
and acres of land.
She told me, she never had the desire to visit the family ranch in
Jalisco, where her relatives still farmed the land near the town of San Gaspar
de Los Reyes, in the village of Mitic. After all, she said, at sixteen she had
just been released from spending three years at Olive View Hospital,
recuperating from tuberculosis, which she later learned had been misdiagnosed.
Once home, she tried to make up for lost time. She finished high school,
worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, attended dances, and enjoyed the
movies in downtown Santa Monica. Her family, in Mexico, was the furthest thing
from her mind. So, when her oldest brother, Jesus, asked if she’d accompany him
and their mother, Eusebia, on a trip to visit relatives, she answered, emphatically,
“No.”
Her older brother, whom she affectionately called “Chuy,” was relentless,
begging her then insisting. Chuy had lived on the family ranch in Mexico for a
couple of years, as a teenager, and returned now and again. As she remembered it,
“We all worked, but my brother Chuy would leave home, go to other states, work,
and send my mother his check, every week, to support the family.”
Her father, Nicolas, was in his forties when he contracted emphysema
after working, for years, in Santa Monica’s brickyards, before dying. My father once
told me, “In those days, they didn’t wear masks or any type of protection. They
worked in clouds of red dust all day with just hankies over their noses and
mouths. They didn’t know they were breathing in pieces of brick. Over time,
their lungs just disintegrated. They ended up choking to death.”
My mother told me, like working
through a math problem, "Chuy, my brother," she said, chuckling, "had
lived in Mitic for a few years. He had a girlfriend there. I didn't know then, but
he didn't want my mom to know, and he was taking my mom with him. I guess he
figured I could keep my mother distracted while he went to see his girlfriend, but I think he had a baby, too. He might have even been married but nobody really
knew. My brother was private."
Mitic, the family village, was a once thriving community, until
revolutions, revolts, and draughts devastated most of it, sending the people
fleeing to San Juan, Aguascalientes, and the United States, many to Santa
Monica.
When she visited Mitic, my mother was fully Americanized and not a hint
of Mexican ranch life in her. She wore slacks and blouses, Rita Haworth-style,
at a time when ranch women in Mexico wore long, dark dresses down to their
ankles.
"They were so poor," she remembered. "All they had to offer
us were cooked beans and a little soup."
My mother spoke as if she had been transported back in time. She was a
teenager again. She said her mother decided to stay with her sister in San Juan
de Los Lagos, while she, herself, chose to
“rough it” and stay on the ranch with her father’s family, where she met a
young cousin, Patricia, whom she liked, right off.
The village was nearly deserted, the dirt streets empty, and many of the
adobe homes decaying. Mitic had fallen onto difficult times, most of the men
gone, looking for work.
"I had to sleep on…not even a bed. It was like a cot, and it nearly
rested on the dirt floor."
The house was made of adobe and in poor condition. At night when she
tried to sleep, she could hear scampering in the house followed by banging
noises. Sometime in the early morning, she opened her eyes and saw the face of
a large rat staring back at her. The rats were everywhere. The next day, she
told her mother, she could not stay in that house another night. "I felt
so bad because I had planned on staying a few nights, but the next day I packed
up and left."
It was a difficult departure because she, and her cousin, Patricia, had
formed a bond. My mother remembered, “She was about fifteen and very pretty…a
beautiful girl."
Patricia asked if my mother could stay for her confirmation. My mother
said Patricia had confided in her, saying she had nothing nice to wear for the ceremony.
By contrast, my mother said her family in San Juan was middle-class. One of her
aunts was a teacher and college educated, and they lived in very nice but modest
home. The children, her cousins, all played musical instruments. “They were all
very friendly but didn’t have much.”
After leaving San Juan, they went to visit relatives in Aguascalientes,
a major city, and back in the 40s, hours from San Juan by car. "Those
relatives who lived in Aguascalientes
were very, very wealthy."
My mother described how my grandmother's sister had married a banker.
The family owned a house with many rooms, the floors covered in Saltillo stone, a
courtyard and fountain, and maids to care for the children. These relatives were
polite and friendly but a bit reserved, and they were wealthier and more refined
than any of the relatives that had migrated to the U.S.
As soon as my mom arrived home, to Santa Monica, she excitedly told her
mother she wanted to send Patricia a confirmation dress, one of her own. She picked
the prettiest one she could find. She hoped the dress would fit. She and her
cousin were about the same size. She wrapped it, took it to the post office,
and sent it to Patricia, hoping to surprise her.
A few months passed. She heard nothing from Patricia or her parents. Then,
after what seemed a long time, my mother received a letter from Patricia's
parents. They wrote, telling my mother how much Patricia loved the dress.
However, Patricia had become ill not long after my mother’s departure. Patricia
grew worse, and she died. They thanked my mother for the dress and told her
their daughter looked beautiful wearing the dress in the casket.
As she told me this, my mother’s eyes glazed over, her voice cracked,
"It was so sad."
I think there was a little tinge in her voice, as if saying, “So you
want to know what it was like in Mexico and why our family came to the United
States?”
What came to my mind was the old dicho, “There but for the grace of God
go I.”
