My birth name is Juan. Not John.
The first house I remember living in was in the city of El Monte, California. I don’t remember much, except a girl I fell in love with in kindergarten named Yvonne, and whispered stories of cholos (that’s a Mexican gangster, to you white folk) killing each other. It was the 70s, so at the time, I’m sure it was difficult to ascertain what was true and what was false. Also, cholos were everywhere. Like that scene at the beginning of Goodfellas when we’re introduced to Deniro’s character, Jimmy Conway. Except much browner, and, as result, I’m sure, less romantic to americans.
My mother did not like living there.
She and my father were both from Mexico, they had only emigrated to this country a few months before I was born, and to a young couple that saw a lot of poverty, but little violence (this was before the cartels), this was frightening to them. And they did not want their sons growing up there. Looking back, I doubt it was really that bad, but you have to consider what it must’ve looked like through their eyes. The eyes of immigrants.
I remember a cul-de-sac. Different, however. No perfectly kept lawns. The houses, way past their primes, falling apart.
It was less a cul-de-sac, and more of a dead end.
A guy nicknamed Chuchi. Every morning he woke up at sunrise to go jogging, just like Rocky Balboa. Then once again in the evening. I remember joining him a few times. He told me it was better to wear shorts over sweats, for some reason. It was the seventies, that was probably reason enough.
A Native American family lived next door. They were really into rodeo and had a barrel of some sort suspended with ropes to learn how to ride a bucking horse. Once in a while, the father would be in his backyard, banging a traditional drum, and chanting a traditional Native American song. It was beautifully mesmerizing.
Gordon, who lived across the street, he taught me how to ride a bicycle. He was older, probably in his twenties, lived there with his parents. We found and built a smaller bike, with smaller wheels. And even smaller training wheels. He loaned me the courage to ride without them. He would hold onto the back of the banana seat and run alongside, making sure I didn’t fall.
You’re doing it on your own!, he yelled out once, and I realized he wasn’t holding on to the bike anymore.
That gliding feeling. As if I had just grew wings, and hovered over my dead end street, like a condor resting on the soft, caring arms of the wind. The sky, a blushing gold as it set quietly, the color a final daily gift.
Chuchi was jogging.
My neighbor chanting his beautiful thousand year old music.
Mom relaxing in the backyard after a long day of cleaning houses and making food, awaiting my father after a long day of work.
The effortlessness of it all. I moved faster than I ever could before. Up and down my dead end street, pretending I was racing and relaying the play by play of the competition I was in, and winning, against my imagined competitors.
We were all poor, some of us were immigrants, but we all lived together, almost in each other’s yards. I don’t remember fences. I don’t remember walls. In my antiqued, soft-edged, fuzzy memory of life there, it felt like home. I felt like I belonged.
But, like most childhood, it wasn’t all a perfectly burnished memory.
I remember getting on my bike one morning to ride up and down again, my father sitting in a chair, wearing his guayabera (his Sunday dress shirt), and watching me ride away. The ever stoic look on his face, impossible to discern. But as an adult I wonder now if there was meaning behind those tired eyes.
Dad couldn’t be there to teach me to ride a bicycle. He worked too many hours. Too many days. One day, I just knew how to ride a bicycle with no training wheels.
I wonder if it pained him to see his son had surpassed his first challenge without his help.
Without him being there.
But he worked.
So he couldn’t be there.
He also couldn’t be there when Gordon invited me into his house.
The darkness, a stark contradiction to the soft colors I saw in my dreamed flight; the stench of years of cigarettes and spilled alcohol. Both foul. And foreshadowing a foulness that would soon visit my five year old body.
A foulness I was warned to never tell anyone. Especially my parents.
Some memories are not burnished. Some are dulled and muffled.
Some time later, I cannot remember how long, someone broke into our little home and stole our little black and white television. I remember the footsteps somehow stained into out kitchen floor. Boots. Cowboy boots. Black imprints stomped all over our privacy, a residue of violation.
Only Gordon’s father wore cowboy boots on that street. His alcoholic screaming at his family could be heard on any given evening.
That was one of the last memories I have of El Monte.
My parents had friends (or was it family? Hard to tell in Mexican families), that lived in a suburban oasis called Covina. So, we loaded up a borrowed truck and moved there. And away from the ugliness and beauty of our dead end street.
And Yvonne. I’m sure she thinks of me often (I’m sure she doesn’t).
I remember fences. Many more fences than I saw in El Monte. Angry faces as I walked across a lawn.
The memories of my youth are scattered across many cliffs in my mind. Crevasses in between hide those memories from which my subconscious has chosen to protect me.
But some derision is hard to hide. Even for the mighty subconscious.
I remember being, or at least feeling like, the only Mexican in a school full of white children. I may have been wrong about this, but what do you want? I was seven.
Juan is an odd name to kids named Chad and Jason, whom made fun of me. Which when you think about it, Chad is a pretty stupid name. Pretty sure I’ve never met a good Chad.
What kind of a name is Juan?
It’s spelled with a “J”?!
Juan, two, three!
After weeks of kids making fun of me, I asked the teacher to call me John.
My first true and conscious act of conformity, and the one that has lingered on my psyche my whole life, like a tattoo.
My name is John now. And everyday it reminds me that I’m a lesser Mexican.
Beaner. Wetback.
Words I’ve heard my whole life thrown at me. And not always from people that hated me. Sometimes from my friends. Words that have been used against me my whole life. To keep me on the outside of their accepted circles.
See, I grew up amongst mostly white people, and most of my friends were white guys, and they often had little trouble calling me those names. It wasn’t always painted with anger and hatred… Well, it was hateful… But it wasn’t always directed at me in anger. It was… Conversational. Sometimes they’d just call me Mexican. There’s something interesting about that word, Mexican. It’s a word that can be used to describe as well as deride, it’s all in the inflection. You can actually call someone, correctly, as having heritage from Mexico and still insult them! Really, kinda magical. Calling someone Mexican often is just pointing out they believe they’re beneath the white person using that word.
In El Monte, I doubt anyone would’ve hatefully called me Mexican.
So, I was more or less accepted by some of the white dudes I hung out with. But never fully. It almost felt like a begrudging acceptance. One that could be revoked at any moment. The reminders of this came at me constantly, when my “friends” would call me beaner. Or wetback. Or even Mexican, in that specific tone.
I was not one of them. And I knew it.
So when someone tells me why do I have to call myself Mexican and not american, or the mouthful, Mexican-american, I often think of this.
You make me laugh sometimes, america.
This society that expects me to respect its moniker, never respected mine. You called me Mexican in a hateful way. My whole fucking life, you did that, america. You beat me down with a word that should being pride in my heritage. You taught me to be ashamed of being a Mexican. You kicked me in the face with a word I should be proud of.
Now, I’m supposed to wipe that blood off my face and stand at attention and call myself american? Something you’ve refused to call me my whole life?
People get mad at me, and tell me that all races had it bad in this country. That all races were hated at one time or another. Even, even, white races! All of this is true, but it’s also perplexing. If your great grandparents had to suffer strife to get acceptance for you, understand, that that is whom I am. Someone’s great grandparent fighting for acceptance in this racist country.
Just kidding. I’ll never have kids.
Just kidding. This country is probably too racist to ever accept brown people as equal.
And yes, I acknowledge that some Europeans had it hard after they got here in the 1800s and early 1900s. But when was the last time you remember a law being passed in your lifetime that specifically targeted the Irish? (Not to single out my McBrothers)
I remember when a law was passed that was specifically targeted at Mexicans and other Latin people (let’s face it, racists see us all as Mexicans). It was called Proposition 187. And It targeted Latin immigrants. There are those that will tell you that it targeted ALL immigrants, from ALL countries, but those are just the words of a racist without enough balls to buy a white sheet to wear over his small mind.
This law sought to take away every service from every immigrant. And, their children. Whether they were born here or not. If you were born here of immigrants, as I was, you would not be allowed to even go to public school, for the honor of being called a wetback by your school chums, as I had. If you got into a horrible car accident after working a late shift at your local fast food place, hospitals would not be allowed to put you back together again.
Where was this Draconian law passed? Somewhere proper and hateful towards beaners like Texas or Arizona? Nope. Right here in o-so-leftist, o-so-progressive California.
And this was when trump was just some rich guy with weird ducklips.
Oh, did you see the line where I said it passed? It did. It fucking passed. This bastion of democrats and progressives passed this fucking racist-ass law (later it was defeated in our state supreme court, because, you gotta keep up appearances). Although, to be fair, California is basically only really cool in two places: Los Angeles and San Francisco. The rest is basically Alabama.
Go to Bakersfield. Tell me I’m wrong.
Or just go to Covina.
I have NO problem cutting you out of my life if you are detrimental to my existence. I don’t care how long we’ve known each other, I don’t care if we were once good friends, I don’t care if you were family. You make my life difficult, out you fucking go.
Now, I do still have a few people that I grew up with that I still consider friends. Granted, we don’t hang out or talk, but I still consider you a friend. You know who you are, guys.
But there are several, much too many for me to comfortably count, that had to go. Why? Because of their ravenous support of the 45th president of these so-called “United” States.
There are a thousand reasons to hate this wealth born, slum lord, huckster of a scum bag reality star. But for me, it’s a little more personal.
If you’re a working class republican, and you choose to support republican policies even though they are, by and large, created to destroy you, I guess that’s on you. You think that because you’ve had it rough (though, let’s be honest: you didn’t have it that rough), everyone else has to suffer proper like you think you did, fine. (I guess). You think that the government should do absolutely nothing about medical care, a living wage, decent affordable education, hey man, you live your life, dude.
I always picture a working class republican as a family that can barely make ends meet because they don’t have decent paying jobs, and are severely in debt, and have no medical insurance, so godforfuckingbid your kid gets sick, screaming: Why should MY tax dollars go to help people like me?!
Or maybe you just vote for republicans because you were duped by your church because you’re pro life and anti-gay or something else incredibly stupid, I don’t know, really. Not my business really. You support whom you want.
(They’re all controlled by the same puppet master anyway, you idiots)
I’m in full digression right now… Apologies.
At what point do you just call yourself american?
Oh, you’re Mexican? Do you live in Mexico?
You’re american, John.
Oh you… You white people who are fully accepted into our society. You are hilarious.
They ripped children from the arms of their mothers at the border and bussed them away whom knows where. They still have no viable plan to reunite them. On the birthday of this country; the day white slave owners decided to wrest control from other white slave owners, this 4th of July as we call it, there were children in cages in anonymous warehouses screaming. Screaming from a fear that none of us will fully understand. A fear no child should ever feel. Their crime: being the children of people that crossed into this land to do the jobs white folk refuse to do.
A nightmare scenario that should not have never been imagined is now reality.
And his ravenous morons support this edict.
And the silence after the fact is sad and frightening. Even from progressives.
As a rule, I don’t celebrate holidays. I’m an atheist, so Xmas is dumb. I hate the genocide of Native Peoples, so I don’t do “Thanks”giving. Maybe I’ll do my birthday, but mostly because I like gifts.
And the 4th of July… Yeah, no. No thank you.
I found this particular holiday especially depressing this year, to be honest. People that I cared about, people whom I respected, they went out and celebrated on this day. They went and had their burgers and hot dogs, and got wasted. Some out of habit, some out of a need to belong. They celebrated this day of “independence,” of “liberty,” while so many helpless children were encaged. It broke my heart to see those that I thought were fully on my side not taking the day off from socializing and drinking. Why couldn’t we all boycott this holiday?
Just. This. One. Fucking. Year.
But if you can drown out the scream-cries of so many frightened children, so you can have fun with your friends, then kudos, man. You’re way stronger than I will ever be.
Or perhaps, way less caring. I don’t know.
They are trying to find ways to revoke citizenship of those that are now here legally. Like my mother. Denaturalization, they’re calling it.
So, if you worked hard, and studied hard to become a citizen here, as promised by the laws of this country, you can now be capriciously expelled anyway. Just like the boogeymen MS-13 racist americans think we all are.
My mother is one of those people that has become a citizen.
Now, this country that has never ever admitted to its racism, no matter the history of slavery, no matter the history of genocide, wants ME to call MYSELF american? While at the same time trying to find ways to kick my mother out of this country?
I’ve been made fun as as a child for my name.
I’ve been ridiculed for my heritage.
I’ve been called racist names by people I thought were my friends.
I’ve seen laws passed that would have specifically targeted my family and myself.
I’ve had to watch as my so-called friends I grew up with, support a sub-moronic racist madman, who then has been instrumental in instituting some of the most hateful, inhumane policies I’ve seen in my life. Specifically targeting my people. My family.
I’ve been told, through all this, that I should call myself american.
Fuck you.
You never accepted me, america. You never accepted my people. You never accepted my family. You won’t even accept my mother.
I am Mexican, not american.
