On this national holiday, everyone will celebrate by picnicking, barbecuing, watching fireworks, and of course, setting off our own fireworks. We may worry about polluting our environment all year long, but we get a special dispensation to celebrate our nation’s independence and blow things up. Try to stay out of the emergency room. Don’t get burned when barbecuing, don’t blow your fingers off with your fireworks, and most importantly, don’t overeat and raise your cholesterol level to astronomical heights.
During all these celebrations, take a moment to look around you. You will see Americans all around celebrating this special day. Some of them will be Mexicans, perhaps undocumented. I know we are always looking forward to this day. Occasionally, we would have a family picnic on the Fourth of July. We would do all the traditional American activities, but we would barbecue carne asada, elotes, and tamales and have a piñata for the kids. We even played Lotería using beans for the markers. But we always celebrated the Fourth of July!
Accents are a funny thing. An accent separates or distinguishes you from another person or group when you speak. For as long as I can remember, I have always had an accent. In kindergarten, I spoke broken English since I only spoke Spanish at home. So, I had a Mexican accent. But when I went to Mexico, I had a gringo accent when I spoke Spanish. Then, I met my friend Patrick McDonnell in the second grade, and I spoke with a little bit of an Irish brogue. Since I attended a Lithuanian Catholic grade school, I picked up a few Lithuanian words. In high school, classmates made fun of the way I talked, so I only talked when necessary. I remember reading books aloud to practice my pronunciation. I was trying to eliminate any trace of an accent. Unsuccessfully, I might add.
When I enlisted in the Marines, I met people from all over the United States for the first time in my life. It was the first time someone told me that I had a Chicago accent. I was surprised when I met someone new, and he said he knew I was from Chicago because I had no accent. My accent adapted unconsciously so it would fit in. And I did fit in. During my enlistment, I spoke with the accents of Brooklyn, Texas, Queens, Boston, Virginia, Oklahoma, and California. But I didn’t do this on purpose. I just somehow blended in with everyone around me.
When I began teaching Spanish, I also unconsciously adapted the accent of the people around me. So, depending on to whom I spoke, I would speak like them. I’m not sure what my authentic original voice sounds like anymore. A colleague once said, “I was trying to figure out what dialect you were. Now I know you’re Mexican because you said, “Mande.”
I suppose if I listen to myself carefully, I hear all these different accents in my voice from different places.
Immigration issues seem to surpass the Iraq war criticism on some days. Of course, I have always thought about immigration, legal or otherwise, since I was little. I was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, so I am an American citizen by birth. However, I have known legal and illegal immigrants from many countries who have settled in Chicago. As long as they assimilated to the American way, no one gave them any trouble.
My mother once brought her sister and her family to Chicago illegally and my mother didn’t think she did anything wrong because she was helping her sister improve her lot in life. Back in 1980 when I was still in the Marine Corps, my mother drove her van down to Mexico, picked up her sister and her children, and drove them to the Mexico-Texas border where my mother dropped them off. My mother, a legal U.S. citizen, then drove through customs into the U.S. and went to the Rio Grande where she picked up her sister and her children after they had crossed the river in inner tubes. It was that easy! They then drove to Chicago without a problem.
When I came home from the Marines on leave, my aunt and cousins were temporarily living with my mother. “Good morning!” they greeted me with a heavy Mexican accent. They wanted to learn English immediately. Eventually, they adapted to American life quite well.
Everyone seemed alarmed after all the immigration marches last year when they realized that there are approximately 12 million illegal aliens, most them Mexican. No one should be surprised since it’s so easy to enter the U.S. illegally. Most of our borders are unprotected. Anyone who really wants to enter the U.S. will find a way; some ways are easier than others. And the federal government never really tried to prevent everyone from entering illegally in the first place.
Occasionally, the feds conduct cursory raids of a few factories to round up a few hundred, out of 12 million, illegal aliens and deport them. The government turns a blind eye to this illegal immigration because factories, farms, and businesses need employees. Sometimes only illegal aliens are willing to take those jobs, regardless of the complaints that they’re taking away jobs from Americans. These jobs were vacant until filled by illegal immigrants who really wanted to work regardless of the substandard wages and working conditions, at least by American standards.
The immigration issue will not be easily resolved until the immigration laws already in effect are strictly enforced. Until then, we shall see politics as usual with no true immigration reform.
Everyone in America wants to speak English—even immigrants. To function in this country, to get ahead in this country, you must speak English. However, not everyone will learn to speak English, no matter how much government officials demand it. Carpentersville, Illinois, even went so far as to pass a municipal ordinance that mandates English as the official language. Will this motivate all immigrants to learn English? Not really. If anything, this will create some animosity toward the government on the part of the immigrants, whether they’re here legally or not.
Most immigrants learn just enough English to get by on. Of those who do master English, not all of them will lose their foreign accents. That’s just the reality of learning English. Think of Henry Kissinger, who spoke fluent English, but never overcame his accent. However, he spoke fluent English. Nevertheless, someone like California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger should be careful how he encourages people to learn English. Yes, he learned enough English to get by on when he came to this country, but he seems to direct himself only toward Spanish speakers when he tells hundreds of Hispanic journalists that Latinos must stop watching Spanish-language television in order to learn English.
There are immigrants from all over the world who speak many languages other than Spanish who should learn English. Living in Chicago, I have met some of those immigrants with whom I could not communicate in English or Spanish. As is typical of any immigrant group, the first generation learns only enough English to get by on, if that much. The second generation is bilingual, but by the third generation, most speak only English. Hispanics seem to be the exception to the rule. Many Americans equate being monolingual English speakers with assimilation into the American culture. Still, America is multicultural and can accommodate many cultures simultaneously. The English language is living proof that there is room for all cultures.
Irma Serrano at the People’s Theater, Chicago, Illinois
When I was a young boy, I was convinced that my mother knew everyone in the neighborhood. Every time I went grocery shopping with my mother, she always met someone she knew, either from the neighborhood, the old neighborhood, or from México. While talking to someone she met on the street, my mother would ask about other mutual acquaintances. I was amazed at how many people she knew. She could talk for an hour with someone she met on the street because they knew each other very well and I would always be pulling her arm so we could go home before the milk went sour.
Once before my mother went to Mexico for her summer vacation, she asked me to do her a big favor. The Mexican singer Irma Serrano was coming to Chicago to perform at the People’s Theater on 47th Street and Ashland Avenue in Back of the Yards.
Well, my mother wanted me to go to the show and take pictures of Irma Serrano for her. I was nervous because Irma Serrano was incredibly famous in Mexico. Then, my mother told me to go backstage after the show and tell Irma that my mother said hello.
Well, this was just too great a task for me! I told my mother that I didn’t think I could do all this. My mother assured me that I could once I told Irma that I was the son of Carmen Rodríguez. I told my mother that if she wanted to see Irma Serrano so badly maybe she shouldn’t go to Mexico and she herself should see Irma Serrano at the People’s Theater instead. After much convincing and threatening on the part of my mother, I agreed to take pictures of Irma Serrano and then go backstage to talk to Irma and then take even more pictures.
The day of the concert, I watched Irma perform beautifully—I must admit that even I loved the show—and I took plenty of pictures of Irma as promised. It took me a while to build up my courage, but I managed to go backstage and talk to Irma Serrano. When I told her I was the son of Carmen Rodríguez, Irma hugged me and asked me how my mother was doing. I asked her if I could take some pictures of her, and she posed for me. I managed to get a good picture of Irma’s dress that looked like butterfly wings from behind. My mother loved the pictures!
When I joined the Marines, my mother told me to look for somebody she knew. I said, “Chances are I won’t ever meet him. Even you have never met him!” He was the uncle of a little girl, Melanie, for whom my mother would babysit. My mother knew that her uncle was in the Marines but had no other information about him. I promised my mother that I would look for him, but I was sure that I would never run into him since the Marines are stationed all around the globe and I never left California.
However, one day, when I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, some arrogant Marine entered our shop shouting, “Anyone here from Chicago?” I didn’t like his cocky attitude, so I didn’t answer him immediately. Then he shouted, “Any south siders here?” Well, I couldn’t resist that invitation to meet and greet a fellow south sider. What a coincidence! He just so happened to be Melanie’s uncle. We even knew some of the same people. We became friends because of my mother!
Chicago USA 