I have a confession to make. My sons are Mexican! Why wasn’t I aware of this all along? There are some things that I just never think about until someone points them out to me–like the fact that I’m also a great-uncle. I never felt that old until my brother Jerry pointed out that I was now a great-uncle when his grandson was born. I have two younger brothers who are already grandfathers and I’m not. So maybe I’m not that old.
So, I was at the birthday party for my grandnephew when my brother Rick, the grandfather of the birthday boy, says to me, “You are the only one in our family who has Mexican sons.” I had never thought about this before, but it’s true. My brother Jerry married an Irish girl, Rick married a Polish girl, and Joe married a German girl. So, all their children are only half-Mexican. Yes, I’m the only one with 100% Mexican children. So how did this occur? I’m not sure. I guess just because I love Mexican girls.
I hope that you have recovered from eating all that rich food yesterday, Thanksgiving Day.
When I was in school, we were also off from school the Friday after Thanksgiving. I wondered what holiday it was and everyone told me it was Bellyache Day. But nowadays this day has been converted to Thanksgiving Part II. On this day everyone goes to see the other family and friends whom they couldn’t visit on Thanksgiving Day. And you know exactly what I mean if several members of your family have experienced several divorces and remarriages.
While I was married, I would celebrate Thanksgiving Day with my wife, children, and in-laws. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, my wife, children, and I went to the circus at the United Center. I stopped going to the circus last year when my sons suddenly decided they were “too big” for the circus. So much for family traditions.
In 2003, when I moved into my first new house after my divorce, I had to work on Thanksgiving Day. So my girlfriend decided to have Thanksgiving dinner at my house on the Friday after, her Thanksgiving Part II. However, I was going to the circus with my sons and my father in the morning. She started roasting the turkey at her house and then finished roasting it at mine. Before she came over to my house, she told me that her brother had driven in from Iowa. Yes, there are Mexicans living in Iowa! I was a little worried about how her brother’s family, seven in all, would fit into my little 1100-square-foot house. There were five in my family, three with my girlfriend and her two sons, plus her brother and his family. We would be all scrunched up in my little house!
Imagine my surprise when everyone showed up, plus their in-laws and friends. There were about forty Mexicans occupying only the first floor of my house, or about 700 square feet. I’m sure the Chicago Fire Department would have disapproved. And none of the small children wanted to go upstairs to play because they were afraid to be alone, so everyone was cramped into my tiny living room, my small dining room, and my minimalist kitchen where the women reheated the Thanksgiving leftovers they had brought with them. There were only enough seats for the grandparents, so everyone else had to eat while standing. I couldn’t believe how crowded my house was. So, I called my brother Danny to come over and take a look. But I think he just came because he was hungry. We stood around eating and talking for hours. If you ever go to a party and wonder why the Mexicans don’t sit down, it’s because they’re used to standing at Mexican parties where there are never enough chairs.
My house had never seen so much food while I had lived there. And I was thinking about the wonderful leftovers would nourish me for days to come. I could already imagine myself eating turkey sandwiches, turkey omelets, and turkey tacos. When we said our final good-byes (for about two hours), the women packed up all the leftovers and took them home with them! Sniff! They didn’t even leave one tortilla behind. ¡Ay, Dios mío! They even took the turkey bones home for their dogs!
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!
Have you seen the new movie Bandidas? Have you even heard of the movie Bandidas? You haven’t? But it premiered in France on January 18, 2006, and in Spain on August 4, 2006. This movie stars Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz! What do you mean you haven’t heard of Bandidas?
Actually, I’d be surprised if you had heard of Bandidas. I almost didn’t hear of it myself. In the direct to DVD phenomenon of movie magic for profit, I read about the Bandidas DVD release couple of months back in Hoy, the Spanish newspaper I get delivered to my house for free. I looked to buy the movie at the usual places where I buy DVDs, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. And I also thought it would be in Spanish because I read about the movie in Spanish in a Spanish newspaper, but not in any of the newspapers printed in English! Well, I couldn’t find the movie in theaters or at the store, and once I did find it, I was disappointed because it was English! I found the movie when I bought a hard drive for my home network that was bundled with three free movies that I could download as part of a trial service for home movies. One of the free movies that I downloaded was Bandidas, since I wanted to see it after reading about it. I hate to say this, but I am sure glad I didn’t pay for it.
Hayek and Cruz are great actresses who wanted to make a movie together for the longest time, hence Bandidas. However, this certainly was not one of their best acting performances. Hayek was much better playing Frida Kahlo. And Cruz, well, I will never forget her incredible performance as a pregnant nun with AIDS!
Anyway, the movie is set in Mexico in the 1880s or thereabouts. Hayek plays Sara Sandoval, a spoiled, European-educated Mexican woman, and Cruz plays María Álvarez, a poor Mexican peasant. I was disappointed that the movie was in English, but relieved that Cruz spoke English with a Mexican accent, rather than her usual English with a Spanish accent that sounds as if she’s from Spain, which she is, by the way. An evil American railroad magnate decides to buy the land in the path of their new railroad line by whatever means possible, including killing landowners who refuse to sell. The attempted murder of Álvarez’s father and the murder of Sandoval’s father sets the contrived plot in motion, which reminded me of those made-for-TV movies from the 1970s. So Álvarez and Sandoval learn to rob banks and save the day by stopping the evil American. Were you expecting a better ending? So was I.
I loved the panoramic Mexican scenery as Sandoval and Álvarez traveled across Mexico. Those Mexican mountains are quite beautiful! However, they were no match for the mountainous cleavage of Hayek and Cruz. What mountain climber could resist scaling those peaks? Talk about gratuitous cleavage scenes! Of course, it’s a well-known fact that the quality of a movie is directly proportional to the amount of cleavage shown. But deep down inside, I know that their cleavage was necessary for plot development. Otherwise, they would have never gotten the help they needed by enticing their male partner Quentin Cooke to join their bank-robbing spree.
The movie does portray Mexicans in a realistic light, including the social and class distinctions. There are good politicians who care for the general welfare of their people and bad politicians who are greedy and assist the evil American railroad magnate. But as far as Mexican realism, I preferred Nacho Libre because it pulled no punches describing Mexican poverty. I’m not sure I can recommend Bandidas. If you happen to run across it–but don’t go out of your way to find it–go ahead and watch it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Over the years, I’ve had some interesting students in my Spanish classes. The one I remember most vividly was a Mexicana named Rocío. I met her when I taught Spanish at Daley College. She dyed her hair this obviously fake black color, even though you could tell her hair was naturally black. She wore black lipstick and painted her fingernails black. She had multiple piercings on her ears, lips, nose, and who knows where else. She always wore black clothing except for her t-shirt. I gathered that t-shirts were very important to her. Perhaps even sacred. You see, she always wore a Marilyn Manson t-shirt. Did I say “a,” as in only one, t-shirt? The semester was fifteen weeks long and we met twice a week. We met for class thirty times that semester and she never wore the same Marilyn Manson t-shirt twice! I always try to keep an open mind when I meet new people, but when I saw her in class, I had the feeling she would be at least a little rebellious. Whenever I called on her, she always gave the correct answer, and she usually scored the highest exam grades in the class. And this may sound strange, but we had a mutual respect for each other. For the oral presentation, she prepared the best presentation of the class. She also taught me a few things that I didn’t know about Frida Kahlo. And about being open-minded toward everyone regardless of our initial perception of them.
Chicago USA 