Tag: Mexico

Landscaping


Landscaping with cacti in Cabo San Lucas

About five years ago, I ran into one of my cousins who was born and raised in México, but then came to the U.S. I had not seen him for years, so we had to catch up on what we had each done since the last time we met. The last time I really talked to him was, well, I couldn’t remember the last time I talked to him. But I’m quite sure it was in México when he was still a boy. So, I asked him what he did for a living, and he said he was a landscaper. How cliché! A Mexican landscaper! But he owned the company because he started his own business. I wondered why I hadn’t seen him for the last three or four years and he told me that he was living in México. And he left it at that. But I wanted to know more. At first, he was hesitant to say anything else, but then he opened up. The reason I hadn’t seen him in years was because he was working in México. And making a good living, too.

Of course, I pressed him for more details, but he didn’t require much pressure because he loves to talk. To be truthful, I’m not sure that I believed everything he told me. But he said it well enough to sound believable.

Well, it turns out, so he said, that he started selling marijuana on a small-scale and his business grew, probably because of his talkative personality and charisma, and he eventually became a major distributor. Soon he started transporting marijuana to the U.S. Eventually the Mexican authorities arrested him. He was convicted and jailed.

From what he told me, I would never want to be in a Mexican jail. They don’t feed you there. You live in squalid conditions. If someone doesn’t bring you food, you don’t eat. I asked him if he felt safe in jail, and he said that he did. Well, because he had a gun in his cell. How did he get a gun in his cell? It was easy, he told me. He had money saved up from his “landscaping” business and he had a friend bring him a gun to jail.

How did the friend sneak the gun into jail? That was easy, too. His friend hid the gun in a bag of marijuana. When the guards at the jail looked in the bag, they asked his friend what was in the bag and his friend bribed the guard and was allowed to take the gun hidden in the bag of marijuana into the visitor’s room and he gave the marijuana and gun to my cousin. Amazing!

He told me he was sentenced to fifteen years in jail. I did the math and asked if he shouldn’t be sitting in a Mexican jail right about now. He said yes, but since he had money, he was able to bribe the jail authorities to mark him present whenever they took roll call.

So here he was in Chicago telling me this story that sounded too unrealistic to be real. But I did enjoy how he told it. The moral of the story? Don’t believe any story anyone tells you. And don’t believe everything that you read on the Internet!

DDR

Mexican sense of humor


Exhibit A: Mexican sense of humor

Mexicans have the best sense of humor in the world. No one laughs more than a Mexican. They’re always joking around, and they are always laughing. Just watch them and see. Many people often ask me why I’m always laughing. I never actually have an answer because I don’t know why I’m always laughing. Sometimes, I laugh for no apparent reason, which makes it easy for me to find a seat on the train.

When I was in México, I noticed my cousin David Rodríguez laughed just as much as me and just as loud. My sons always complain that I laugh louder than everyone else in the theater whenever we see a movie. I can’t help it. My mother and I always told jokes and we weren’t afraid to laugh. My abuelita was also quite funny. Our whole family is always laughing. If you ever go to a Mexican party, you will hear continuous laughter. It’s just our nature. We lead simple uncomplicated lives and enjoy every moment of life. If we have a place to live, food to eat, and drink to drink, we’re happy as a tamal in a corn husk. And no matter what tragedy occurs in our lives, we’ll just laugh it off.

I’ve heard Mexicans tell how they lost their job, their house, their car, etc., and make everyone listening laugh while they told their sad tale. I admit it. I’ve laughed, too. My friend José was a carpenter who had once cut off his index finger with an electric saw. One day, I saw he had two fingers bandaged and I asked him what had happened. He told me how he was cutting wood with an electric band saw and his mind drifted a little. Right from the beginning he slipped into the typical Mexican joke-telling mode. “Remember how I told you how I cut off my index finger the last time,” José said, and I remembered how he had made me laugh then. “Well, this time, I cut off my index finger AND my middle finger!” He started laughing with his contagious laughter, and I couldn’t help but laugh, too. “¡Chingado! I did it again!” he said to me. “Then I couldn’t find my fingers right away because they went flying across the room!” I regret to say that we both laughed hysterically during his recounting of this catastrophe. Of course, he never did finish telling me the story because he was laughing too hard. But even in a crisis, a Mexican will find humor.

Matilde y el martillo


Mi tío Samuel y mi tía Matilde

My tía Matilde was quite a character. Once when we were visiting México, we stayed with my abuelita who was blind. All our relatives would always visit abuelita, especially when we came from Chicago. Matilde was still single at the time, so she lived with my abuelita.

While we were there, my mother decided to fix up my abuelita’s place a little. That meant everyone there had to work, vacation or not! We cleaned and painted, and when my mother saw the freshly painted walls, she decided to hang up some family pictures. Only one problem. My abuelita didn’t have a hammer. So, my mother sent tía Matilde to get a hammer from a friend’s house.

That sounds easy enough, no? Well, not to a Mexicana. Somehow the simplest errands became a complicated quest. Tía Matilde sets off on the simple errand of bringing back a hammer so my mother could hang up some pictures. My aunt should have returned in ten to fifteen minutes tops. Well, a half hour went by and tía Matilde didn’t return.

My mother looked down the street and saw no sign of her sister. An hour passed, then another, and still no sign of tía Matilde. My mother sent me to the friend’s house to see if Matilde ever went there. No, they hadn’t seen her all day. No one really worried about her because in México sometimes people get distracted and forget their original mission, in this case, the quest for the hammer.

Tía Matilde finally returned about three hours later! My abuelita and my mother started interrogating her. “Where did you go? What took you so long?”

Well, she met this certain Samuel. He was standing on the corner playing the guitar and he started serenading her. They went for a walk and before she knew it, three hours had passed. Then, she remembered about the hammer! She returned, finally, but without the hammer!

My abuelita and mother were mad at my tía Matilde, but they also couldn’t help laughing at the whole situation. Matilde and Samuel eventually married and had six children.

DDR

Why study Spanish?


I’ve been teaching college Spanish for twelve years now. Every student has his or her own reason for studying Spanish.  Most college students take Spanish because of the foreign language requirement. I remember one of these students who barely passed the course. When I corrected the first exam, I felt bad for her because she had only earned a D. When she saw her exam grade, she shouted, “Yes!” I was worried that perhaps I had given her the wrong grade. The entire class turned to look at her. She then shouted, “Yes, I got a D!” She was so proud of herself. She went through this ritual after every exam. I gave her a final grade of D for the course. The next semester, I saw her in the hallway, and I was hoping she wouldn’t see me because I thought she was unhappy about her grade. But alas, she saw me and approached. Suddenly, she smiled and said, “Thanks for the grade you gave me!” And she was genuinely happy about it. Then, she added, “I had a lot of fun in your class.” I was shocked by all this, but I must admit that it was all very rewarding.

So, I was thinking of other reasons that my students took Spanish. Here are some:

  1. I’ve always wanted to learn Spanish.
  2. My wife speaks Spanish.
  3. My husband speaks Spanish.
  4. It’s a beautiful language.
  5. I want to go to Mexico on vacation.
  6. Most of my customers speak Spanish.
  7. My parishioners speak Spanish.
  8. I want to move to Mexico.
  9. I want to go to a Mexican restaurant and order food in Spanish.
  10. I want to see Penelope Cruz movies in Spanish.
  11. There are so many Mexicans here, we’re all going to have to learn Spanish anyway.
  12. I want a sexy Mexican girlfriend.
  13. I’m Mexican and I can’t speak Spanish.
  14. I think the cooks in the kitchen are talking about me.
DDR

El Gallo de Oro


El Gallo de Oro, 2952 W. 63rd Street, Chicago, Illinois

When I lived at 3006 W. 64th Street, I always used to eat at this great Mexican restaurant that was exactly one block away. El Gallo de Oro, 2952 W. 63rd Street, 773.737.8101, has been there since at least 1981 when I moved back to Marquette Park after being honorably discharged from the Marines.

This Mexican restaurant serves real Mexican food cooked by real Mexicans to other Mexicans who patronize the restaurant. That’s how you can tell if a Mexican restaurant is really good: by how many Mexicans eat there. I remember once going to Milwaukee and my girlfriend suggested that we eat at a Mexican restaurant, either La Perla or La Fuente, but she didn’t know which one was better. We ate at the one where all the Mexicans ate! And it was great Mexican food! So, are you wondering which restaurant was better? Well, I honestly can’t remember because I drank a few too many bottles of Negra Modelo. Anyway, El Gallo de Oro has great Mexican food, and I say this after having come back from having eaten Mexican food in many Mexican restaurants and Mexican homes in Mexico. Well, lately, I’ve been going to different Mexican restaurants in the Chicagoland area, or Chicagolandia as I like to call it since we have so many Spanish speakers here, and I’ve been ordering the enchiladas de pollo. Today, I tasted the enchiladas at El Gallo de Oro, and they were ¡sabrosísimas! This is a great Mexican restaurant.

When I still lived in the neighborhood, I ate there several times a week. Of course, everything I needed in the neighborhood was within a two-block radius. The cleaners, the gas station, the locksmith, the used bookstore, my barber Aldo of Italy, and of course, El Gallo de Oro. I went to the locksmith exactly once, but it was nice to know that he was always available even though I dreaded the day that I would actually need him. Aldo of Italy cut my hair once a month before I ate at El Gallo de Oro. Aldo always loved speaking to me in Spanish while he cut my hair until I fell asleep. Anyway, again, I loved the attitude of the Mexican cooks at El Gallo de Oro. They were typical Mexicans who loved to brag about their food and service. I especially loved their sign in the window: “La competencia es buena, pero nosotros somos … ¡más chingones!” In English, “The competition is good, but we are … ” Okay, I’m not sure how to translate the last two words, but you could tell who was Mexican and who wasn’t by how they reacted to the sign. Of course, at that time the FCC let a lot of profanity get aired on all the Mexican radio stations. So the sign remained in the front window for many years until about two years ago. I rather miss that sign. That’s the thing about Mexicans. They have chutzpah!

One time, I told my father, brothers, and sister that I had a special surprise for them for our Thanksgiving dinner that year. They were so curious that I caved in to all their questions and told them my surprise beforehand. “We are eating Thanksgiving dinner at … ” and I paused for dramatic effect … “El Gallo de Oro!” “But we want turkey,” my sister shouted. “Yo quiero guajolote,” said my father. “Un momento,” I said. “El Gallo de Oro is serving turkey burritos on Thanksgiving Day!” After a little grumbling, they finally agreed to my Thanksgiving dinner plans! Everyone got to eat turkey, I got to eat at El Gallo de Oro, and my father got to eat so many jalapeño peppers that sweat poured from his forehead profusely and he had to keep asking for more and more water. Well, El Gallo de Oro managed to satisfy yet another finicky Mexican family–again!

DDR