What My Bisabuela Knew
On Passing, Protocols, and Plastering the Town Anyway
Did you know I’m Mexican? Some of you are like, “Um, duh, Gad it’s in your last name” and others may be more along the lines of, “really?? You looks so…”
I'm a fifth generation Mexican American. I grew up listening to my bisabuela (great grandma) tell stories. She picked peaches in the Summers… and there were lizards. She hated those lizards. They scared her to death, she was always imagining that they were going to crawl up her pants and get stuck. Her mom sewed her a pair of white peddle pushers, so lizards couldn't get stuck, and the white fabric would make it easy for her to see any lizards who dared jump up her legs. Late in life she was known to be a fierce woman. She lived in the barrio, but every vato knew she'd come at them with a broom (or a shovel!) if you stepped out of line on her watch. Nobody messed with Mrs. Fields.
She's the reason I don’t speak Spanish. When she was young, it was looked down on to be brown, to be Mexican, to have an accent. She was determined to give her family the best chance at success and for her, one thing she could do was give us English only. This is pretty funny, since she only spoke Spanish. So the rule to speak no Spanish (except her) obviously failed with her own children, since she rarely spoke English herself. My grandmother is fluent in Spanish, my mother understands it, but cannot speak. As a kid, I was a funny mix, because no Spanish was spoken at home, but my Dad's side of the family traveled down to Baja every summer. The Spanish snuck in a little bit, in spite of Abuela Adela's wishes. Also, by that time she wasn’t around to swing her shovel at my Dad.
As a young woman I felt frustrated about not being fully bilingual. I understood the family reasons, but those reasons also felt old fashioned. As old fashioned as I thought it was, I also grew up hearing “chinga la migra.” I remember breathless messengers in Santa Barbara letting the neighborhood know the Kmart on so and so street was locked down. Kind of like Walmarts today, but back then they actually locked the doors and trapped everyone inside.
The thing is I pass for “white.” At least with white people. Which is exactly what Adela wanted for me. And today I can’t help but wonder what kind of cynical wisdom she might have shaped me with that I don’t fully understand or appreciate. I was looked on with pride by both sides of my family for being so pale and so blonde and blue eyed. I grew up with a family that was proud of how I measured up to white beauty standards. This was a symbol for them of accomplishment, and yet it was also how I didn’t belong. The weird part of being a mix kid is how you understand that you both belong to more and less than those who aren’t.
The one blurry-ass photo that everyone says, “oh yeah, you look Mexican.”
I’m faced with this a lot right now. The two worlds in which I am both a part of and removed from. And a reality that my last name is more dangerous to have than I’m used to. I am proud of my heritage. I also gulped and did a quick memory check on who’s name our cars were registered in when ICE made it to our corner of the state. My mom got a call from Homeland Security right after she paid her taxes last year demanding information about her lineage and her birth certificate. At the time, people rolled their eyes and called out “scammers.” Even though I doubted at the moment, now, I’m not so sure. If I ever found myself plopped back in Mexico, I’d go looking for Tio Ernie. But dang. Those are weird thoughts to have.
This is really where I’m going with all of this: What if ICE shows up to our talk? I’m not saying this for fear of myself. I’m pretty pale. But, I’ll tell you what, Seth and I had a heart to heart about how we were going to promote this talk. Were we going to poster the town as usual? Were we going to try something different and only send out personal invitations? Who’s not going to show up because they ARE afraid of putting a target on their backs?
In the end we decided, if we changed how we would normally act, then “they” were already winning. So we plastered the town in posters. Honestly, there’s more out there than usual. And we personally invited groups that we think care, but aren’t on our usual list of invitees.
I talked to Consejo Hispano today to invite anybody interested to the talk on Thursday. It’s so fun relaying Kenny’s story from horse trainer to philosopher. I was also there to ask what their thoughts were about ICE showing up.
I met someone working on how to best train our community in response to ICE and also someone on the rapid response team. We commiserated over some ethical questions ICE raids raise. Personally, I’m struggling with how many protocols or recommended procedures depend on the very ideas that are being disrupted. How do you write a protocol when the systems you’re used to working one way all of the sudden work a totally different way? Legal and moral are not the same thing.
I learned about how their organization is grappling with how to best deal with the videos people are catching of abductions. On one hand, if you capture footage of someone being abducted and post it online, well, people stay aware that this is real and this is happening. On the other hand, if you post a video of someone having the worst day of their life on the interwebs and they don’t even know it, how many ways might that come back to haunt them? Or their families? Consejo Hispano is dealing with people seeing videos days or even weeks later and calling panicked and afraid to leave their homes. How do you figure out a procedure for that? When not posting might mean people pretending it’s not happening?
As usual, I’m not here with answers. But this has been on my mind and it felt important to share. I am (we are) thinking about what kinds of ideas we can be talking about to help our community grapple with the big questions we face in our different roles in this time of quickly changing norms.
Turns out this talk will be more timely than we could have imagined. If you’re wondering, yes, Kenny plans on sharing some thoughts about Maduro and Venezuela.
