Juan of Words

Bartering With Gorditas

These things were awesome back in the day.

Neatly packed in a perfect order, an apple in one corner, a juice box in the other, a peanut butter and jelly, or ham and cheese sandwich, stuffed just-right inside of a clear plastic bag, placed right underneath another loosely-filled plastic bag containing what looked like a single handful of chips.  Their lunches always looked so much better than mine.  They were presentable I thought, always inside of the latest aluminum lunch box with the right cartoon characters on the outermost lid.

Mine on the other hand was wrapped in aluminum foil, stuffed inside of a plastic or brown paper bag, whatever we happened to have at the house that morning, accompanied by an apple, a banana, sometimes a mango, which by the way parents is really difficult to eat on a field trip, I can’t tell you how many times I had to resort to licking my fingers and arms to get all the stickiness off of myself, like a damn cat or something, a durazno,una  pera or any combination of these.  When I’d take my lunch out and unwrap it kids would always peer over and see what I’d brought, not because they were curious but because our lunches always came with a strong smell.  Usually it was of gorditas made by hand, stuffed con huevo, chile y frijoles, which I’m sure you know, the longer they sit the stronger the aroma they give off. It was so embarrassing to me at the time.

To avoid being asked the inevitable “what is that?” by my huerito friends I’d always try to sit as far away from everyone else, by myself, where I could devour the flavorful goodness from my mother’s kitchen as fast as I could, right down to the very last single bean.  When the maiz portion of the gordita was gone I’d take my fingers and scoop all of the chunks of eggs and beans still lying on the aluminum foil in my hand and greedily stuff their still-warm goodness into my mouth.  It’s no wonder I came to be such a husky child in my youth.  I wasn’t jealous of their lunches anymore by this point.  Then, despite my continued embarrassment as the years went on, I began to notice other kids, los hueritos mainly, would come sit next to me no matter how far I’d go and ask me for a piece of my gorditas, or want to trade lunches all together.  I never wanted to, but sometimes mamá would pack an extra serving for me and that was always fair game for my quickly-developing system of barter at that young age.  They’d give me their chips, their Twinkies, their chocolate cream cakes, or even their juice boxes in exchange for just a small portion of my aluminum-wrapped, brown-paper-bagged, warm, homemade lunch, and I was always much the happier with a full stomach from what I considered the best of both worlds.

Soon enough I had lost all my shame, in more ways than one, and eventually we did get the right kind of lunch boxes – mine had The Thundercats on it – but I never again felt like my lonche was less than their lunch.

We’re Taking Juan of Words On The Road – ROAD TRIP!

On the road again...

It’s official!  This time next week we’ll be on the road, si Dios quiere, taking our first real vacation in years… probably the first one period, to be completely honest.  You see if it wasn’t work, it was lack of resources, or something equally hampering to our vacation plans in years past that always prevented us from taking one.  And while there are still seven whole days in which anything could happen, including a tropical storm which is headed for the Texas coast (just my luck right?), we’re hoping this year we can actually stick to our summer plans for a little vacaciones.

Our final destination is the Washington, DC – Virginia area, and to make things more interesting, and since traveling by car is cheaper than flying, we’ll be making it a road trip!  I haven’t taken one of those in a minute, and nunca across the states.  Pero como todo buen Latino we’ve left a lot of the details and logistics to the last minute.  So over the next couple of days we’ll likely be ironing out – and I do mean literally ironing out like with a big old plancha, the kind you had to put coal in and everything to make it work… none of this electricity crap – all of the detalles.

What we do know for certain is that we’ve dreamed up a wish list of stops along the way to make things more interesting, both for us and for you, since the idea is to take Juan of Words on the road with us!   That list right now includes stops in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Nashville, Virginia, DC, New York and possibly even New Jersey if time permits.  It sounds like a lot and given the fact that we’ll truly only have two weeks to drive there and back, we’re hoping we can make as many of these stops as possible, in between spending a lot of quality time with my sister and her family.  I’m most excited about that little perk, which was the whole reason for us selecting this route as opposed to any other.

We’ve even made tentative plans with a couple of amigos and amigas from the social media hemisphere to possibly meet up when we’re in their areas, so también veremos how that works out.  Hopefully everything just falls into place once we’re on the road (I’m crossing my fingers it does).

In the meantime, there are tons of deadlines and projects to finalize before heading out, including that little matter with Tropical Storm Don – I knew there was a reason I didn’t like tropical storms!  So por favor, send us good vibes and help us make our first actual vacation in years a reality.

A very dramatic appeal, I know

La Vida Es Un Carnaval: Let Somebody Know You Love Them

"Corazón Sagrado" by RAJANBAKYA

Sometimes there are no words that can be spoken, that should be spoken, or even that are necessary.  A deeper connection, innate in all of us, more animal instinct than anything else, I think, takes over and the only thing we are left to do is react to our own actions.

I’ve seen and experienced this heightened sense of human contact on a couple of occasions now and each time it’s left me speechless, in awe of what the mind and heart, el corazón especially, are capable of when uninhibited.  I’d dare say it’s a higher power acting within us, through us, where we are only the vessels to something much more grand taking place before our very eyes.

I’m not sure what got thinking about this now… maybe it is my recently-heightened sense of sensibility, or maybe I’m just thinking too long and too hard again.  I tend to do that a lot, as well as over-analyze situations and experiences to the point of even confusing myself beyond rationality at times, but that’s just the way I am.  I’ve always been that way, and sad as it to admit, I don’t really know how to be any other way.  Por alguna razon así me hicieron…

If I’m completely honest though, it really was one of my sisters that got me thinking about this subject this time.  I’ve blogged about it before, our tendency to just automatically embrace each other whenever we see one another – my siblings, parents, and I (Raising a Bilingual Kid: ¡Saluda!) – but the older I get the fewer words are necessary between us it seems.  Sure they make our conversations more interesting, not to mention actual conversations, but more often than not just sitting in the same house together, laughing together, sharing those little nothings together are enough to reiterate just how much we mean to one another.  There’s a certain sense of peace and happiness, a lifting of the spirit, in that.  I don’t know how else to accurately explain it.

Y definitivamente sé que no somos los únicos.  So today les dedico este post a todos los que como yo comparten este sentimiento.

Life is too short.  Let somebody know you love them!

Further proof of our never being alone, and always a little pick me up for me personally, Celia Cruz’s ‘La Vida es un Carnaval’.  You can’t hear this song and not feel more positive.  Happy Monday!

Burradas And Progress In Mexico – True Confession

Sometimes it feels like we grew up at the end of an era.  Where burros and ox were at the brink of retirement, arroyos and pozos were all but dried up, rocky roads and mountains just literally days away from being reshaped, redeveloped, redefined, and all the while we were oblivious to the changes happening around us.  Going to the rancho meant packing our most worn clothes, tennis shoes that were on their last breath before they detached at the sole and created the illusion of having their lenguas fuera every time we lifted our feet off the ground, and preparing to work harder than we ever had to on this side of the border.

Llunta de 'gueyes'

It was exhausting, but there really wasn’t anything else quite like it, especially not in our crammed little apartments de este lado. The ox wagons from our text books came to life in El Sauz, usually with my grandfather riding majestically atop them headed to the arroyos with a huge tanque to fill up with clean water, my mother’s stories about grinding fresh corn into nistamal and then into tortillas were happening right before our very eyes, even their anecdotes of how much harder everything was in Mexico became our reality as we made our way back from the pozos where we were collecting water to be warmed over fire with a pail of pond water on each shoulder.  I remember thinking “man this is awful… I don’t want to take a bath.”

And a lot of times I didn’t.  Instead I’d change my clothes, wipe my face with a wet towel, splash my hair with water and pretend I was clean.  Nobody really minded or even noticed because the truth was that a few minutes after we took a bath and changed into something clean we’d be just as dirty once again anyway.  Especially us kids who liked to spend most of the day running around the hills of the rancho, laying out on the tan-colored ground underneath trees with exceptionally large branches that were perfect for shade, and just generally getting ourselves into trouble one way or another.  Eventually one of my siblings, usually my sisters, would tell mamá how I hadn’t taken a bath in days and she’d force me to grab my two little pails from the cement block kitchen, run down to the pozo and haul back enough water to take a proper bath.  In these instances I’d have to heat my own water over the fire myself.

“¡Apúrale!  Tienes que bañarte… ¡Apúrale, antes de que agarre un samandoque!

It never got that far.  By that time I was usually feeling pretty dirty myself.

Now, that Mexico is no longer there.  It is, but it’s changed.  In so many ways that it feels the same but at the same time it doesn’t, if that makes any sense.  Nobody rides around on an ox-wagon anymore; people don’t carry their own bathing water these days; they have running water and the pozo from our earlier visits is now just a dried up crevice on our side of the rancho; the ride to the pueblo that used to take almost an hour through mountains and difficult-to-tread-roads full of rocks and bumps now only takes about 20 minutes on newly paved streets; there’s a tortilla truck that drives around selling freshly made and warm tortillas de maíz; even televisions and video games have replaced part of the sense of adventure for children in El Sauz, along with cell phones and the Internet which they can access in the pueblo for a few pesos.

Our ranchito in transition, El Sauz.

I’m reminded of the movie Muriel’s Wedding where the father of the bride kept repeating the line “you can’t stop progress!”  It was about something completely unrelated, but for some reason it’s stuck in my mind for years now.

Still, not even “progress” changes everything.

One of the last times I went to Mexico, a few years ago now, I was too lazy to take a bath every day because even though technically we did have running water in my parents’ home, which now has four rooms instead of two, we did still have to heat up the water over fire so that it would be warm enough to tolerate.  It was the fall and one thing we still don’t have in El Sauz is a water heater.  After a few days of holding out on a shower I couldn’t take it anymore.  I myself had to take a bath to be comfortable.  “How cold can the water be?” I thought to myself and closed the restroom door behind me determined to take a real quick shower without any warm water.  I’d done it before on this side of the border and hadn’t suffered any dire consequences “so how bad could it be?”

Despite my siblings ridiculing and then sincere concern (my younger brother actually came around the house to knock on the restroom window and make sure I hadn’t passed out) I stayed in the restroom and roughed it out in the cold water.  More than a few colorful phrases escaped my mouth during the whole five minute ordeal, I’ll tell you that much!  I can’t remember when I’ve taken a quicker shower en toda mi vida.  I came out of the restroom feeling a little accomplished and more than anything else embarrassed for acting like I didn’t know any better.

You might not be able to stop progress, but, as it turns out, stupidity is pretty unpredictable as well.

Here's me trying to look "clean" sans shower.

The Harvest / La Cosecha: U.S. Child Migrant Farm Workers

[vimeo ​16968153]

There are some things you just can’t deny, and one’s own personal history is definitely at the top of that list.  A few days ago I received an invitation to review marketing materials for a new documentary that will soon be coming to a theater near you, and like a lot of the other invitations I sometimes receive I filed it under the “pending review” folder in my email account.  I’d glanced over the project, a documentary about child migrant farmworkers in the U.S., and highlighted it as a top priority for review since it sounded like something I would be interested in.

What I didn’t know was just how close to home it would actually hit.

Zulema Lopez and her cousin pick pickles

This afternoon, after reading about and watching as much of the film as possible, I found myself sitting in front of my computer unable to fight back tears.  Not only is The Harvest / La Cosecha a story about the hardships of child laborers in the United States, most of them working 12 to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as bizarre as it might sound, it could have also been my story.

We were there in those same fields, living in the shadows of our own parents’ “illegal alien” status, surviving on the same miserable salaries, uncertain about what our tomorrows might bring, and feeling like maybe, just maybe, we’d never find a way out of our own poverty.  Though I should clarify my siblings and I never picked crops as children.  My father was a farm worker who earned less than $150 per week clearing fields, maintaining a few crops and caring for livestock.  My mother helped out by earning $15 a day here and there cleaning people’s houses, a lot of them our teachers from school.  Eventually we made it out and left the Texas Valley behind with all of its hardships, my parents obtained their legal status and got better jobs, and we were able to continue our educations here en los Estados Unidos.

Victor Huapilla and his family of farmworkers.

Still, looking through the pictures of the families featured in the film took me back immediately.  Several of the kids are actually from the same town we lived in for close to 10 years, Edingburg, Texas.  Their family pictures look like ours, their birthday cakes like the ones my mom used to make us from scratch, their parents’ words sound like our own parents’, and they themselves look and sound like we once did, all of those years ago.  They are me!  What I will always be at the end of the day.  A child of immigrant parents who came to this country to provide us a chance at a better life.

It was never guaranteed, and still isn’t today, but somehow, I guess we’ll never know how or why, we got lucky.  We never had to abandon our education to help our family make ends meet and we were able to pursue our parents’ dream for us: raising the bar on what it is our family could achieve.

A child migrant farm worker.

I’m overjoyed by the testimonies of these children, encouraged by the passion of the people responsible for this project – Director U Roberto Romano and executive producers Albie Hecht, Susan MacLaury, Rory O’Connor, actress and philanthropist Eva Longoria, Raul Padilla, and Alonzo Cantu – and overwhelmed with emotion by just how much a part of me this documentary already feels.

So about the actual film: The Harvest / La Cosecha profiles three migrant child farmworkers (Zulema Lopez (12), Perla Sanchez (14), and Victor Huapilla (16), and their families as they work through the 2009-2010 harvest seasons.  Filming for the 80 minute documentary took place in Minnesota, North Dakota, California, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.

Depending on the initial public reception from two screenings – one in New York, the other in Los Angeles – The Harvest / La Cosecha would subsequently be distributed across the country, hopefully to a theater near you.  So, if you’re in New York or Los Angeles, please support this film and help bring it to the rest of the country.  Here are the details on the two initial screenings:

FRIDAY, JULY  29th- THURSDAY, AUG 4th
NEW YORK CITY
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St # B
New York, NY 10011
Please check with Quad Cinema for tickets and show times

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5th – THURSDAY, AUG 11th
LOS ANGELES
Laemmle’s Music Hall 3
9036 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, 90211
Please check with Laemmle Music Hall 3 for tickets and show times

FTC Disclosure: I received materials about this film from the distributor.  I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own.

Los Castigos De Nuestros Padres

Yup, I'd agree with the kid.

It’s no secret that our parents (Latino moms and dads) do not play when it comes to discipline.  My mother and father, papá especially, didn’t have to do more than give us “The Look” in order for us to know it was time to stop whatever we were doing immediately if we did not want to suffer the consequences.  We’d freeze, shake in our pants, cease and desist before they could say anything, for we knew what would follow, if we didn’t, would be anything but nice.

Definitely not to say that we were abused or suffered children by any means – we weren’t.  Más bien, éramos bien canijos, so absolutely we, well me more than the rest of my siblings I like to claim, undoubtedly endured the occasional coscorrón, manotazo, pellizco, cintarazo, and yes even the world famous chancletazo, probably the most effective of the bunch because it was administered by our mother and felt more like an attack on our heartstrings than anything else.  But those dosages of corporal punishment, even when they didn’t feel like it at the time, actually helped us become more responsible, more respectful, and definitely more aware of our place in the world.

Mother and father: authority.

Us: subject to their discipline and enseñanzas.

So now, my question is to you, what do you remember about your own parents’ discipline style?  There are no right or wrong answers, nor should you feel like you can’t share your opinions if you don’t believe in corporal punishment.  This is more of a way of honoring our parents for all of their efforts to raise us the best way possible, that they knew how at the moment.