Juan of Words

A Few Words On Gratitude

No hay que ser malagradecidos.  If there was one thing we all learned growing up at my house it was that it was never okay to be ungrateful. Last month, when I went to Chicago it was via invitation and all of the cost of my travel, hotel and conference fees were covered thanks to the generous donation of one of the LATISM sponsors. What I didn’t know until returning to Houston was that the compadres I’d been hanging out with in Chicago were actually the ones who had made my entire trip possible.

Inevitably me dio mucha pena that I did not get the chance to properly thank these gentlemen from Ford en Español while we were hanging out at the Navy Pier. They literally treated me like royalty and were so down to earth and friendly that it felt like we had known each other for a lifetime. En serio Fernando and Jesus are a todo dar and Ford en Español has always been nothing but wonderful to me. I love it that they are so in touch with their Hispanic clientele. Enough to dedicate an entire marketing effort to us in Ford en Español!

Thank you Ford, Fernando and Jesus for being so great at LATISM!

As a token of my appreciation, let me also add how great Ford is doing with their new car models. This year I’ve had the opportunity to drive their Ford F-150 EcoBoost and the Ford Focus hybrid, and both really were quite impressive. Not only were they easy to drive, comfortable, and very luxurious, but most importantly to me, they were very economical on the gas. Not to mention the great entertainment console which worked seamlessly with my phone on Bluetooth. I’d never even used Bluetooth in a vehicle before! And needless to say after the test runs were over (almost three weeks for the F-150) I did not want to give either one of the vehicles back.

So now, I’m definitely excited about the new 2013 Ford Escape SUV. Not only would it be more practical for a family of three like ours, but it even has Active park assist, which helps drivers parallel park. Wow, that would have come really handy during our road trip to DC this summer! I had a couple of nerve wrecking episodes trying to properly park while we were there. Sad and comical at the same time.

The New 2013 Ford Escape

In any event, you should definitely check out the new models. Here is a quick link to the new Ford Escape. Also, LIKE the official Ford en Español Facebook Page. They really do have a lot of great posts all of the time.

LATISM, Dolores Huerta, and Your Love – Thank You!

I’m sitting on the plane right now, exhausted, con los pies que me están matando – we definitely don’t have that many stairs in Houston – pensando, en tantas cosas tan hermosas that happened to me the last few days.  I’m afraid that I’ll blink and it will all have been a dream… or that somehow I won’t remember it all.  Me quiero dar el pellizco yo mismo.  Then again, I’m not that brave.

En La Villita de Chicago

This week I attended the Latinos In Social Media (LATISM) National Conference in Chicago – if you don’t know who they are look them up, it’s an amazing network for both Latinos and non Latinos – and while having been invited to attend in it of itself was pretty damn extraordinary, I don’t think I’d fully grasped the significance of what this trip would mean to me.  As soon as I walked in the door at the Intercontinental Hotel, near the gorgeous Navy Pier where everything took place, mind you well after 11 p.m., I was met with abrazos and cariñitos: ¡Juan!  ¡Juanito!  ¡Juan of Words!  The cínico in me wanted to believe that these were just standard formalities, people just being nice, but then something weird happened… it kept happening, everywhere I went.  Even more amazing – uuyy hasta se me enchina la piel – más gente linda approached me to tell me why they enjoyed this blog, and how much they identified with me.  All I could do was offer hugs because there really aren’t any words to express the gratitude in my heart for this kindness.  Para serles sincero I still don’t believe it!

With Elianne Ramos, spokesperson for LATISM

I mean this is me.  The kid with little dreams, with little expectations out of life besides graduating from high school, the one out of seven chiquillos that my parents raised a duras penas, the one who didn’t even believe in his own passion for writing not too long ago, the one who still can’t even believe how much love he’s been blessed with through this medio.  No se si me lo merezca, but I sure as hell am grateful!

To top it all off, on the night before my departure a couple of us decided to drink a glass of wine before calling it a night, and low and behold who did we end up sharing a table with?  Dolores Huerta!  Yes, that Dolores Huerta, the living legend.  It was the perfect ending to a wonderful three day event.  Not only was she truly graceful, but what she had to say to us felt like it was truly delivered to our ears by divine intervention.  The journalist in me wanted to take notes, but we were all so mesmerized that all I could do was listen and try to record everything she said to us in my mind.  All in all, what she wanted us to know was that we are all just as capable of making a difference, of utilizing our voice for a greater good, and of motivating others to do the same.  That is definitely a tall order, but one I wanted to share with all of you as well.  Don’t take it from me.  Take it from her, una mujer verdadera that has made her mission in life to serve others.  What an inspiration!

Dolores Huerta!

So in closing this very random post, I want to thank you all once again for reading this humble little blog and for making me feel extra special in Chicago, and also by encouraging you to believe in yourself and follow your dreams.  You never know what might happen if you just try.

¡Los Quiero!

El Día E

Spanish is actually my first language.  Y a pesar de haber estudiado y vivido toda mi vida aquí, nunca deje de hablar el español. My parents wanted us to speak both languages and made it their job to teach us español at home.  Por eso ahora cuando la gente se sorprende y me dice “oye, ¡qué bien hablas el español!”, me da muchísimo orgullo que mis padres nos ayudaron a preservar esta parte tan linda de nuestra herencia.  No hay como pelear, amar, sentir, y gritar en español.  Porque como ustedes bien saben, nuestro vocabulario es mucho más Romántico y amplio.  A veces al traducir una palabra de español a inglés se le pierde todo, especialmente la emoción y el corazón.

Por eso cuando me invitaron a participar en “El Día E”, el día oficial para celebrar nuestro idioma alrededor del mundo, no lo tuve que pensar ni un solo instante.  Acepte con todo gusto, y aquí les presento mi palabra favorita en el idioma.  ¡Gracias a todos por las sugerencias en las redes sociales!  Espero les guste el videllito (a y nada más pa’que sepan, la cámara agrega unas cuantas libritas… pensé que debería aclarar eso, jajaja).  Compartan sus palabras en español favoritas conmigo porfis!

Ve más videos El Día E de mis amigos y amigas Aquí

También visita la página oficial de El Día E Aquí

Tributo A La Reina Del Tex-Mex: Selena Quintanilla Perez

The original tribute magazine.

It’s hard to believe that 16 years have gone by since the one and only Selena Quintanilla Perez passed away.  I still remember finding out the news from my dad.  He picked us up from high school – my younger brother and I – and told us the news as soon as we got in the car: “guess what?  Selena is dead.  Somebody killed her.”

One of my favorite collages of Selena.

“What!?  She was so full of life!” we thought as we drove home in pretty much utter silence.  I remembered her silly interviews on television shows like Onda Max and Johnny Canales, the infamous diez y cuatro confusion on Cristina, her debut acting role in the TVyNovela Dos Mujeres un Camino, how she spoke and sang in Spanish, but spoke English as well as we did at home (something I had not seen in another artist before her), and of course her charisma and electrifying voice.

My own collection of tributory magazines.

Never again would we hear the deejays on the radio announcing Selena y Los Dinos coming to perform in Houston, never would we be able to see her at the Houston Rodeo again.  It was quite a shock.  Even more shocking, the outpouring of emotion and sadness across the country… even the world, at the death of La Reina del Tex-Mex Selena Quintanilla Perez.

Special edition, tribute People magazine.

What I don’t think any of us knew then, or could have imagined, was just how large of an impact her star would actually have on the overall perception of Latinos in America.  Not just Texans or Mexicans, but all of us.  In a way she awakened the rest of the country, especially advertisers, to our existence and strength in numbers.  For better or for worse, her passing left the door and several windows wide open for the rest of us to take advantage of.

Doing what she did best...

In Texas, the anniversary of her passing is always a big deal.  I’m not exactly sure how significant it is in other parts of the country, but I am assuming equally memorable since it usually inspires national tributes on English and Spanish language media.  For us Tejanos, she was and still is our pride and joy, the little girl from Corpus Christi who dreamed big and made it even bigger… before leaving well ahead of her time.

Selena, we miss you!

Here one of my favorite Selena songs, ‘No Me Queda Más’

More on Selena at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selena

My Anti-Presentimiento Remedio-Ritual

Nervous beyond belief...

It’s an awful feeling, right there in the pit of your stomach, twisting and turning, telling you “something is wrong, something bad is about to happen,” although you haven’t a clue what, or two whom.

Nothing is worse!

You want to do something, stop something, or at the very least warn somebody, but can’t do anything but sit there and worry.  You know that if you start calling around asking people if they’re okay, if they are up to anything dangerous or unusual, you are only going to worry them too, and what’s the point of that?  So most times we just suck it up, hope for the best and pray a little, asking that somehow, someway whatever our presentimiento was about doesn’t actually happen.

I generally also try to convince myself that it is little more than silly superstition and that I don’t believe in that stuff… right before repeating my ritual once again: worrying, worrying some more, praying, praying again, and then thinking up everything in the world that “the universe” could be trying to warn me about, before going back to square one all over again.

Maybe it’s because my own mother’s presentimientos always seemed to be so accurate in my memories.  She’d get an “ugly feeling” and all of a sudden, BAM, something was wrong!  It was unnerving to hear her say tengo un presentimiento.  My skin would crawl and I would just start bracing myself.  Then I got to thinking, maybe it was just that whole theory that if you believe something strongly enough it will come true.  I guess that we are channeling negative energy into our lives and that we are really the ones making bad things happen to ourselves.

A little bit too new age, modern thinking for me… so in the years since I’ve adopted my own “Anti-Presentimiento Remedio-Ritual”.  Like when I dream a bad dream, I really do believe that if I repeat it out loud, share it with someone else, I am preventing the dream, or the presentimiento, from actually coming true.  That somehow I’m putting a block on it, stopping it dead in its tracks.

It sounds silly, but it is kind of comforting… some of the time.

Pickles, Calletana And The Coyote

'Retrato de Mujer' de Diego Rivera

My uncle had a friend whose name was Calletana.  She was short and dark with medium length hair, black, with a wave right at the spot where it ran into her shoulders, straight, but kind of crazy at the same time.  The rest of her features, just as feminine and she was petite:  big eyes, curvy lips, like a miniature Barbie doll, except shorter and fuller, with lots of personality, and speaking only in Spanish.

Her clothes weren’t as nice as Barbie’s though.  My uncle was a coyote, what you’d call somebody who crossed mexicanos illegally from one side of the border to the other, and Calletana, I assumed, was his business partner, so whenever they showed up at our house they were dressed down more than anything, like they’d just been nervously driving for hours, because they had.  Warm ups and big tee-shirts, her hair pulled back in a nappy pony tail, my uncle in blue jeans or brown poly-cotton pants, with a dark colored polo shirt, almost always.  He must have been at least 10 or 15 years older than her.

I was 10, and I adored her.

As they’d pull into our driveway she’d yank back the sliding door of that vintage gray van, jumping out to greet me with just as much excitement as I’d jump around with before running into her arms.  Something about her just made me feel special.  Like I was the center of the world when Calletana was around.  She never yelled at me for trying to get my little brother in trouble.  She didn’t tell me I was annoying.  And she never, ever ran around our house and yard trying to hide from me.  Instead, Calletana and I would sit on the floor of my uncle’s van with its sliding door open, just talking about nothing, laughing and carrying on like we were family.  We weren’t.

From the smirk on my father’s face when he told us what a coyote was I knew that word meant danger, doing something you weren’t supposed to, doing a bad thing and getting away with it, like when I had grabbed a handful of candy at the Valley Mart and ate it all up before anyone saw me.  I knew it was wrong, but I felt like such a rebel because I didn’t get caught.

Maybe that’s what it was like for Calletana?

She wasn’t bad.  I liked her, and even if she had done a bad thing on purpose and gotten away with it, why should that matter?

I still wanted her to come around and be my friend.

I definitely didn’t want her to get in trouble.

For years they’d come around like that, just showing up unexpectedly at any random moment, and every time my excitement was just as huge.  My mother and everyone else’s not so much;  yeah they were happy to see them, but they weren’t bursting out of the seams  to have another silly conversation at the footsteps of that beat up old truck with Calletana like I was.

Years later all I’d remember would be the pickles.  Small and crunchy, with just the right amount of sour – the kind you could eat one right after the other without ever getting tired of them.  Like we would.

I didn’t know why she always carried pickles, but she did.