Juan of Words

Celebrating “El Grito De Independencia” Everyday

¡El Grito! Of Mexican Independence that is.  This year to commemorate this very special day in history for all of us mexicanos around the world I thought about writing something that would explain a little more about what this day means… only I had already done that in this post here.  Then I thought about blogging about the dozens of hardworking men and women who have taught me what it is to be a true mexicano throughout my life, only, guess what?… I had already done that too.

Finally, it came to me!  What better way to celebrate El Día de la Independencia than by showing you physically, well through images anyways, how everyday in my world is a little celebration of my Mexican heritage.  These are a few of the little mundane things that always make me feel a little extra mexicano:

Cloth Towelettes

Hechas a purititita mano

We use them for keeping tortillas warm, to sit hot pans on top of, in the center of our table, to not burn our hands when handling hot skillets or a comal, and though I don’t think “cloth towelettes” is the proper term exactly, these crafty little artesanias are extra special to me because they are all hand made and were all gifted to us.  Look at the detail and color.  How could you not feel proud of these?

Guayaberas

I like the brown, pero ya casi no me queda

I used to wear them a lot more when I was flaco.  Then, the panza started protruding and they no longer were as flattering!   Lately though I’ve noticed my collection of guayaberas is actually growing again.  These two were given to me as gifts.

Chile

Picante todo sabe mejor

By the bite, in a salsa, or straight from the mata, there’s nothing like the smell of fresh chile to make you feel real damn Mexican all of the time!  The red ones my jefecita grew herself.  The smaller ones she brought back from Mexico.

Miniature Piñatas

La Piñata

Okay, Anjelica bought these for a party we never had, and ever since then they have been a huge hit with all of our friends and family who see them.  They’re about six inches tall and six inches wide and can’t fit any real candy inside, but they are just real chingonas, I think.

Molcajete

Now you know, there ain't no chile like chile from el molcajete

Not much to say here.  My brother and I both bought this same molcajete in Cerritos, San Luis Potosi, Mexico for our wives – without knowing what the other was getting, I promise – and brought them home as gifts.  To date, we’ve only really used it a handful of times here.  I wonder if my brother has gotten any more usage out of his.  LOL!

Bean Smoosher

Apachurrafrijoles

Guess we’re moving on up!  Growing up we used to just use the bottom of a cup to smash beans, or anything else with a flat surface that was small enough to fit in the pan, but nowadays they’ve got this fancy little contraption that makes you feel all sophisticated when you’re cooking frijoles refritos. Just goes to show some of us will buy just about anything.

My Boots

Kicking up las botas

Rodeo is only a couple of weeks every year here and though we hardly ever go (too many crowds), when I put on my boots, everybody knows that ¡ya es hora! To hit the road for a rumba – usually a quinceañera or a wedding, but sometimes a baile here and there too – being a Texan bien mexicano I can definitely say there’s nothing like kicking your boots up at the end of a long, hard day.

The Finger… err, I mean Lemon Squeezer

Apachurradedosylimones

Officially the perfect counterpart for anything spicy, the lemon is also huge in our diets here at casa Juan of Words.  Whether it’s on a corn on a cob, a beef stew, in tacos, or anything else, there’s nothing like a little lemon and chile to make your lips and tongue feel all the Mexican you can handle.  Oh yeah, the squeezer should only be used on lemons… not fingers!

Hope you enjoyed and have a very happy Mexican Independence Day.

¡Viva México!

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.

Una Piedra En El Camino, Me Enseño Que Mi Destino

Las piedras...

Las piedras en México tienen historia.  They’re jagged and rough.  Shapely in all sorts of colors and sizes.  Smooth to the touch.   Rough to the grasp.  Sturdy.  They tell the story of generations gone by, of old men playing their instruments and singing their música de vara, of old women walking by at the dawn of early morning, wrapped up against the cold in their rebozos, always in pairs, with their pails of fresh corn, heading to the molino, of huaraches de piel walking alongside mules, sheep and all sorts of other assortment of livestock, of children running to take care of mandados, of young men with their alcohol and cigarettes, laughing and carrying on, of young women giggling and smiling, trying their best to be proper while the objects of their affection walk by, of young boys and girls escaping from school, marching to the beat of el himno de independencia on Independence Day, of so many cousins showing us how to get from one place to the next without ever being seen.

That’s what I remember in those rocks.

I imagine Mamatule and Papanino, my grandparents, sitting at the front of their kitchen, wrapping up their tobacco in corn leaves, smoking it ever so peacefully in the dead air and silence of night, my father as a young man courting my mother, the young girl from Monterrey who showed up at the rancho every couple of months with her padrinos, wearing nice dresses and sensible shoes.  Shoes, in this place, where most girls walked around barefoot.  I imagine their conversations.  My mother playing hard to get, stern and dismissive, measuring every single one of her expressions ever so carefully, a half smile here, a look of agreement there, my father unrelenting, with his big smiles and nice words, staking out her every move from the tanque where pigs swam around to get refreshed and people carried pails of water to heat up for their baths, and slowly winning her over, one platica at a time.

I try to envision our land before the casita de escobas, that’s what they called the firmer shrubs they used to fill in the gaps between the frames of wooden sticks in those days, before the first room of cement blocks went up, when it was up to the people of the pueblo to decide whether the newly-wedded couple of my parents deserved to have this empty section of land donated to them, and then when they were there together for the first time, what conversations they might have had, what first moments they might have lived, welcoming my eldest sister, their firstborn, and then the ones that followed, the decision to leave home, first apart, cada quien a su tiempo, and then together, all of us together.

And I’m inspired.

It was there we began our journey.  The only place that ever felt like home, where even though it wasn’t my precise history that took place, it called out to me, made me feel one with the land, with the air, with the water, in a way that I’d never felt before.  Our apartments, houses here were mundane.

Those piedras, majestic.  Respectable.  Ours!

Mexicanismos, El Grito, La Pachanga, Y La Patria

Mexico, Lindo y Querido...

Like true mexicanos, today we’re turning a blind eye on all the bad, laughing instead of crying, and celebrating the fact que a pesar de todo hoy nuestra patria cumple 200 años de independencia!

¡¡¡¡AAAAEEEEEEE!!!!

Yes the country is in a state of disarray.  Our people across the border and government are inundated with crime, violence, and corruption.  And this side of the border, we’re not faring any better!  But in all honesty, you’ve gotta hand it to our people for not letting the constant bad news get us down.  O como dirían en mi rancho: ‘Entrémosle a la pachanga – ¡a Dios rogando y a San Pedro bailando!’

Aquí, a compilation of just of few of my own favorite Mexican things:

El Grito.  Don’t be caught looking like these guys in a random YouTube video drunken, dazed and confused.  Get it straight and do it right!

Cheves. Any variety, any color container, although for an occasion such as this you might as well stick to the classics,  DosXX, Victoria or Corona tonight!

Sabrosa, sabrosita!

Mariachi. Need I say more?  And then composers like Jose Alfredo Jimenez!

Papel Picado. Great for any occasion, and you don’t have to take it down ever if you don’t want to.

Colorin Colorado

Salsa. Chiles, Cholula, Tabasco, Valentina; any and all salsas I love!  Can’t eat without them.  Ask anyone that knows me.

Ta' Picao!

Piñatas. What is more fun than a piñata?  At any age really!

Bon Bon Ban

All Mexican Food. Tacos, Tortas, Tostadas, Arroz con Leche, Tres Leches, Pan Dulce, Enchiladas, Frijoles, Arroz, Tortillas; quite literally all Mexican foods!

Provecho

Ballet Folklórico. Just beautiful!  Puro Amor y Pasion en este baile.

Huaraches. Can’t ever find the huaraches we wore in Cerritos, SLP, but these are sort of close…Comfortable, fresh and cheap.

Si te queda el huarache...

Artesanias. Something as simple as bird can take on a whole new life, color and sabor under the creativity of a good artista mexicano(a).

Pasion, Amor, Arte

Mexican Coke. No te hagas. You know you’ve had it and it is not the same as the stuff they sell here.  Ni a los talones le llegan…

Como ninguna

And many, many other things…too many to list and mention here.  Mejor los dejo con estas palabras hechas tan famosos por el revolucionario Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla:

Mexicans!
Long Live the Heroes that gave us our Fatherland!
Long Live Hidalgo!
Long Live Morelos!
Long Live Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez!
Long Live Allende!
Long Live Aldama and Matamoros!
Long Live National Independence!
Long Live the Independence Bicentennial!
Long Live the Centennial of the Revolution!
¡Viva México!
¡Viva México!
¡Viva México!