Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (14 page)

Again, the paradoxical mentality of the immigrant was not politely ignored and certainly not assuaged, as it would be today, but rather directly assaulted. The unvoiced assumption - a formulation of classic know-nothingism - resonated with us: If it is really so good over there, why don't you go back? Was this an exercise in American exceptionalism?
Absolutely.
Did our teachers
lay
the foundations for later chauvinism that might manifest itself collectively in what is now derided as American "unilateralism" on the world stage?
Perhaps.
But did the relegation of cultural diversity to the realm of the private and familial rather than the public and official encourage divisiveness and tension?
Hardly at all.

The goal of assimilation that was once the standard, if unspoken orthodoxy in our schools and government is now ridiculed as racist and untrue.
The result is that the very idea of both Mexico and America is changing, as is the experience of the immigrant. Instead of growing more distant, a romanticized Mexico is kept closer to the heart of the new arrival - thus erecting a roadblock on his journey to becoming an American. Those who die as Mexicans in
California
have sought neither to become citizens of the United States nor to return to Mexico. As a local columnist for our paper recently described their nether world: Pens-aban que se iban
a
ir patras ("They thought they would go back to their home"). Apparently he was sad that those who fled Mexico always nostalgically promised to go back, yet eventually died in the United States.

Sociologists, the media and university activists now envision balkanized enclaves in America, assuring us that retaining the umbilical cord of Mexican culture is not injurious. Instead, we are for the first time creating a unique culture that is neither Mexican nor American, but something amorphous and fluid - the dividend of the multicultural investment. Whether you break the law to reach
California
or immigrate legally, it makes little difference in determining how well you drive, whether you send your kids to college, or whether you draw on the public services of the state. The bien pensant punditry - which lives exclusively north of the border, most often in white suburbs that are not integrated - will rush to add that southern California and northern Mexico will soon create their own regional civilization, perhaps even their own language and culture. An offspring not wholly of either parent will arise, and this Califexico, Mexifornia or Republica
del
Norte is not a "bad" thing at all, but something which, if not exactly advantageous, at least is inevitable.

After all, these pundits note, two thousand maquiladoras
-
 
American
corporations with Mexican workers - are expanding along the border, creating the veneer of American popular culture over the miasma of a Third World infrastructure. They do not dare say publicly, but they hope privately that this new hybrid civilization - at least its water, sewage, streets, police force, hotels, universities, cars and banks - will resemble San Diego more than Tijuana.

A former Mexican resident of Mendota - now a nearly all-Mexican community on the west side of
California
's Central Valley - remarked to me recently that he finally left his town "when the last white people left." His unspoken, apparently racist, message was echoed by a resident of Parlier, another nearby town that has also become essentially all Mexican. The latter boasted to me that he transferred all his children to nearby Kingsburg schools where "there are lots of white people." It would be easy to dismiss such crudity as the false consciousness of a victim of ingrained racism, or to suggest that such thinking is confined to a small minority of self-hating Mexicans. (Or perhaps the more sophisticated might attribute these startling confessions to affluence and white racism that created better material conditions in Kingsburg and ensured worse schools and social services in Parlier.)

Maybe, maybe not.
As I see it, what both of these very bright, proud, capable men instead meant was that there were simply too many unassimilated Mexicans in Mendota and Parlier to ensure an American future for their children, a critical mass that had made both towns more resemble those left behind in Mexico than those in the United States, and therefore less safe, secure and desirable places to live. The Mendota resident amplified just that feeling by explaining to me that he liked living in a community with educated doctors, teachers, small business, and English as the standard language - because "things work better that way." Or as my friend from Parlier put it: "If I wanted to live in Mexico, I don't need to live in Parlier."

The immigration problem is much more than just a result of our demand and their supply. And the resulting muddle arises not because we are too crowded per se. Japan, after all, feeds, clothes and educates three times as many as we do without the natural wealth or open spaces of a
California
. If we were committed to metering immigration and demanding language immersion and complete assimilation of all new arrivals,
California
in time could handle a steady stream of legal Mexican immigrants.

The problem, rather, is the changing attitude toward immigration and assimilation - making too many of us increasingly separate and unequal, and thus apprehensive that a big state with plenty of room is already too crowded for what we have become. It has always been easier for people who emigrate to keep their own culture than to join the majority - if we have learned anything from our turn-of-the-century arrivals, it is that assimilation is difficult
-
 
but
for the first time in our nations history it is now also felt to be easier for their hosts to let them do so.

Rarely now do southwesterners express a confidence in our culture or a willingness to defend the larger values of Western civilization. The result is that our public schools are either apathetic
about,
or outright hostile to the Western paradigm - even as millions from the south are voting with their feet and their lives to enjoy what we so often smugly dismiss. Our elites do not understand just how rare consensual government is in the history of civilization. They wrongly think that we can instill confidence by praising the less successful cultures that aliens are escaping, rather than explaining the dynamism and morality of the civilization that our newcomers have pledged to join.

Few in government or the media have a clue that secular rationalism, religious tolerance and the chauvinism of a middle class ensure that we enjoy a rare degree of liberality in our lives
-
 
only
possible through a foundation of material prosperity built on the sanctity of private property and free markets. Even more rarely do they appreciate how such Western values are not predicated on race or ethnicity, but on simple acceptance of a core set of rights and responsibilities. Few Mexicans could ever be accepted as full citizens in China, Japan, Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia - in other words, in many places of the non-Western world that define their citizenry by the criteria of race, tribe or religion. Despite the campus rhetoric of resentment and discrimination, it would be far harder for an Anglo immigrant to be accepted as a full citizen in a Michoacan village than it would be for a Mixotec to take root in Fresno.

Yet through multiculturalism, cultural relativism and a therapeutic curriculum our schools often promote the very values from which new immigrants are fleeing - tribalism, statism and group rather than individual interests. If taken to heart, such ideas lead our new arrivals to the postulates that cause abject failure in
California
: "My home buddies are my only friends"; "The school has failed to help me"; "Chicanos aren't treated right and need to stick together." In a larger sense, if we were to entertain the attitudes toward women that exist in Mexico; stress the need to favor relatives and friends rather than follow the blind protocols of civil service; or copy the Mexican constitution, court system, schools, universities, tax code, bureaucracy, energy industry or sewage system, then millions of Mexicans quite simply would stay put. There is a reason, after all, why those in a rather cold and inhospitable Canada, north of the Dakotas and
Minnesota
, do not cross into America by the millions, while others from a temperate, naturally beautiful, oil-rich, mineral-laden and fertile Mexico do.

The answer to our current dilemma has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with the degree to which a society is openly Western, and can thereby create a culture that trumps its natural environment.

How, then, exactly did the old assimilationist model work? As I remember it, simply and effectively. In our grammar schools during the 1950s and 1960s, English was definitely the official language. As a result, at our local schools that were overwhelmingly first-generation Mexican, one could hear not a word of Spanish even on the playground. Groups of four and larger were not allowed to congregate at recess. Mr. Jackson, our Arkansas-bred principal, gave us lectures about "rat-packing" hapless individuals, and swore he would whip anyone who jumped someone unexpectedly and with greater numbers in an "unfair fight." Anytime he heard that four or five were going to "get" someone after school, he offered them boxing gloves and said they were welcome to go against him first. I remember that those caught fighting with "Mexican" kicking instead of the accepted "American" punching earned four, rather than two, spankings.

In class, a rather tough Americanism was rammed down our throats: biographies of Teddy Roosevelt, stories about Lou Gehrig, recitation from Longfellow, demonstrations of how to fold the flag, a repertoire of patriotic songs to master. "America the Beautiful" was memorized including its mostly forgotten second and third stanzas, along with a dozen other songs, from the almost impossible to sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" to the corny "God Bless America." (I can still remember the Spanish-accented refrains of "Stand besid her")

"Manners" and "Civics" were taught each week - weird lessons like not appearing "loud" in public or wearing glittery or showy clothes; the need for picking up random trash from the sidewalks; and especially the avoidance of the "hard look" or staring down strangers with the intent of "being unpleasant." Thinly veiled, but never expressed overtly, was the idea that much of our assimilationist rhetoric arose in direct antithesis to the perceived practices of our many immigrants from Mexico. The pachuco, now glorified in our universities as the original nationalist rebel who bravely battled the prejudices of white America, was our special boogeyman in 1963. We were told that this mutinous chuko combined the worst characteristics of Elvis Presley with dangerous habits of gangsters from Tijuana. Did he assimilate, hold down a job, and appreciate his newly adopted country? Or did he foment fights, avoid labor, and wear clothes intentionally designed to draw attention to
himself
?

We didn't learn - as my kids do today - that he was a second-generation "Zoot-suiter" with an illustrious fashion, cultural and social history of resistance to the racism and know-nothingism of the United States. We simply believed what we were told and judged by what we saw - and what we saw was empirical, namely that chukos started fights and were arrested for thefts while the rest of the Mexican kids who dressed as Americans pretty much kept out of trouble. So we ten- and eleven-year-olds all listened when our largely well-meaning and naive white teachers warned us not to "go chuk" - which I think meant adopting beetle boots, Frisco pants, long and oiled-down hair with a ducktail in back, baggy shirts, armless wife-beater T-shirts, gaudy necklaces, and assorted chains, switchblades and brass knuckles. When my older brother wore Frisco jeans on the last day of school in junior high one year, the principal in
a frenzy
called home for my parents to pick him up at detention immediately. I asked my parents if he had, in fact, "gone chuk" - to their laughter and slight anger at the
school's
rigidity.

Our fourth-grade yard monitor, Mr. Kaufman, furious that our intramural Mexican captains were selecting their team members on the basis of familial relationships rather than proven talent, told me, my twin brother and the three other Anglo kids to form our own team - as an object lesson. Then he lectured us on how nepotism and tribalism were a small step from racial prejudice, and how team captains who discriminated against gifted athletes with no blood ties could find themselves the victims of much worse bias in the larger world - and for reasons far more malicious than merely being from a different clan. These teachers were at times insufferable in their condescension, haughty in their assumption that they were giving culture to the new arrivals and thereby lending their "know-how" for "making it in America"
-
 
but
make it in America most of these immigrants did.

The best speller was Gracie Luna, who alone of our class knew the plural of "phenomenon." Armando Quintana was the most accomplished actor, always beating us out for dramatic parts that were mainly Anglo. My twin and I thought it unfair that the sixth-grade football coach did not demand birth certificates, since we sat the bench while those whom we suspected were really two or three years older played every game. One football whiz, Raul Carbajal, told us that he was sixteen. (How else was he shaving when the rest of us, at twelve years old, had only peach-fuzz?)
When I saw him at a local baseball game last year, Raul, now nearly sixty and a veteran of thirty-five years as a skilled air-conditioning mechanic, told that he was actually eighteen at that time.
As we watched our sons play ball, he said that our teachers, now long dead, who bought him new clothes and drove him home were "great men and women."