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05/07/2012 Luis Urrea is a Mexican American writer and he was discussing the "garbage pickers" in Tijuana. You see, in areas of Mexico the poorest of the poor live in garbage dumps and try to earn enough money to survive by picking through the garbage in search of glass, copper, bottles and other things they can sell or recycle. They put up makeshift cardboard huts and live there with their families. Some are born there and die there. On a lucky day, a dog dies and they cook it to feed to their children. Near the dump in Tijuana is a "Potter's Field" cemetery for babies. Anyone can go there, dig a hole and bury a child who has died. Some of the graves are marked with the crib of the infant, which the family has brought to the cemetery and on which they have written the child's name. In another location in the dump is a makeshift cemetery for adults and older children, where the sanitation workers, who operate bulldozers and diggers, dig large holes once a week for the residents of the garbage dump to bury their dead. I had never heard of Luis Urrea before. I wish I had. I wish I had read his books. Three are now on their way to my house from Amazon. Luis had a Mexican Father and an American mother. He looks white; his hair is sandy blond. He said the border figuratively went right through his living room, where his mother sat on one side and his father on the other and they never moved their chairs as they sat and watched Walter Cronkite each evening. Though he was born in Mexico, he moved to the United States with his parents when he was in the fifth grade. He said he had never seen anything so beautiful as the tiny, lush, green lawns in the suburbs of Clairemont. He tells a story about going to school and being called a "greaser" by a freckle-faced boy with red hair. He didn't know what that meant, exactly, so he came home and told his father. He says what happened next. "My father was getting ready to go to the night shift. And he always smoked Pall Malls, and he would tip his head when he had a point to-- he'd do this. And he was looking at me when I came in and he said, 'What's the matter with you?' And I said, 'Nothing.' And he said, 'Mi hijo, que traes?' And I said, 'Nothing.' 'I can see you're upset. What are you upset about?' I said, 'Oh, they called me a name.' He said, 'Really? What name did they call you?' I said, 'They told me I was a greaser.' And he looked at me just for a second, and I knew because he went like this and I thought, 'Oh, here it comes.' And what I thought was going to happen didn't happen, because I thought he was going to go on a diatribe about these people. And he says to me, 'Mi hijo, in the western expansion across the United States, the Americanos came in covered wagons. The wagons were made of wood, entirely of wood. The axles, los ejes was made of wood, mi hijo. So they would get to about Texas and the friction heat up the wood.' He said, 'y se quemaba todo. The wagons would burn down.' He said, 'You know who the only people in the world with the technology to grease the axles was Mexicans.' And I was looking at him, and he said, 'So when they call you a greaser hold your head up because it's a term of pride.' And I knew my dad was lying. You know, I knew he-- but it was so brilliant. Even as a fifth grader, I saw my father take a moment of shame and through a story, right, turn it into something to try to lift his kid up. And then he went off to the bowling alley to clean toilets all night." This interview hit me on so many levels. Often, it is all too easy to feel sorry for myself, to think I've had a harder life than others. For instance, I moved away from my entire extended family when I was 10. Holidays for the next 12 years consisted of my mom, dad, brother and me having a meal together, with no one else. And then my brother died and there were 3 of us. Nevertheless, I had a pretty good life after that, with a husband and eventually four children. But 3 recessions ruined us financially and we even lost our house. Then my parents both became ill and died within four days of each other. But, had I been born in a different time and place, all of that could have happened while I was living in a garbage dump. People in garbage dumps get cancer and neurological diseases and their children die of malnutrition and easily treatable maladies (for those who can afford a doctor). I can't imagine what it might have been like to lose a brother and then have to bury him in a garbage dump. I'm living in a paradise compared to these poor souls. Yet we mock and despise them here in North America. And when they take a chance, risking their lives, going through the desert as they walk to America, in a desperate attempt to save their families, we imprison them, make laws to discriminate against them, and sometimes shoot them. We call them names like "wetback" and "illegal alien." We say they are criminals and don't belong in our country. We think of them as no more valuable than the dogs that roam the garbage dumps with them. Luis Urrea said something else toward the end of the interview that stopped me cold, especially now with the genealogical research I've been doing on my family and my husband's family. Some of my husband's ancestors came over on the Mayflower, to escape religious persecution. Some of mine came because of the famine in Ireland, and I couldn't help thinking of them when Luis said about the Mexicans who come here illegally: "The people I write about are enacting a love letter to America, not an evil assault… What if the people had been called refugees? What if the people had been called Pilgrims?" Something to remember the next time you hear a politician say he would veto "The Dream Act" or build an electrified fence, the next time a state legislature passes a law that allows the police to stop anyone, anytime, anyplace and demand their papers. All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com |