"Those Who Don't"

"Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared.  They think we're dangerous.  They think we will attack them with shiny knives.  They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake...

All brown all around, we are safe.  But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight.  Yeah.  That is how it goes and goes."

(Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, 28)

I'm from the state that has the highest percentage of Mexican Americans.  I'm from the city that has the third largest population of Mexican Americans in the country.  My best friend from high school is Latino.  Not far from my house, there's a gas station where a couple dozen Mexican men gather each morning, waiting to be hired for a day of Manuel manual labor by other men who cart them away in the beds of their pickup trucks.  Two summers ago, I worked in a part of town very heavily populated by Latinos - most of the store signs are in Spanish, and many houses and other buildings are painted in bright, Latin American colors.

Despite all of this, I still feel like I don't have a good understanding of Mexican American or immigrant culture.  Most of the Latin culture I'm familiar with is what I experienced on my mission in Paraguay.  However, since I served south of the border speaking Spanish, lots of people assume that I understand Mexican slang or that I'm a connoisseur of Mexican food.  Especially returned missionaries who served in Mexico.  ("Let's go to this one place... they sell really good horchata!"  "What's that?" I ask.  "Are you serious?"  I'm still not entirely sure.)

I got a very sobering taste of immigrant life a few weeks ago, though, during a phone call with a mission buddy from Guatemala.  Here's part of our conversation:

Me:   "How's work?

José:   "Okay I guess.  It's a lot of work.  You guys (in the US) make more in a day than I make in a week."

He told me how much he makes, and it's true.  Dang.  Later on in the conversation:

José:   "My brother was in the USA for a while; he was in Texas."

(Being from Texas, I got excited and asked him about it.)

Me:   "Oh cool!  What city did he live in?  Did he like it?"

José:   "He was working there, but he didn't have documentation.  The cops found him and put him in jail.  We didn't know what happened - we hadn't heard from him for weeks and we were all really worried.  They deported him and he came home later on."

What do you say to that?  I didn't know how to respond.  I somehow managed to finish the conversation.

That phone conversation, along with The House on Mango Street and La Misma Luna, have helped me understand a little more about this very difficult aspect of Latin American culture.  Life is hard.  There's a lot of distrust going on out there, and I think a lot of it is due to ignorance.  I don't know if there's a solution to everything that's going on or if the whole immigration thing will ever get sorted out.  I only hope that building trust (from both sides of the issue) can help smooth things over.

Favorite

I'm not really what you'd call a 'literature' person.  (Sorry, Dr. Mack, I know that's your thing.)  I read, and I enjoy reading (most of the time), but I'm not a fast reader.  It's a lot easier for me to relate to other types of art.  (But this class is REALLY helping me get more out of reading - seriously.)

I roomed with one of my good high school friends for my first three years of college.  He studied film here at BYU, and continues to do so as a graduate student in California.  While living together, I think some 'film critic' rubbed off on me.  I try to watch movies as pieces of art rather than mere forms of entertainment.  (However, different films serve different purposes - everybody needs a little Nacho Libre every now and then.)  I've also been playing music since I was five years old.  With this background, it's easier for me to relate to sound and visual images than to text.

My favorite thing we've studied so far this semester was the film The Mission.  (As mentioned in a previous post, I may be biased because I served my mission in Paraguay and visited the ruins of the Jesuit missions.)  But as we discussed in class, this film isn't really about the Guaraní Indians.  I think I'd like this film just as much if the setting were a different Latin American country with a different Indian tribe.  It's the message and high quality of the film that gets to me.

The Mission is about redemption - it has one of the best 'atonement' scenes that I've ever seen.  The film makes you think about life and hard decisions and how to treat others.  In addition, it's stunning from an artistic perspective.  It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and was nominated for Best Picture.  The film score is equally beautiful - I heard "Gabriel's Oboe" several times before I ever saw the movie or realized that that's where the melody came from.  The music was ranked #23 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores.

Conclusion:  that's why The Mission is my favorite so far.

Agua y fuego

"These things of the water, the mermaid, the golden carp.  They are strange.  There is so much water around the town, the river, the creek, the lakes-" (117)

"I thought about the sins of the town and how the golden carp would punish the sinners.  He would drown them in clear, blue water.  Then we passed the church and I thought about God's punishment for sinners.  He casts them in the burning pit of hell where they burn for eternity... Drowning or burning, the punishment was all the same." (137)

(Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima)

Fire and water are two of the most raw, elemental symbols that exist.  Their contrasting characteristics make them go well together:  fire rises up, water sinks down; fire's heat dries up water, water puts out fire.  There's a very good yin-yang feel about them.

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In a religious setting, I think most people associate water with "good" and fire with "bad".  For example, fire destroys; the "fires of hell" remind us of punishment and suffering.  In contrast, water soothes and cleans us; we are baptized in water.  Our physical lives depend on it, and Christ talks about "living water".

But are we not also baptized by fire?  Fire also cleanses and purifies, and gives us heat and warmth necessary for life.  Moses saw the power of God in a burning bush, and later as a pillar of fire.  Joseph Smith talked about heaven as a place of "everlasting burnings"; the Bible Dictionary says that fire is often a symbol of God's presence.  Water also has some negative connotations - Noah and his family were saved while water destroyed the rest of mankind.  Lehi's family and the Jaredites had to pass through stormy seas; the apostles were also frightened during a storm while Jesus slept on the boat.  And how often do we hear that nonsense about "Satan controlling the waters"?

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I think it's awesome how symbols can be used to denote completely opposite ideas.  Fire and water aren't the only examples.  (Snakes are another good one - a symbol for the devil, right?  But what about the brazen serpent and feathered serpent?)  I think that's what's going on with all the water stuff in Bless Me, Ultima.  Water is a precious resource in the dusty desert... how lucky for their town to be surrounded by it.  But remember that one day the Golden Carp will return and flood the city, punishing all the sinners.  Antonio is a mix of the sweet moon water and the salty sea.  "[Is] the power of good and evil the same?" (page 55); power might just be power, and it depends on how we view it - the same for water and other symbols.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o'erflow,

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

-Robert Keen

Mom vs. Dad

"It is the blood of the Lunas to be quiet, for only a quiet man can learn the secrets of the earth that are necessary for planting- They are quiet like the moon- And it is the blood of the Márez to be wild, like the ocean from which they take their name, and the spaces of the llano that have become their home."

     I waited, then said. "Now we have come to live near the river, and yet near the llano.  I love them both, and yet I am of neither. I wonder which life I will choose?"

     "Ay, hijito," she chuckled, "do not trouble yourself with those thoughts.  You have plenty of time to find yourself-"

     "But I am growing," I said, "every day I grow older-"

     "True," she replied softly.  She understood that as I grew I would have to choose to be my mother's priest or my father's son.

(Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, 41)

Latino or no, coming-of-age stories are not hard to find.  The example of Bless Me, Ultima has the added element of one parent versus the other.  Antonio feels that he must choose to become either like his mother's side of the family (calm, settled, religious farmers) or like his father's (rowdy, free-spirited, indifferent vaqueros).  The idea of parental polarization goes way back:

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"Y crecieron los niños, y Esaú fue diestro en la caza, hobre del campo; pero Jacob era hombre quieto, que habitaba en tiendas.  Y amó Isaac a Esaú, porque comía de su caza; mas Rebeca amaba a Jacob."  Génesis 25:27-28

We see similar parallels from the Old Testament:  the outdoorsy hunter is loved by the father while the quiet son is loved by the mother.  Another very similar example can be found in the character Jack from the movie The Tree of Life:

The premise of this movie is virtually the same as Bless Me, Ultima, just set in a small, 1950s American town.  A quote from this trailer says, "There are two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace.  You have to choose which one you'll follow."

Jack's father teaches him the way of nature - survival of the fittest.  To succeed, one must be strong and willing to fight, no matter the cost.  "It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world," says the father.  On the other hand, his mother teaches him the way of grace.  She teaches love, faith, and an appreciation for the world.  "Unless you love, your life will flash by."

I think Antonio Márez's feelings can be summed up perfectly in the quote from the trailer, "Father, Mother - always you wrestle inside me.  Always you will."  (Remember Jacob's coming-of-age wrestling match?)  It seems that Antonio and Jack think that they only have two choices, that they can either become like their mother or their father.  Are those the only choices - is there no happy medium?  Or can these two philosophies somehow be reconciled?

Do unto others...

"...there was a limitless affront in being beaten by a Negro as black as oneself... as low-born; perhaps branded, too.  It was as though, in the same family, the children were to beat the parents, the grandson to the grandmother, the daughters-in-law the mother who cooked for them.  Besides, in other days, the colonists... had been careful not to kill their slaves, for dead slaves were money out of their pockets.  Whereas here the death of a slave was no drain on the public funds."
(Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World, 116-117)

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This is a hard concept to deal with - black slave owners treated black slaves worse than the white owners did.  How could this happen, when just a few years previous they were all slaves? What made them think that it was okay to treat each other like that, committing the same atrocities that they themselves endured?  A scripture comes to mind:

We have learned by sad experience

that it is the nature and disposition of

almost all men, as soon as they get a

little authority, as they suppose, they

will immediately begin to exercise

unrighteous dominion.

~D&C 121:39

I can think of two (infamous) scientific studies that proved the idea mentioned above.  The Milgram Experiment is a classic textbook example of deceitful and unethical research.  Considering the horrific acts committed by Nazi soldiers led Stanley Milgram (a Jew) to design this study to test obedience to authority figures.  He found that 65% of test subjects would administer huge electric shocks to other people (it was fake, but they didn't know that).

The Stanford Prison Experiment was another demonstration of how brutal people can be when given power.  Twenty-four males were randomly selected to act as either prison guards or prisoners in a mock prison situation.  The purpose was to study the psychological effects assuming these roles in such a scenario.  All participants were normal, healthy students with no criminal or psychological history.  Very rapidly, the "guards" were using cruel punishments and psychological abuse.  Many of the "prisoners" had mental breakdowns.  For the safety of the subjects of the study, it had to be ended after only 6 days.  To me, the sad thing about this experiment was that they all knew (initially) that it was fake, and that they'd been randomly assigned the positions.

Comments from the designer and participants of the study.

I think there's more of a dark side to ourselves than maybe we realize.  Let's always remember to take a second and consider how we treat others... you can't go wrong with the Golden Rule.