"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.