Hispanic Fanatic

I am back from my vacation to my home state.

While there, I had a great visit with my mom, who is always the perfect host.

In addition, Aunt #1 let me know that I got a few facts wrong in my post about Uncle #1, and I learned that Cousin #1 is planning a big move (more on this later). Late in the trip, I went drinking with Cousin #6, during which one of us said something so funny that alcohol was spit out. I will not identify the guilty party.

Also, my abuela made pupusas for my wife and me, which we transported across state lines as quickly as we could before they thawed out. Their loss would have been at least a tragedy and, quite possibly, an actual crime.

I also hung out on my former roommate’s 100-acre farm (Latinos seldom get this rural, unless they’re picking lettuce), and I caught a baseball game with some old friends. And yes, our team clinched a postseason spot – most cool!

Finally, I accompanied my wife to her high school reunion, where it was verified by several of her classmates that she has aged extremely well and is – to quote one inebriated guy – “even hotter now than when she was a teenager” (let it be noted that I did not punch him).

The closest I came to updating the blog was when I checked to see how my last piece for the Huffington Post had done. I was pleased to discover that it had received seven or eight insightful comments, which I thought was pretty good until I noticed that Jaime Lee Curtis had written something in the same section that got 412 comments… come on! The woman from “Christmas with the Cranks” is pummeling me.

So it’s clear that I have to get back to work. Fresh posts are coming. Stay tuned.

First, let me thank Stephanie for her comments on my post “Omnipotent” and for supplying a great resource on Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Second, thanks to Jeanne for her kind words (and enthusiastic encouragement) on my post “A Sort of Hajj.”

Third, I have to announce another brief hiatus.

I am taking a brief vacation this week. I will be going back to my home state to see friends and family (including the Cousins). As I mentioned in a previous post, the one thing I will positively not be doing in my home town is attending my high school reunion, but as we said back in the 1980s, “Whatever…”

The bottom line is that I won’t be updating this blog for the next week or so. I hope to publish new posts as soon as possible.

To keep you entertained in the interim, here is the creepiest story with a Latino angle that I could find:

An engineer has reconstructed the infamous Aztec whistles of death. You can see what they looked like and even hear the spine-tingling tones they emanated. As the story states, “If death had a sound, this was it.”

I mean, how cool is that?

See you all soon.

As I’ve mentioned before, my family emigrated from El Salvador. But I have never set foot in that country.

The nearest I have come to this familial motherland was when I was fourteen, and my mother took me to Nicaragua. As part of the trip, we climbed to the edge of a volcano (yes, my mom took me cool places when I was a child). On the climb down, my mother pulled me aside and pointed to some verdant mountains in the distance.

“That is El Salvador,” she said.

This glimpse is the extent of my first-hand experience with my family’s birthplace.

A natural question is, why did my mother and I stop at Nicaragua? Why didn’t we keep going into El Salvador?

The answer is simple: We didn’t want to die.

At the time, (circa 1985), my mother was on a Salvadoran government hit list. If she exited a plane there, she would be shot. Anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating doesn’t realize how ruthless and bloodthirsty the junta running El Salvador was at that time. My mother was a rabble-rouser in the United States, and she spoke out against the Salvadoran government (see my previous post on this). This got her noticed in her homeland. They certainly weren’t going to send some international assassination squad after her in the Midwest (it’s not a Bruckheimer movie for damn sakes), but my mother found out through her friends in El Salvador that she was on the small list of Americans who would be quickly picked up if she ever returned. Two of her siblings had already been murdered (see my previous post on this as well), so this was no joke.

For this excellent logistical reason, we were not going to El Salvador any time soon. The war has since ended, of course, and my mother has returned a few times. But I haven’t yet made the trip.

Time, money, and the myriad responsibilities of adulthood have prevented me from packing a suitcase and yelling, “Next stop, the tiny village of San Vicente.”  In fact, although I’ve lived in several cities and seen more of America than most people have, my international jaunts are limited. Besides that journey to Nicaragua, I’ve been to Mexico (which will be the subject of a future post) and traveled about nine feet into Canada once. I finally made it to Europe a few years ago, where my wife and I hit London and Paris. And that’s it.

But with all the dream destinations in the world that I have yet to conquer – drinking wine in Italy, diving off the coast of Australia, trekking to the North Pole – why am I hung up on visiting a tiny country best known for warfare and which my family abandoned a generation ago?  

After all, few people go to El Salvador unless they have family there. I suppose there are those mega-travelers who hit every nation no matter how small or impoverished. But aside from that, people generally don’t get any closer to the place than the rainforests of Costa Rica or the beaches of Belize.

However, for those of us who are first-generation, there is always the pull of a land that we have never seen, the place where our parents come from. Their memories and stories have not been decayed by time, and we feel irrational nostalgia for a place barely removed from us. We ponder how we would have turned out if we were born and raised there (I have since found out that this is metaphysically impossible… but that’s another post or maybe even a different blog altogether).

This yearning for a lost homeland is not shared by most Americans. For example, my wife is descended from German immigrants who came over so long ago that she has no idea when they arrived or what their names were. Her desire to visit Berlin is roughly equal to her interest in roadtripping to Delaware. In contrast, one of my best friends is first-generation Serbian, and his life was incomplete until he walked through Sarajevo.

Similarly, I want to see the place where my mother and aunt grew up, and the nation where several of my cousins were born, and the focal point of so much joy and misery in the history of my family.

And of course, I have more incentive to see El Salvador ever since Cousin #8 moved back there (this will be the subject of a future post).

So I hope to someday go beyond the fleeting image of that landscape I viewed from a distant vantage point when I was a teenager. For all I know, it might be decades from now, when I’m an old man doing some kind of crazy circle-of-life final journey. But I will stand on top of that lush mountain that I saw long ago and say, “Damn, I finally made it.”

In Europe during the Middle Ages, lepers and vagrants were often assumed to have nefarious supernatural powers. The thinking was that too much exposure to the riff-raff would cause your hands to fall off, or your baby to die, or your wife to go mad. And if the local burgermeister couldn’t get it up with his mistress-wench, it must have been because that withered crone who begs outside his door had placed a hex upon him.

The reason for this odd logic, according to some historians, is that as cities grew, a permanent underclass developed that freaked out the respectable people. The upper classes feared these cretins who dressed in rags, and to deal with this dread of the unknown (or to assuage their guilt for not helping those less fortunate than themselves), they claimed that the wretches only appeared weak. So the myth grew that some manic with no teeth and gangerous limbs could take you out if you weren’t careful.

We’re much more civilized today, of course, and we don’t blame the poor for our calamities – well, except for all those homeless guys who are making downtown unsafe… and the welfare recipients who continue to sponge the system… and those illegal immigrants who are stealing our livelihoods… and…

Wait a minute.

Yes, we do indeed go after those who can’t possibly compete with the middle and upper classes. If we’re fortunate enough to achieve a certain level of comfort, but that final rung on the economic ladder is too slippery to grasp, we blame our distress on the equivalent of Middle Age witches.

This blaming necessitates the really nifty trick or assessing that someone has no power, and therefore won’t fight back, and then ascribing enormous power to them. The tactic is especially common in prosperous societies, where people have more possessions and, therefore, have more to lose.

A crazy homeless guy ranting about God reminds us of our potential to bottom out more than it would in say, Sierra Leone, where poverty is a widespread fact of life.

Similarly (and most importantly from this blog’s perspective) a team of illegal immigrants clambering over the neighbor’s roof, laboring mightily in the summer sun, invokes a fear in middle-class Americans that these hard-working strangers are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead – and that means they’re coming for our nice cars and fancy televisions and 80GB ipods and crème brûlée torches (by the way, this last item is real and exists solely for people who have way too much disposable income).

It’s been pointed out that immigrants are often the boogeyman for societal problems. Just look at Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” to see how despised the Irish were.

So now it’s the Latino’s turn to be scorned and feared.

Naturally, there are clear objections to the idea that illegal immigrants are modern-day scapegoats. Foremost among them is that undocumented workers are not cost-free to the economy, nor are they incapable of criminal behavior. In other words, negative reactions to illegal immigrants are not solely based upon made-up superstitions.

However, the depths of hatred for these individuals, and the vast influence ascribed to them, boggles the mind. Any sensible discussion of immigration reform is doomed once it’s declared that a guy making sub-minimum wage who lives in constant fear is really the secret strongman.

So do we go on blaming the powerless?

Personally, I’m going to try to take more responsibility for my issues – unless of course I can turn this around and blame someone much, much more powerful than me, like the government or Big Oil or the Bavarian Illuminati.

OK, now I’m on to something.

Football season began this weekend, and like millions of other people, I will spend far too much time over the next few months getting emotionally attached to meaningless events beyond my control. My mood on certain Sundays will depend on whether or not an enormous, steroid-enhanced millionaire in a bulky uniform can catch a weirdly shaped spinning object.

There are, of course, few Hispanics who play professional football. Genetically, we tend not to be that big, which is a serious disadvantage in a game based on brute force. Once you get past Tony Gonzalez of the Kansas City Chiefs and a few diminutive place-kickers scattered around the league, the NFL isn’t exactly awash in Latinos. Still, we will soon have at least one honorary Hispanic take the field.

Chad Johnson, a receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, has legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. For those of you who passed freshman Spanish, you know that “ocho cinco” means “eight five.” It’s a reference to Johnson’s jersey number (eighty-five), although strictly speaking, he should have changed his name to Ochenta y Cinco.

He first slapped “ocho cinco” on the back of his jersey in 2006, when the NFL celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month (which, by the way, is in September). He wore it for pregame warm-ups, but had to remove the moniker for the game because the NFL pointed out that it wasn’t his real name. Well, it is now, and his jersey will indicate as much while we hear the pleasing baritone of sportscasters intone, “and the pass is complete to Ocho Cinco.”

As someone who also changed his last name to reflect Hispanic heritage, I can understand Johnson’s… I mean Ocho Cinco’s decision. Why not choose a name that better reflects your personality, and that has the added benefit of paying tribute to an oft-marginalized culture? And really, how attached could the guy be to the name “Johnson” anyway?

There are a couple of differences between me and Mr. Ocho Cinco, however. First, I’m truly Hispanic, and he’s not. Actually, I don’t have to enumerate any other points besides that one. But I will add that I chose my mother’s maiden name as my new surname, bypassing the megalomania inherent in picking a random number that celebrates just me and my greatness.

In any case, Ocho Cinco joins the very short list of celebrities who have changed their names to something Hispanic or, at the very least, expressed a desire to be Latino. It’s further proof that our hipness level is slowly, incrementally rising.

I am not a Bengals fan, but I hope Ocho Cinco does well this year. After all, if he sucks, we’ll hear, “He was pretty good, until he decided to get all Hispanic on us.”

Forgive me for being a bit tardy on this news item, as well as for straying – initially at least – from my professed subject matter.

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Bristol Palin, who is, as you know, the Republican VP candidate’s poor knocked-up teenage daughter.

Religious conservatives have rallied around the girl and said that her condition is nobody’s business, or that it is actually good news because it verifies Palin’s pro-life credentials. So as a thought experiment, let’s reverse the situation:

Say that Obama or Biden had a 17-year-old daughter who got pregnant and is keeping the baby. Would we hear from social conservatives how it’s irrelevant, or proof of the candidate’s humanity, or even inspiring?

More likely, we would hear how liberals don’t instill proper values in their children, or that they don’t respect traditional family values, or that their lax parenting proves their inability to lead the country, or that it all sets a poor example for young people.

My point isn’t that religious conservatives can be hypocrites, or that abstinence-only sex ed doesn’t work, or that this girl’s condition has become a campaign issue (although to be honest, all of that is true). Rather, this is my long-winded way of addressing the powerful and detrimental nature of religion in American culture.

So what has this, specifically, got to do with Hispanics?

Well, as you may or may not know, Latinos are the alpha and omega of Catholicism in the United States, and perhaps the world. Consider that in America, almost 70% of Hispanics are Catholic, compared to just 20% of the general population. Some countries in Latin America are as Catholic as Middle Eastern countries are Islamic.

Has all this religion helped the Hispanic community? I would argue that it has not.

The stranglehold that the Catholic Church has over Hispanic culture has bred a unique form of interdependence. Faith in God’s master plan has superseded faith in one’s abilities and talents. This latter type of perseverance – call it secular if you want – is more needed than ever in communities where deep-seeded problems demand creative answers. Instead, with all the issues facing the Latinos, prayer is the answer most often given as a viable solution.

For a more specific example, let’s look at the horrific graduation rate of Latino adolescents. It’s no surprise that Hispanic teens lag so far behind white, black, and Asian American students in actually getting through high school. The priority that Latino culture places on religion dwarfs the attention given to education (I will post more on this discrepancy later). Especially among immigrant parents, making sure that a kid does all his homework is not nearly as vital as ensuring his attendance at Mass (I will add that my mother was an exception to this mindset, which was to my great benefit).

Social conservatives love to proclaim that issues in barrios and hoods exist because the people who live there have grown too dependent on government largesse to fend for themselves. They may have a point.

However, their alternative has often been to push for more dependence on Christianity, a cultural force that, unlike government, isn’t accountable to voters. How else do we explain the dreaded faith-based initiative?

A natural objection to all my negativity is to point out the good that religion does. Indeed, many people have turned their lives around because of a newfound faith, and some of our greatest leaders (eg, Martin Luther King Jr.) were driven by religion. And in Latin America, numerous priests in Central America – to say nothing of the great Archbishop Oscar Romero – have sacrificed their lives for a greater good.

Still, at this point in history, is the net effect of religion in general (and Catholicism on Latino culture specifically) a positive? My belief is that it ultimately does more harm than good.

So I’m pleased to see that young Latinos, like the younger generation overall, are at least pausing to consider if all this praying is really worth it.

A report by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies shows that Hispanics become less Catholic with each U.S.-born generation. This lines up with surveys showing that the number of nonreligious young people (those from 18-25 years old) has nearly doubled over the last generation (from 11 percent in 1986 to 20 percent today).

This should not be construed as a clamoring for atheism or a call to burn down all the churches. Rather, it is quite possibly Latino culture’s gradual realization of the need for balance.

And perhaps it is the recognition that going to church and worshipping really hard is not sufficient to raise our standard of living. Maybe Hispanics are learning that, you know, God helps those who help themselves.

Let me give a quick thanks to Cousin #3 for her comment on my post “Cousin #1.” She clarifies an error I made and also makes some great points about the importance of societal priorities… and how they’re often fucked up.

But since we’re on the subject of family, now is a good time to introduce you to the grandmother.

Three-quarters of my grandparents died before I was born or so early in my life that I have virtually no recollection of them. So my only real experience with grandparents is my maternal abuela.

I met my grandmother when I was eleven, when she moved to this country against her will. All through my adolescence and early adulthood, she rarely passed on an opportunity to remind everyone that she had never wanted to come to the United States and that it was her troublesome daughters who had brought her to this frigid nation.

She is now pushing ninety, and she has lived in America for almost one-third of her life. Her birthday is October 31 (Halloween), and when she discovered that American kids dress up like ghosts and demons and devils on that day, she took it personally.

Despite her advanced age, she is absurdly healthy, leading my family to the conclusion that we have good genes and tend to live a long time if nobody shoots us. It’s true that she limps more noticeably because of a hip injury from decades past. But even with this mild handicap, helping her down the stairs is pointless, as she is likely to slap away the hand of someone trying to guide her. It’s a bit of a metaphor.

Her stubbornness is legendary and shows up at predictable moments. For example, it isn’t really a family Christmas until she throws a fit. Each year, she denounces the food as inedible, even if a separate dish has been made solely for her and is something that she consumes every other day of the year (usually dark-meat chicken). Then she goes to sit by herself on the couch while everyone else eats and drinks and laughs. The first few holidays that she pulled this, one of the cousins or someone brimming with Christmas spirit would try to cheer her up. By now, however, we barely notice when she limps off in peevishness. It is tradition, and it usually means that we can open the presents soon.

Food has also been the source of a few run-ins that I’ve had with her. When she came to America, she brought her old-world ways with her, which included a belief that men can’t – and more importantly, shouldn’t – ever cook. My mother tried to explain to her that things were different in America and, as a single mom, she needed me to step up and occasionally prepare my own meals. This scandalized my grandmother, who dismissed the whole argument of men in the kitchen with a curt “Sin verguenza.”

And yes, if you take her out to dinner, she will complain that the food is cooked specifically to kill her.

Her drive to be judgmental is, in culinary matters at least, somewhat justified. She makes magnificent pupusas, which are a Salvadoran delicacy so amazing that I feel physically sorry for anyone who has not had them.

Making pupusas are a link to her previous life in El Salvador. However, asking her about this former life doesn’t reveal fascinating insights about another culture or a deeper look at our family tree.

Instead, it usually just provokes her to spit out some fact about the area and follow it up with a list of townspeople whom she hated or are probably dead. Then she waves her bony hands and declares the conversation finished.

Indeed, when she visited her homeland for the first time in decades, she summarized the trip with a shrug and the condemnation that everyone in El Salvador had become morbidly obese.

She has outlived two of her children and all of the men in her life. As one family member has stated, “You’re supposed to live long enough to annoy your children. But she’s lived long enough to annoy her grandchildren.” Actually, she is now a great-grandmother, so perhaps she will let a third generation know exactly what she thinks of it.

Despite her perpetual grumpiness, my grandmother did have one moment of moral clarity and bold defiance. That moment, however, deserves a post of its own, so I will address it in the future.

Instead, let me relate the fact that about twenty years after being dragged into America kicking and screaming, my grandmother learned that the war in El Salvador was over and that she could safely go home to live out her remaining years. My mother and aunt told her the news with the expectation that my abuela would be thrilled to return.

But my grandmother looked them right in the eye and said she didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about. America was her home, and she had no intention of returning to a sweltering land with dirt roads. She denied ever denigrating the United States, and she said it was crazy to think that she would ever want to leave.

“Por que?” she said, and returned to cooking her pupusas.