Hispanic Fanatic

It may defy belief, but I’m going to have to take another short hiatus from the blog. The reason is that I will be in New York City for the next week, so posts are going to have to wait until I get back.

As a placeholder until then, I will regale you with the following anecdote. I don’t have any witnesses for this one, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Not long ago, I was walking down the street when I felt a sudden and unpleasant discombobulation. That’s right: I was falling. Through some miracle of arm waving, inner-ear gyroscopic adjustments, and pure luck, I kept from wiping out on the concrete.

Once I stuttered to a halt, I looked behind me to see what had caused me to slip. I saw the offender at once. I had stepped on – no kidding – a fucking banana peel.

Now all I need is for an anvil to fall on my head.

In a previous post, I mentioned that my grandmother makes the best pupusas in the history of Western civilization. It is best not to argue this point with me.

The pupusa, for those of you who don’t know, is more or less a tortilla stuffed with meat, cheese, and/or beans that is then fried. There are numerous variations. I’ve heard it compared to the meat pies of Great Britain, but I reject this characterization on the grounds that English food sucks.

In El Salvador, November 13 is National Pupusa Day, which gives you an idea of how seriously this dish is taken in that culture. It also shows how people who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving still want something to fill that calendar void before Christmas.

Years ago, one of my friends was so taken with my grandmother’s pupusas that he attempted to make them himself. He is a male who cooks, which would incense my grandmother (see my previous post for her opinions on guys in the kitchen), and the fact that he is white gives him a theoretical disadvantage in making a Salvadoran dish. But he is a Yale graduate and a pretty quick study, so I believed he had as good a chance as anybody at mastering exotic cuisines. In addition, he has spent so much time with my family that my mother refers to him as her other son, and I must admit that his Spanish is possibly better than mine. So he’s pretty much an honorary Hispanic.

So my friend strapped on an apron, which must have been comical because he’s a towering man who played college football, and set to work slapping patties and cooking chicharrones and scooping queso. Everything seemed to be going well, right up until the moment the first charred pupusa set off the smoke alarm. Alas, things did not improve after that, and the resultant mess of crumbly dough and gooey innards could hardly be called authentic pupusas.

I give my friend credit for expanding his cultural horizons. But in the end, this highly educated, muscle-bound man had to admit that a 90-pound octogenarian had him beat.

If you are bold enough to think you can outcook my grandmother, by all means, give it a try. Here is a recipe for pupusas. If you really want to do it right, sprinkle them with some curtido. If, as I suspect, you fail miserably at this culinary endeavor, head to a Salvadoran restaurant, which are in every major city. Order a pile of pupusas, and tell them the Fanatic sent you.

In an earlier post, I talked about Barack Obama’s apparently insurmountable lead among Hispanic voters. This is a bitter pill for Republicans, who have eyed this key constituency the same way Homer Simpson drools over doughnuts. Conservatives know that a McCain administration, already an unlikely possibility, is impossible if Obama’s nearly three-to-one advantage among Latinos in the polls is an accurate indicator of Election Day.

It’s looking good for Obama, whose chief appeal is that he is an inspiring, charismatic Democrat who has the added bonus of being a racial minority. For Hispanics, what’s not to love about that combination?

Even the backlash from bitter supporters of Hillary Clinton, who is big among Hispanics, has not materialized. By the way, I have personally never understood the woman’s superhero appeal to my fellow Latinos. I think she’d be a fine president, but how did this upper-class white lady become such a rallying point for La Raza? Feel free to enlighten me.

Also helping Obama is the fact that he hasn’t completely taken the Hispanic vote for granted, as so many Democrats have done. Thus far, he doesn’t seem to be ignoring us – for that kind of treatment, we would have to be Muslim.

As for McCain, his appeal to Hispanics is that he doesn’t come off as a Minuteman on immigration, and he has built up a positive reputation among Latinos in his home state of Arizona.

His negatives include the fact that he is carrying the Republican banner – which is even less popular among Hispanics than it is with the general population – and the perception that he looks like that old crusty sheriff from a small town who will pull you over for a busted taillight and, even if you’re a citizen, end up calling la migra on you.

Stacked up side to side, it’s clear that Obama has a more complicated relationship with Hispanic voters than McCain does. The dynamic between Latinos and African Americans has always been intriguing, and I will address this in a future post.

But in all likelihood, Obama will still win our vote in a couple of weeks, and commentators will trip over themselves explaining how the Latino population was the deciding factor in the election.

Regardless of who wins, of course, we expect thank-you notes and invitations to the inaugural ball.

First, thanks to Gigi for her passionate comment on my post “Dogma Vs. Cheese.”

Second, let me return to the subject of my previous post, in which I advocated for amending the U.S. Constitution. I argued that being born in America should not be sufficient for citizenship. My idea is that people who want to be citizens should have to pass a test, just like naturalized immigrants do. One’s birthplace or family history would have nothing to do with it.

The piece was also published on the Huffington Post. There, I received dozens of comments, ranging from the thoughtful to the shrill. Joining the fray were conservatives who thought I was joking and liberals who said I supported literacy tests for voting. Because I pissed off individuals across the political spectrum, I figure that I must be on to something.

As an addendum to that post, let me point out that the U.S. government has recently reformatted the citizenship test. Now it’s less of a hodgepodge of rote and trivial questions, such as “How many stars are on the flag?”

There’s more of an emphasis on content, with questions like “What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?” In essence, you have to think a little more now.

It’s impossible to know how effective the test is unless one actually takes it. And nobody is going to devote the time, money, and stress to do that unless they absolutely have to. But there are a number of online study guides that give us a taste of what immigrants have to master.

For example, here’s the government’s official guidance on becoming an American.

Sadly, it doesn’t include tips on maintaining a hostile relationship with your next-door neighbor, or which flatscreen television you should buy that you can’t possibly afford. Clearly, there are some all-American concepts that immigrants will just have to learn on their own.

But my main argument stands: Immigrants have to learn about our country and prove their worthiness to stay, so we native-born citizens should have to as well.

In any case, if you’re so smart and bursting with patriotic vigor, let’s see how you would do on the new citizenship exam. Here’s a sample of the test.

Give it a shot, and try to imagine that your entire future rests on how well you perform on this exam.

You don’t have to tell me your score. 

First, let me thank Evenshine for his/her thoughtful reply to my post “Dogma Vs. Cheese.” 

Second, let me give thanks in general that this election season is almost over.

One of the odder moments in this incessant campaign was when John McCain’s status as a real American became a question. I don’t mean that anyone doubted his patriotism or citizenship or anything like that. I’m referring to the skepticism expressed over whether his birthplace (a military base in the Panama Canal zone) fulfills the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.”

It would indeed be a soul-crusher for Republicans if the guy pulls an upset in November, only to be ruled ineligible come Inauguration Day. Either scenario, by the way, is highly unlikely.

In any case, conservatives want to change the Constitution (that non-living document) by adding the “Schwarzenegger amendment,” so that any naturalized citizen can become president. But while they’re at it, they also want to amend the Constitution so that being born in America is not sufficient for citizenship.

The thinking here is that too many pregnant Hispanic women are dragging their huge bellies across the border, just so they can spit out a little nino or nina on U.S. soil. Doing so, of course, ensures American citizenship for their offspring.

I happen to agree with these proposed changes, especially amending the Constitution so that people born in America are not automatically made U.S. citizens. In fact, my compliant with this proposal is not that it is unfair or radical, but that it doesn’t go far enough.

So if we’re going to do this, let’s do it correctly:

Amend the Constitution so that no one can become a citizen until he/she passes a basic test. I mean nobody gets citizenship by virtue of where they’re born or their parents’ status. Everybody has to earn it.

This is where most conservatives pull back. They just want Diego and Maria denied rights because their parents don’t speak English. They certainly aren’t talking about limiting the status of their own ninth-generation offspring.

It’s not just selfishness. We have this mindset that people whose roots go back farther are better Americans. But individuals whose ancestors fought at Valley Forge are not inherently more patriotic than immigrants. In fact, I would argue that people who spend time, money, and effort to study our culture – then prove they know what they’re talking about – are more committed to, and knowledgeable about our nation than the millions of Americans who slept though high school history.

To be fair, I have a bias. Several members of my family have had to pass the test. I was born here, so I didn’t have to put myself on the line. But my mother, aunt, and several cousins have had to step up and say, “Hell yeah, I had to work for this.” And don’t we always appreciate things that we have earned more than gifts that are just handed to us?

And what’s so intimidating about a basic test, anyway? I’m not talking about forcing people to answer questions like “Explain U.S. monetary policy on a macroeconomic level.” The citizenship test, as I understand it, asks people things like “Why do some states have more representatives in Congress?” I find it difficult to believe that this is a harmful thing for citizens to know.

If we had informed citizens – people who really strived to be active members of this country – maybe America wouldn’t elect leaders based on how cute they are or, Lord help us, whether the majority wanted to have an imaginary beer with them.

An objection to this idea is the status of children. Are we to educate every child with the knowledge that come adulthood, many of them will be, at best, legal residents and never become citizens? Well, that’s hardly scary, because we do that now. Furthermore, I would argue for the intrinsic benefit of putting all kids on an even playing field – one where every child is a future potential president –rather than subdividing children into “natural-born citizens” and interlopers.

So what are the objections to this idea? Are they based on the principles of fairness and history, on the norms of our culture? Or perhaps we react negatively because of fear, the itchy suspicion that many of us have no idea what all those stars and stripes on the flag actually symbolize.

When I was a toddler, I couldn’t pronounce her name, so I came up with a garbled nickname that I no longer use. I’ve thought about bringing it back. I think she would like that.

Aunt #1 is the only sibling of my mother whom I have ever met. She came to America after my mother had established a beachhead of sorts in this nation.

Her sensibilities are such that, once when I was a kid, I referred to someone as a “sucker,” and she lectured me on vulgarity and propriety and respect for others until I apologized. She would not be pleased to know, alas, that “sucker” is among the least profane words I use on a daily basis as an adult.

Shortly after Aunt #1 moved to America, she met a man from Puerto Rico, got married, and had three daughters (Cousins #1, #3, and #5). A quarter-century later, she divorced him. Years later, when he was stricken with cancer, she took care of him. For those of us who know her, it was an unsurprising display of patience and compassion.

Aunt #1 is the most religious member of my family. Each year, she uses a chunk of her vacation time to go on a spiritual retreat. It’s with monks and hours of meditation and no talking and everything. It requires far more dedication, faith, and discipline than I could ever conjure.

To be sure, Aunt #1 is certainly not the Bible-thumping “You’re all going to hell if you don’t agree with me” kind of fundamentalist nutjob who has given the religion a bad name. In fact, when one of the cousins came out as a lesbian, Aunt #1 offered her love, despite the huge Catholic no-no that this announcement signified.

She actually tries to live all that “Love they neighbor” and “Turn the other cheek” stuff that that many Christians reject – you know, the hard stuff. She would preach the importance of tolerance, if she preached at all, that is.

Aunt #1 is that rarest of subspecies: an actual Christian.

Among my numerous flaws is the fact that I’m not very charitable. Yes, I give money to worthy causes and all that, but I’m stingy with my time. My wife does volunteer work, which is one of the eight thousand things that I admire about her. Still, I’ve never found the energy to join her on her endeavors or to paint a dilapidated inner-city house or to devote a holiday to working in a soup kitchen or to do something else community-driven and altruistic.

My reluctance may be due to laziness or cynicism. Or it could be that my youthful stint doing volunteer work in the barrio of my hometown was less than satisfying.

I was a teenager, and I accompanied my mother on her rounds giving food to poor people. Again, I went not because I was bursting with the milk and honey of human compassion, but because my mom told me to. She needed someone to lift the heavy bags of donated foodstuffs, and I was informed that I was this person. So we drove around town, and I lugged clunking sacks up flights of stairs, entering each family’s hovel with the slump-shouldered, sullen indifference of the American teenager.

The families were overwhelmingly Hispanic, most of them recent immigrants who were still struggling with English. The land of opportunity was a lot harsher than many of them thought it would be, and they were, without exception, grateful for our help.

In fact, they were excessively grateful. I was hugged numerous times, and more than once a weary-looking Latina mother would burst into tears or repeat, “Gracias” over and over again.

This was not a moving experience for me. On the contrary, I got embarrassed. I didn’t like people falling over themselves praising me, especially when all I had done was carry some groceries. Plus, none of this charity work was my idea and all of it was against my will.

But still they went on in rapid Spanish, until my mother interrupted them to hand over the bill. You see, the food was free – but it still cost something. The price for being fed was a lecture.

The lecturer was my mother, and the topic was birth control.

My mother and I had noticed that most of the households were overrun with shrieking children. The Latino obsession with family (which I have addressed in these posts more than once) was in full flower. This was one of its negative outcomes.

So my mother tried to explain to these destitute women that they didn’t have to keep cranking out babies. She pointed out the obvious – more children meant more mouths to feed – and she tried to convince them that in America, they had freedom and choice and other abstractions that didn’t exist in their home countries.

But the lectures were not popular with the receipients. Many of the immigrant mothers were mystified about basic birth control, as if my mother were trying to convince them to buy a magic talking chimpanzee. It was just that exotic.

Those who knew about condoms and pills and IUDs usually dismissed them out of hand. It was against God, they argued, by which they really meant it was against the Catholic Church’s teachings. This showed me at a young age, as if I needed any further proof, that religion can do more harm than good and that people will abdicate responsibility for their own personal disasters under the guise of being holy. It also convinced me that Hispanics will never improve their quality of life as long as they remain fanatically devoted to the pope (see my earlier post on this).

Other excuses popped up. Some women implied that it was their culture’s way to have lots of children, oblivious to the fact that they were in America now. At least one woman said that her husband refused to wear a condom because it wasn’t manly. This was a special moment when my mother translated this particular item for me (and not awkward in the least!).

In any case, many of the immigrants had come to expect my mother’s sermon. They had to choose between having their belief system questioned or receiving those enormous rectangular cubes of cheese that exist solely for poor people’s consumption. It was their Sophie’s Choice.

So they listened, and then they said, “Gracias,” and then we left to repeat the whole futile process again.

And that’s why I don’t volunteer anymore. Or maybe I’m just lazy.