 Traveler, thinker and writer, Ed Garren. By Ryan Gierach. |
Through the late 1960s, there weren't any Mexicans in Florida. Local agricultural work was done by local black folks, supplemented by Jamaican "guest" workers who came up for the citrus harvesting season. The poorest of local whites also worked the fields as well, along with local teenagers desperate for cash, but only long enough to get a better job or join the military.
In 1968, while working for the local Rexall store, I delivered medications to folks who couldn't come in to the store. One day, the pharmacist/owner sent me out north of town with a bag filled with meds prescribed for a new born. There was no address, just directions to a remote area north of town near Lacoochee. After three miles on a dirt road, I turned a corner and found myself in a large yard, filled with people, all living in a cluster of small houses, with large tables outside. It was a Saturday afternoon; a party was being set. The new father beamed as he paid for the meds, showing me his new baby. Everyone seemed very close, loving, and happy; these people cared about each other. It was very refreshing. I didn't understand a word of Spanish in those days, but I liked these people. My first Mexicans.
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Later in college, I would go to Miami to visit friends. One friend's father, who himself had come off the boat from Sicily at age 15, was constantly going on about "those lousy Cubans”. One day I asked, Mr. C, why he had such a thing about them. His answer, "Those-a lousy Cubans, they take-a jobs away from Americans like-a me." My Jewish friends from New York would tell me that the Cubans were too aggressive. I reflected on my first trip to Miami in 1959. My father's associate in Coral Gables ranted one morning over breakfast about how the pushy New York Jews were ruining Miami. The cycle seemed endless, the last group, complaining about the new comers, where does it stop?
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By the time I returned to Miami in the late 1970s, it had become the new Havana, filled with life and soul. South West Eighth Street, "Little Havana,” was thriving, neighborhoods were being rehabilitated, and it was amazing. The entire city was legally and officially bi-lingual, by law. It was one big Spanish lesson; I loved it. The city's Bi-Lingual status made it the North American center of Latin American commerce. Tourists from Spain came, and soon the rest of Europe was coming to transform South Beach. Miami has become the most international city in the United States, largely due to its Cuban-Americans and it's Bi-Lingual status. Within two years, I found I was speaking Spanish, not the greatest, but a start. My mother was thrilled, "No person is really educated unless they speak at least two languages. I never had an opportunity, so I'm glad you're learning Spanish”.
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When I came to Los Angeles in 1983, after Miami, I thought I had moved to a large mid-western town. Public places remained rigidly monolingual, English speakers just ignored Spanish speakers. It was terribly provincial, I was shocked, and it was not what I expected. As I uncovered the history, I came to know the horrific repression that greeted anyone in LA who was different. From a repressive, segregationist "Bi-Lingual Education" scheme, which held back Spanish speakers, to pass laws for Asian Americans, prohibitions on non whites in real estate, marriage, peers telling me that if they spoke Spanish at school growing up they got beaten, even parents who insisted on "No Spanish" at home.
In another column, I mentioned that I made most of my living away from West Hollywood. Much of my work was in places where most people were not white, and did not speak English as a first language. So my world became mostly a world filled with immigrants, people who had adopted America as their new home. Like my father's parents, they came here both to get away from, and to make a new life in this "new" world. I spent long hours in conversations with folks from everywhere, talking about America, talking about the "old" country, getting to know the person behind the less than perfect English.
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And I learned more Spanish in El Pueblo del Nuestra Senora, Reina de Los Angeles.
In the last week, I've had a lot of Mexican food, talked with Alberto, Arturo, Maria, Jorge, Consuela, and lots of folks from Mexico. Rodrigo has been here from Hidalgo for three years. Gabriel has been here for over a decade. Over and over I hear the same thing, "La vida es mas tranquilo" (Life is easier). They also say the schools are better, and they get paid better. That coupled with a lower cost of living, and one more person discovers the reason why so many love living in the south. These folks work in Georgia and North Carolina. They have made the mountains their home. Like the Scotch-Irish and the Cherokee before, they have found the magic of the place, they love the earth, they cherish what grows in the rich soil, and they fit right in.
It seems to me that this entire current flap about "Immigration Reform" is sort of like the restrictions on inter-racial marriage that California and other states imposed in the early 20th century. Until the "Loving v Virginia" case in the 1960s, California, like many states, would not allow anyone to marry members of another race. In reality, it was only imposed on white/non-white unions. Those folks went to Oregon, where the state didn't care. Then they came back, had kids, and worked to make a better world.
In the middle of all this crazed terror about the Mexican invasion, I ask myself, and the occasional person who will engage me, what's the problem? All the Mexicans I know work very hard, raise their kids, pay their bills, and pay taxes.
I've never been "pan handled" in Spanish, have you?
Like most poor people from the country, they aren't as anal retentive about new paint as some. But then, after a full week of cleaning other people’s houses, making other lawns beautiful, they probably don't want to spend their day off making anyone happy but themselves. Appearance is not important, being happy is important.
 Photo by Mikel Gerle |
Years ago, I was camped on top of a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. It was a Sunday, quiet and then three old vans pulled into the parking lot. At first, we campers were a bit un-nerved. But no need to worry, they parked on one end of the lot, and then the doors opened up, and about twenty people got out. There were fathers, mothers and children. They went over to an empty site at the edge of the camp, set up barbecue, hauled in several ice chests, and made a big party, just like years ago in Lacoochee. The men built a fire, the women cooked, the men drank beer, the women fed everyone, then they all took a siesta in the warm sun on blankets on the ground. One of the daughters and her sister told me their story. All the men work in the cleaning business. They were all night janitors, many also did yard work in the day. Their mothers traded off childcare with doing domestic work. They lived in Watts. She went on to tell me that the family had always been farmers in Mexico and they loved nature, the outdoors, and the earth. She said that living in the city was very stressful, gangs, bullets, etc. So their father and uncles took them out into the country every Sunday, to get away, to give their children a taste of nature and the earth that they loved so much. One of the girls got wet eyed, "My father works two jobs so I can go to school and have a better life. He never had that chance back home."
I thought of my paternal grandparents on the boat, fleeing Europe before WWI, my grandfather AWOL from Franz Joseph's cavalry convinced he'd be cannon fodder when the war broke out, sailing across the water to a new and better world. I think of my mother, who left the abandoned train station she grew up in, so she could have a better life. What's the difference? It's what people do, they come to America to have a better life, and they make America better for it.
Whether we like it or not, Mexicans, and other Latin Americans are a part of our country. They have been here for well over a century and are here to stay, and as long as there is work to be done that "Americans" (whatever that means) won't do, they will come and do it. And if you think that's bad, go someplace where there are not Mexicans to do the "hard" work. You'll wait longer for service, which will be delivered by someone with better English, and a lot of "attitude,” like they're doing you a favor.
Today at El Montano Mexican restaurant in Silva North Carolina, young Rodrigo, our waiter told a joke. He said George Bush called a big meeting, and told everyone that we had to build a big fence to keep the Mexicans out. All of his cabinet agreed, the fence should be built. Then they asked the president, "Who will build it?" Bush replied, "Without Mexicans, I don't know."
Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT, is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind,” a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America.
Ed Garren can be reached, even in the Red America’s wilds, at