My father never spoke much Spanish around the house, never really talked a lot about our heritage Until the day I traded Bobby Ames my two favorite Hot Wheels cars for his red, plastic, Frito Bandito erasers. My little brother and I shoved them onto our fingers, strapped belts around our chests like bandoleras, danced around our bedroom singing:
"Ay, ay, ay, ay I am the Frito Bandito Give me Frito Corn Chips and I be your friend The Frito Bandito you must not offend..."
Until Dad burst through the door shouting: "What the hell are you doing!"
He took one look at us trying to be Mexicans, sat down and explained that funny little Frito Bandito had been modeled after Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, men who had died fighting for their country. He told us the story of Zapata's ghost riding through the hillsides of Morelos shouting, "Tierra Y Libertad!" Land and Freedom
The Frito jingle had been stolen from a love song, a man singing to a dark eyed girl from the mountains, a woman who was so beautiful birds would gladly abandon their nests so that her beauty could take their place. He told us that some nights his Father sang that song to his Mother then he stood up and began to sing Cielito Lindo. We stared in wide-eyed amazement as Spanish echoed off our bedroom walls. As his heart reached back to Mexico. At the end of that song, he slipped those erasers off our fingers without a fight, quietly left the room. That night, I swore I could hear the hooves of Zapata's horse outside my window and in the darkness my little brother whispered "I hear them too."
I won't let my own children watch Speedy Gonzalez cartoons.
That peòn dressed rat who always saves the run-down border town from the gringo gato because, as one mouse lounging under his sombrero, leaning against an adobe wall tells the other one, "He likes my seester"
I'd like to grill up the Taco Bell chihuahua fajita-style sprinkle it with salt and limòn, top it with whatever the hell their "Spicy Pepper Jack" sauce is and shove it down the throat of the advertising genius who came up with that one.
The Mayans came up with the concept of zero, The basis of all mathematical equations. The Aztecs mapped the stars, invented a solar calendar that's still accurate today.
We are the smell of dried chile peppers and corn tortillas rolling like mist across the valley, the pastel colors of desert sunsets blended over Toltec temples, the prayers on the lips of Santa Anna's soldiers. We are the tears that fall from our eyes in the face of injustice. If you feel the need to commercialize our heritage, you can make a commercial out of that.
"Yo quiero some respect, pendejo!"
Hazelnut Coolattas vs. Addition
You never really get over addiction, you simply replace one with another that's hopefully less harmful like quitting smoking, but always chewing on those mint flavored toothpicks you're stealing from all the restaurants where you're going to asking to be seated in the nonsmoking section, but really close to the smoking section. Or switching from calling and hanging up on your ex-girlfriend in the middle of the night to writing long, sloppy letters to Jennifer Lopez who is less likely to file a restraining order against you because you live too far away to be considered a serious stalker. Until you remember that there are some really cheap flights from Logan to L.A.X. on the Internet and while you're searching for those, you find out Miss Lopez has a web site So you start bombarding her with emails that she never answers. Which really pisses you off, so you send her a virus disguised as a love poem which somehow gets sent out to all the computers everywhere and since everyone wants someone to send them a love poem they open it and Corporate America suddenly shuts down because addiction has this kind of snowball effect.
For me, it started with Hershey Bars. My body had been processing drugs and alcohol into sugar for so long that it was craving sweets. I tried cookies, ice cream, even donuts- and I hate donuts! But during a crazed, late night search for donuts, I stumbled across the greatest sugar rush known to mankind: a large Hazelnut Coffee Coolatta, from Dunkin' Donuts. Icy cold, caffeine mixed with sugar like a legal speedball, Yes, I want whipped cream on top of that! Damn the calories, damn the fat content! And I don't care if that cup is non-recyclable! Dunkin' Donuts is the best connection I ever had, there's one on every corner and they're open 24 hours a day!
So I'm leaving The Cantab one Wednesday night, all hot and sweaty from a night of poetry, when I start jonesin' bad. But it's cool 'cause I know how to handle this and there's a Dunkin' Donuts right up the street.
But when I get there, it's closed! It's closed!
You can drive through Any Town, Nowhere at 4 o'clock in the morning and find a Dunkin' Donuts open for business, stocked with pink frosted pastries, steaming coffee, and yes, Coolattas! But in the middle of Cambridge, where people are walking around with pink frosted hair and there's a police station two blocks away, they close at 11 o'clock!
I start trying to remember where I'd seen another one. I'm wandering around downtown clutching a handful of dollar bills like a junkie looking for a fix! Get in my car chain smoking cigarettes all the way to the one by my house and... It's closed for repairs!
I'm freaking out now because there's a bar right next door and I'm about 3 steps shy of 12 and a beer sounds really good right now. I mean fuck the Coolatta man, It's not like I didn't try!
I'm standing there fumbling for my lighter when my father's 2-year medallion falls out of my pocket, clinks on the asphalt parking lot, shines in the pink and white light frosting this New England night, One Day At A Time. That's how you fight addiction, you never get over it. But restaurants do give away mint flavored toothpicks, Jennifer Lopez can always use some more love letters, And there's another Dunkin' Donuts right down the road, So keep driving man, just keep driving.
Stories
Before we left the hotel my father slipped ten silver dollars into my pockets. Halfway across the bridge we stopped to watch the children stripped to their underwear diving into the dirty, brown water for tourist's change. When we got to the other side, he waited while I climbed down and handed those silver dollars over to the oldest of the group, watched as they gathered their clothes and ran off shouting to each other through the streets of Jaurez. Later that day he stood holding my hand on a bluff overlooking the city, "All that you can see and beyond used to be Mexico. Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico were at one time all a part of Mexico."
My Father told me stories about the Aztec empire, their shining cities made of gold, solar calendars, magic, and human sacrifices. The priest's razored fingers quickly slicing open the chest, pulling out the beating heart, and holding it high over his head for everyone to see. The Aztec struck such fear across the land that even hundreds of years after their demise it was still rumored by the gringos that all Mexicans were bloodthirsty and carried knives.
There were Mendezes who rode with General Francisco Pancho Villa. Labeled a murderous bandit by those he opposed, a hero by his people, really no different from any other great military leader fighting against oppression for something he believed in. Blackjack Pershing spent a year in the desert trying to track Pancho Villa down A frustrated Pershing telegrammed back to Washington, "Villa is nowhere and everywhere." So the United States Government assassinated General Villa, A practice they had started in Panama, and continued in countries like Guatemala and Vietnam.
Afraid for her safety in the mists of turmoil, my grandmother's brothers took her across the border and up into Kansas, where she met and married a young charro named Gabino Mendez. Unlike the mariachis who play songs like "La Cucaracha" in the mercado, a charro sings legends handed down from one generation to the next, canciònes like "Jalisco" and "La Pistola y El Corazon" and my Grandfather taught these songs to his sons until he was murdered for $20 in a bar in Chicago.
Estas son las historias de mi familia. They whisper our name on the wind so that it can fall like dust into the layers of Mexico's past, firm ground for us to stand on. Through our veins runs the blood of mystical Indians and Freedom Fighters, Political Refugees and Bards, and with each heartbeat history continues.
