April 19, 2007

Two countries, two souls, one dream

Posted by Tomas Palermo at 12:00AM

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A poor kid discovers Mohawk hair-dos, breakdancing and the keys to his future in the Mexico City. Making and losing millions on velvet paintings in Ciudad Juarez. An opera cafe florishes in Tijuana. How soccer replaced football in the slaughterhourse towns of Kansas.

These are some of the amazing stories captured by LA Times contributor and author Sam Quinones (True Tales From Another Mexico) in his latest page-turner, Antonio's Gun & Delfino's Dream. In the fast-paced, richly detailed book released April 1 on University of New Mexico Press, Quinones tells the incredible real-life stories of carpet-layers in Bell, CA, how campesinos from the tiny Mexican village Atolinga came to dominate Chicago's taco stands and restaurants, as well as the tragedy that accompanies the thousands who ambivalently leave their birth country and risk death in a scorching desert crossing to work in the meat processing plants that most American laborers shun.

Along the way, Quinones explores Mexican immigration and its mixed blessings for both the United States and Mexico. For instance, he details repeatedly how many who come to the States and do well enough to build homes back in their home villages rarely resettle in their places of origin. In turn, many Mexican villages have become entirely dependent on remittances from sons and daughters in the US, thus deflecting pressure from Mexican governmental agencies to reform and develop their domestic economy.

Quinones eloquently explains:

A Mexican saying goes: "Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States." Its message is that the closer Mexicans get to the United States and the farther they stray from Mexico's heart -- Mexico City -- the more they lose their souls. But far from losing their souls, Mexicans find themselves in the United States. "Farther from Mexico City, closer to God" is a truer assessment of the facts, and it is one of the themes of this book of stories about Mexican immigrants and the border.

Mexican immigration is much debated and little understood. Activists and ideologues dissect it looking for heroes or villains. But they miss its beauty, which is that the closer you get to it, the more it shatters pat answers and preconceived notions. Within each immigrant's life roil courage and callousness, cowardice, generosity, envy, mercy, common sense and irrationality. A great opera, I believe, can be mined from each immigrant's story. I hope the stories in this book reflect that.

Elsewhere in the book, explains how hard it is for Mexican immigrants to not only find acceptance in the States but also to shake the timid attitudes and low expectations ingrained by the 70-year dominant PRI political party. And then there's the raw matter-of-fact way the book describes racial disparities. Rey Ramirez, a star high school soccer player in a small Kansas beef town describes the inequalities between immigrants and locals this way: "Their parents own farms and cattle feed yards. Our parents work for their parents."

With another National Day of Action for Immigrants approaching on May 1, Quinones book is a reminder that behind every immigrant-staffed business are the same dreams for respect, visibility and fair treatment that we've enshrined in the US Constitution.