Your Mexican Future

[Mexican Festival in Philly’s Italian Market, 9/22/13]

On 9/1/15, as I walked past Wings and More, a skanky Korean-owned bar in Philly’s Italian Market, Jimmy ran out to drag me in. He’s drinking with his Mexican co-workers from Anastasi Seafood.

Not three years later, Jimmy would be fired for stealing, but as the last American employee, his days were numbered anyway. Months after being laid off, Jimmy died. Before moving back to Bucks County, Jimmy said to me and Terrance, “This is your last chance to lend me money.” Just about everyone at Friendly had already given Jimmy money.

At Wings and More, Jimmy introduced me to one guy who had so little English, we couldn’t really talk, but then I met Humberto. When Humberto asked me what I did, I said I was basically a teacher and a writer, then I actually ran nearly two blocks home to get my two books available in Spanish, Otra vez la noche: Cuentos contemporáneos de Vietnam, published in Madrid in 2006, and Todo alrededor de lo que se vacía, published in Mexico City in 2012. Since I had extra copies of Otra vez la noche, I gave Humberto one. “This means a lot to me, my friend,” he said. He was red-eyed and drunk.

Leaving behind a wife and two children in Mexico City, Humberto came to Philly in 1998. By 2000 or so, his wife had found another man, but Humberto’s mother didn't tell him about it until 2002, “When she said, ‘I must tell you something. I have something to tell you,’ I knew something was wrong. Then she told me. She said, ‘Do not drink.’ She knew I would drink to not feel the pain.”

In 2003, Humberto got back to Mexico to try to salvage the situation, but his wife wouldn’t even let him see their children.

“My wife, she was an angel. She still is. She was my everything. I came to the USA to make money to build us a house. Now I can’t even see my children.”

Humberto has found himself a new woman, though. “You're lucky, I said. Many people have nobody.”

“I know, my friend. I can go out, get any woman, but it’s not the same. I can talk about it now. Before, I could not talk about it. In Mexico, when you get married, you make a vow to the Virgen De Guadalupe, and my wife did that. You’re supposed to be together many years.”

“Forever...”

“Yes, forever.”

Humberto is a beefy dude, with moustache, whisker and slicked back hair. On his arms are tattoos of the Virgin of Guadalupe, “Hecho en Mexico,” tragedy and comedy masks, a stylized puma and something I couldn’t quite see. On his neck is “El Rey.” He wore an orange mustle-T showing Japanese cartoon characters. His nickname is “Cornish Hen,” however.

“Why do you let them call you that?”

“I didn’t, but you know how it is. The more you complain, the more they call you that.”

Another guy in Wings and More was called Chinito, “Little Chinese.” He is small and has Oriental features.

“That guy is a good boxer,” one man remarked.

“Him?! You must be joking.”

“He drinks more beer. He good boxer!”

Everyone laughed.

I brought up Chino Maidana, whom Humberto very much admires. Humberto then recounted the knockout punch delivered by Sergio Martinez against Paul Williams. He even showed me how it was done.

“Sergio said, ‘You have to show your opponent some meat.’”

“Meat?”

“Yes, bait. You have to bait him.”

“Then you counterpunch...”

“Yes, like this. Bam!”

It’s one of the best knockouts ever.

I brought up the Chavez/Meldrick Taylor fight, the one that went 15 rounds and was stopped by referee Richard Steele with only two seconds left. Slick, quick and nail tough, Taylor is a Philly guy. He never recovered from that loss.

Humberto, “People think Taylor was winning, but Chavez worked the body. He hurt him. Chavez was winning.”

I disagree. Just two seconds from his greatest triumph, and a victory for the ages, Taylor was robbed, but that’s boxing, and life too. I remember Jeff Fenech putting on a master class against Azumah Nelson, only to see Nelson declared winner. Fenech sobbed inside the ring.

When Vicente Fernández’ “Por tu maldito armor” came on, Humberto sang along with tremendous feeling, “Por tu maldito amor / No puedo terminar con tantas penas...”

Besides me, the only customers were six Mexicans. Jimmy had left. On a wall were photos of patrons and this sign, “NO ESCUPIR EN EL SUELO GRACIAS.” Don’t spit on the floor, thank you. The harsh neons exposed each man’s loneliness.

“Humberto, there are never any women in this bar.”

“I know. They cannot come in because they get attacked.”

He didn't mean that literally, of course. He just meant these lonely drunk guys would pay her way too much attention.

Fights do break out here regularly. Cops have been called.

In 17 years, Humberto could only return home once, “I said to my mother, ‘Don’t die before I can see you again.’”

Thirty-six-years-old, Humberto makes money by delivering pizzas on his bike. His mom is 60-years-old.

Uncle Sam used NAFTA to dump subsidized corn onto Mexico, forcing Mexicans to leave farms to slave in maquiladoras. When these move to Asia, Mexicans had to cross into Alta California, Nuevo Mexico, El Norte or Atzlan. Working for cheap, they keep wages down. Anyone who complains is a racist. Uncle Sam is expert at bankrupting or bombing your house so you must move into his to be his casa nigga. Refugees fleeing wars or wrecked economies benefit top exploiters. Who cares about social chaos on the lowest rungs. Massas need ever cheaper cooks, nannies, whores and factory grunts. Go to Midtown Manhattan and see if you can find any native born American pushing someone else’s baby in a stroller.

Reading about the recent chaos along the US, Mexico border, I’m almost tempted to fly to El Paso. In a rented car, I can drive for hours along the Rio Grande, to see what’s up. My fond memories of that landscape are probably misleading me.

In El Paso in 2012, I met the photographer Julián Cardona. A long-time resident of Juarez, Cardona fully understood how America’s insatiable appetite for drugs and cheap labor wrecked his city. Now is the perfect time to pick Cardona’s brain, but checking online, I found out he died in 2020 at 60-years-old, my age.

The translator of my Todo alrededor is Luis Alberto Arellano. He died at age 40 in 2016, just a year before I decided to look him up in Mexico City.

In Tijuana, I saw border crossers dressed like ninjas. In Juarez, the El Paso skyline seemed so close, the American Dream was just a pole vault away. Strolling into Juarez cost 35 cents! Once I didn’t pay because the Mexican border guard was dozing in his booth. Entering the USA was more complicated. Driving from Ojinaga to Presidio, my rented car was scoured for concealed drugs. That suspicious cop didn’t crack a smile. I’ve written about crossing the illegal footbridge from Candelaria to San Antonio del Bravo. Fierce River of the North my ass. Will Rogers joked that it’s “the only river I know of that is in need of irrigating.”

Outside the famously haunted De Soto Hotel, I ran into a morose old guy in a blue cowboy hat who claimed to be Pancho Villa reincarnated. A loan shark and witch doctor had caused a tumor to grow on his right foot, but Villa paid another witch doctor to get rid of it, so that’s solved. With wet eyes, Villa made the most bizarre statements in a monotone.

Learning I was Vietnamese, Villa asked why all these big countries messed with Vietnam all those years, “Why did China stay for 20 years, Russia for 20 years and the US for 20 years?” As an enlightened revolutionary, Villa would fix everything. Since the US had paid 37 countries to bully then destroy Japan, Villa would move all Japanese to the US, and all Americans to Africa. Vietnamese he would relocate to the USA and Chihuahua.

At El Paso’s The Tap, I met an older black guy who had moved back from happening Juarez. All those pinging bullets and nubile corpses dumped in the desert made just walking around less than relaxing. News of decapitated heads tossed into bars darkened each night out.

Knowing I was prowling around Juarez, poet Clayton Eshleman told me to watch my ass, “Anything can happen to you there.” Eshleman, too, has died.

The biggest question is how will Uncle Sam go out? Will he nuke the chessboard or just soil his pants, then keel over? His death spasm will quake Mexico, as millions of berserkers spill South. With so many Mexicans already there, will Mexican troops march north to reclaim lost land?

Porfirio Diaz famously said, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.” Soon enough, Mexico will be free of this problem.

Let’s close with a cheerful corrido. Music heals:

Jacinto Treviño

This makes 3 times
Beauty shows itself;
The first was in McAllen,
Then Brownsville and San Benito.
In Bekar’s cantina
A shootout erupted;
Shards of broken bottles
Flying everywhere.
In Bekar’s cantina
Only one was left,
Only Jacinto Treviño
With rifle and pistol.
“Come in here, cowardly rangers,
You’re not messing with a kid;
If you want to know your daddy,
That’s me, Jacinto Treviño!”
Jacinto Treviño tried to stifle
A laugh as he spoke, “To me,
Rangers are only suitable
To sew my shirt cuffs.”
The sheriff then spoke
As an American, “Jacinto’s
Too much of a man, there’s
No denying he’s Mexican.”
With this I’ll take my leave
From all who are here;
If anyone wants to find me,
I’ll be waiting in Matamoros.
 
*

Jacinto Treviño

Ya con ésta van tres veces
Que se ha visto lo bonito;
La primera fue en McAllen
En Brownsville y en San Benito.
En la cantina de Bekar
Se agarraron a balazos;
Por dondequiera volaban
Botellas hechas pedazos.
Esa la cantina de Bekar
Al momento quedó sola;
Nomás Jacinto Treviño
De carabina y pistola.
“Entrele rinches cobardes,
El pleito no es con un niño;
Querían conocer a su padre,
¡Yo soy Jacinto Treviño!”
Decía Jacinto Treviño
Que se arrastraba de risa:
“A mí los rinches me hicieron
Los puños de la camisa.”
Decía el sherife mayor
Como era un americano:
“Ay que Jacinto tan hombre,
No niega ser Mexicano.”
Ya con ésta me despido
Aquí en presencia de todos;
Si me quieren conocer
Los espero allá en Matamoros. 

[El Paso, 4/2/12]

[reincarnation of Pancho Villa in El Paso on 4/2/12]

[El Paso and American train as seen from Juarez on 4/2/12. Sign, “DANGER! RIVER AND CANAL AHEAD / DON'T TRY TO CROSS THEM, / IT IS VERY DANGEROUS... / SAFEGUARD YOUR LIFE, THINK OF / YOUR FAMILY, THEY WAIT FOR YOU.”]

[El Paso skyline as seen from Juarez at border crossing on 4/2/12. Mother and son had just walked to the border for a look.]