Mexican New York

There are about 3 or 4 places I go to buy cafe, cookies, pizza, and mexican food-not because these spots are particularly great or even cheap, but because the Mexicans that work there are always friendly. We converse about the weather, talk about their place of origin, my families place of origin, and exchange smiles. Occasionally I'll get a free slice, an extra cookie, tecate, or asked what song I would like to listen to. On those particularly long and isolating (alienating) days of school these encounters are uplifting and provide much needed energy.  I wonder if I get more out of these encounters than they do. Maybe so. 

After about 18 months of living in NYC, I finally headed to Queens-the place where "all the Mexicans are." Not knowing what to expect I was struck by what I encountered on roosevelt avenue. An entire street filled with Mexican joints: restaurants, bars, dance and pool halls. It was the similarity of each of these places that hit me: in all of the spaces entered I encountered young males, cervesa in hand and listening and contemplating the words of some of the most beautiful written songs ever: tragos amargos, reloj, que casualidad, amor eterno, cien anos, ella, and many more. Was this street an aberration; reflection of an overwhelmingly male migration to New York along with the absence of Mexican migration in the past? While bars filled with males is not uncommon, the amount of these spaces seemed significantly different from what I have seeing in Los Angeles, Guadalajara, or Mexico City. Is this space the production of larger structural factors? Gender norms (discrimination)? Not sure. Yet, roosevelt street, I think, is linked to Mexican male migrants all over the country and throughout the years:  expressing and feeling loneliness, melancholy, and friendship via music and with a cervesa in hand. I leave you all with Antonio Aguilar's Paso del Norte:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgpH8klkMM

(you tube: paso del norte). 

And Jose Jose's El Triste

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skCZCaThiuM

Pueblo en Vilo: History as longing for Home

[In Image: Grandma, Great Grandfather, Tio, and Pops]

 

Don Luis Gonzalez Gonzalez is often labeled one of Mexico’s greatest historians. At the young age of 12 he left his small town of San Jose de Gracia for the then sprawling city of Guadalajara. For migrants and son/daughters of migrants his experiences as a rural migrant to GDL resonate: he describes being made fun of for his attire and speech. He would go onto study with Fernand Braudel of the French Annal school and produce in the 1960s a history of a village that did not take part or benefit from the Mexican revolution:  a slap in the face to the PRI and a much needed corrective to state narratives of the Revolution.

 

As an arrogant and naïve undergraduate at UCLA I often frowned upon the entrance of romanticism and nostalgia in academic works. Little did I realized that my entire academic pursuit is guided by both…

Below are two quotes from Gonzalez:

 

From the traditional microhistory spoken or sung by the old ones has evolved the microhistory written by numerous village enthusiasts. Mexico abounds in local histories by persons who do not see themselves as intellectuals. These are microhistorians unacquainted with universities but well acquired with community life. They are found in the cafes and bars rather than in classrooms. But beyond this, they are difficult to define; microhistory attracts people from widely disparate walks of life. Nevertheless, one general characteristic is notable among them—their romanticism.

 

            To quote, “Sentiment, not reason, stimulates the study of microhistory. Microhistories most common flow from a love for one’s origins,” as from the love for a mother. “Unimpeded, the small world which nourishes and sustains us is transfigured into the image of mother….Thus, the so-called patria chica would be better called the matria, and the narrative which reconstructs its temporal dimension ca be known alternately as microhistory or as historia matria. The spontaneous microhistorian works “toward the clearly unhealthy goal of returning to a lost time, to his roots, to the illusory Eden, to the womb.”

 How does one write a history of  Zacatecas, Guadalajara, Mexicalli, El Monte, Pico Rivera, Goleta, and Pomona--a history of what Americo Paredes called "Greater Mexico." One that is outside of both nation-states...thats the journey.