the country failed, though occasionally violent confrontations between braceros and union men flared in the fields.20 CBS News’ now classic television special “Harvest of Shame,” presented by Edward R. Murrow, was broadcast the weekend after Thanksgiving in 1960. It showed how the feast everyone had just enjoyed came to be on their table. It shocked the nation. The publication of Ernesto Galarza’s Strangers in Our Fields caused an uproar in 1956. Then the DiGiorgio Corporation, the giant farming business that was the focus of Galarza’s contempt, had the rashness to sue Galarza, and the controversy expanded. After twenty-two years, the mounting evidence of abuse could no longer be denied.
Four million, three hundred ninety-five thousand, six hundred twenty-two: that is the undisputed number of braceros that were contracted. Though they represented every region of Mexico, they came inordinately from the central and southern states. Northern Mexicans had been crossing the border since the Mexican-American War: they knew the paths of the “migra,” the rhythms of the agricultural migratory stream, the ways of the urban Mexican Americans, they had developed the skills to survive and in many cases remain permanently in the United States. Braceros from the southern and central states, on the other hand, had little experience en el otro lado. They would be given a subsidized crash course by the American government, complete with prejudice, discrimination, and abuse. There is simply no data on how many braceros stayed, married, had children; how many sent for their families, invited friends, adopted this country as their own, and joined their northern paisanos in the thriving communities they had built throughout America. Of one thing we can be sure, there were millions of them, and their children were millions more and now add their grandchildren—and they were all invited in by the United States of America.
And throughout this time the pressure on children to “be white” was extreme. Being white would prevent you from being seen as a Mexican. Having the right accent, which meant no accent, dressing snazzy, being clean-cut, never but never speaking Spanish within earshot of white people, always saying loudly you were an American, but, if confronted about your surname or your skin color, conceding you were Mexican-American or better yet an American of Mexican descent … Those were the constant instructions on how to pass for white. In segregated Bullion Plaza Elementary, the Mexican school, the teachers would tape your mouth shut if you spoke Spanish. Your name was “Americanized”: Alfredo became Alfred, Guillermo became William, Federico was Fred, all names ending with an “o” were just shortened, so Ernesto became Ernest. Pánfilo was screwed, they changed his to Perry. Girls were not exempt, María was Mary and Rosa became Rose. Yahaira was a challenge. Her white name became Joann.
Accents were a real problem. Second- and third-generation kids came from households that spoke Spanish at home, so even they would pronounce English with an accent. Television, the great teacher of English and leveler of accents, was only barely becoming affordable to most mining families in the 1950s; movies were affordable perhaps once a week, and kids were in school for only a few hours a day. Thus accents, which we did not know we had, were reinforced constantly. It was the persistence of accents that led to some of the most ridiculous exercises in whiteness. One ludicrous idea was teaching kids to speak in “round sounds.” To this day I don’t know if this was a local invention or whether some lame-brained linguist actually developed this method. Open your mouth slightly, then form an “O” with your lips extended outward, then speak while keeping your mouth in that O shape. Try it. It will indeed reduce your accent, but it will also make you sound like a fastidious and pretentious fool. In elementary school it could make you the object of derision and get you a good whuppin’ from the other Mexican kids as an added benefit.
Enforcing accentless English were kids policing other kids. To mispronounce a word, wash for watch, eschool for school for example, would lead to guffaws and mockery. “¡Qué feo lo mascas!” “You chewed that up ugly” was a favorite phrase. Kids recently arrived or kids who came from homes where only Spanish was spoken were ridiculed to the point that they were afraid to speak.
Going to the Mexican movies at the Lyric would signal to the whole town you were a Mexican, and not really a Mexican American or an American of Mexican descent. Just a Mexican, and it was becoming increasingly clear to the kids that being Mexican was not a good thing. The Lyric closed, because the Mexican families who had enjoyed the movies every week had transmogrified into Mexican Americans or better yet Americans of Mexican descent, and in their new identities wouldn’t be caught dead in a Mexican theater. Taking bean burros or tacos de papa for lunch at school was an open admission that you were a Mexican, as was humming or singing any ranchera or corrido. “Cielito Lindo” was acceptable to the white teachers, and at least once a year they trotted a bunch of Mexican kids to the auditorium to sing it for them. I still hate “Cielito Lindo,” and don’t call me Alfred. My mother spoke little English, and my father worked long shifts and was always volunteering for overtime. I would accompany my mother to pay the bills and do the shopping as the translator and cultural guide. It could get a bit embarrassing when inquiring about feminine products and underclothes. It fell to me because my sister, god bless her, was embarrassed by our mother’s Spanish. There was little doubt my mother was a Mexican.
Girls loved Max Factor. Especially the bleaching cream. It would whiten them up. In the late 1950s Rose Escobedo was the first Mexican-American cheerleader at Miami High School. Years later she told me that at the time she attributed her breakthrough to Max Factor. She used it all week before the tryouts. If girls were lighter-skinned, putting henna in their hair could give it a reddish tone and make them look, well, Italian maybe.
I was a problematic student in high school. My older brother was a record-breaking track star, a varsity football player, and a pretty good student. My sister was every teacher’s pet. Given my behavior, I was ordered to the principal’s office routinely, and given a “good talking-to” before being expelled for a day or so. Principal Nick Ragus, whose preferred method of counseling students was the loud, intimidating rant, would remind me each time: “You know why you’re not like your brother and sister? You don’t have red hair! You don’t have freckles! You look like a Mexican! You better straighten out!” My mother suggested henna.
Mexican restaurants started serving Spanish food, especially if they wanted to attract white clientele and the folks who aspired to be white. Amazingly, Spanish food, it turned out, was exactly the same as the tacos and enchiladas they served the week before. La Casita in Globe, famous for its menudo, red chile, enchiladas con huevos, and, of course, always serving its homemade tortillas with a generous slathering of butter, declared its cuisine Spanish-American. The food is just as wonderful today, and the neon sign on the window has long ago been boxed and taken away, consigned to the trash heap like a bad memory. In Miami, the town’s most popular restaurant, El Rey, where I followed both of my brothers scrubbing floors and washing dishes, proclaimed with its own sign that what it called a “regular burro,” red chili and beef with refried beans and longhorn cheese mixed together in a heavenly concoction, was really Spanish-American. And down in Phoenix, the El Rey on South Central was the final defiant restaurant in Arizona refusing to serve blacks. It became the site of continuous protests by the NAACP until the tiny, family-owned storefront relented at last. It never regained its popularity with the white downtown crowd, but it survived in business for years afterward serving pretty good Mexican food, especially its chile colorado with frijoles de la olla. A big hand-lettered sign painted onto the south-side wall of the homely white building reading “Mexican Dishes” survived until El Rey closed in the early seventies, but the neon sign that announced Spanish-American food on the window under a big colorful poster of a sombrero came down soon after its ignorant last stand against integration. Up the street from the infamous El Rey was the Spanish Kitchen. The chief cook was Sra. Duran, whose daughters Rosie and Esther would become icons of the Latino civil rights movement in Arizona. The menu at the Spanish Kitchen was tacos dorados, chile verde, menudo, gorditas, and many other northern Mexican delicacies. There wasn’t a paella or even a Spaniard in the kitchen. Discomfort with calling someone or even something Mexican lingered for many years. As late as 1970 the city of Scottsdale held a downtown fair featuring “Spanish food.” The menu as listed in the advertising section of the Arizona Republic
