Bonita

On a recent trip to that wonderful event called the San Diego Chargers, my buddy and I came across an interesting discussion of Mexican Americans and Mexicans from Tijuana that have moved into a place called Bonita. I was already on an awe because we took the trolley to the stadium and saw that one of the stops is literally titled, "Barrio Logan" professionally labeled on the route map. I have never seen anything in Los Angeles-Orange County that states Barrio anywhere on the contrary, the word barrio is quieted away, not really pronounced except maybe in Barrio Studies class if they teach those anymore or if ever did. In Los Angeles the name of the place will tell you the racial makeup of the barrio: East LA= Chicanos; South Central LA=Blacks, the ghetto kind, Silverlake=Jotos, the White kind with too much money; Inglewood better off Blacks though Mexican Americans lived there and once had a barrio called Ballona no longer there because of suburbanization; Manhattan Beach= Filthy rich Whites; Sherman Oaks= Israel; Chinatown=Vietnamese; Monterey Park=Chinese non American; MacArthur Park=Marasalvatrucha though most Salvadorians have moved or been deported; Glendale: Armenia; Pacoima=George Lopez; Pasadena=Old Protestant Anglo Saxon Money; Movie Studios=Jews who are Whites and La Habra=OC Chicanos who are part White.

We don't have the barrio in front of the barrio, the place speaks for itself but to have a Trolley stop recognition scored points in my radar for the simple fact that no matter how barrio meaning how brown poor that neighborhood is, it still deserves it's due recognition. I took a picture because it moved me. Then we saw the drunk fest called professional football and because we were crowded we would talk, how could we not? As we ate the fillers, we had a conversation with a person next to us who would share with us football talk, then city or county talk. It was exciting to talk to somebody whose only point of reference to Los Angeles was visiting Disneyland in Anaheim. I was kind of surprised but maybe I should not have been, it's not exactly I know San Diego that well but through 20 plus years of adulthood, occasional trips have driven me into Pete Wilson country. That Camp Pendleton always made it seem too far and too disconnected from Los Angeles as if in another time zone.

As trust ensued and I enquired about her Santa Muerte tattoo, she began to open up about work, family, city or residence and city of growth. She even admitted she was a proud bitch in high school who liked the trouble makers, cholo bad boys. After a while I asked myself, am I at a Raider game but she settled my jitters by saying she's outgrown all that, she enjoys football and is raising her daughter to the best of her ability. Then she stated she lived in Chula Vista but had grown up in Bonita. I knew Chula Vista or Chulajuana as she calls it as to imply a relationship to Tijuana though she had not crossed the border in years, it was too dangerous. My aunt lived there in the early 1980's, where didn't she live, and the E Street exit was one place. But then she stated she was raised in Bonita where all the "fresas" lived. My buddy didn't catch on but I knew that well off Mexican nationals were called "strawberries" as class competition from my teenage travels to Torreon, Coahuila. It carries an attitude of "we are better" that those poor folks, but I had only heard it in central Mexico.

When she further stated, "Bonita is full of those fresas, who think they are better than us Mexican Americans because they have money. They are the ones that are born there then move across and view us as inferiors". I was shocked and yet I wasn't because I have come to the awareness that Mexican nationals think they are better than those of us born in the US for the simple reason that we are too Gringo for them and in my case too Apache. My type of Mexican American is rooted in being Apache and my height proves it for me so I have always sense this ethnic national north divide because we are really different ethnic people and I don't even like their offspring even if born in the north, I still see them distinct because their history is not in the north but somewhere in Zacatecas or Jalisco.

But her comment came from somebody geographically born in the same California who for many decades were also not viewed as Mexicans even if born behind the border because they were too far from the center. My mother was born in the Rancho Cucapah of Mexicali near the Cerro Prieto Volcano and she has always been viewed almost an non Mexican and my father was a Yuma Apache and he always dealt with Mexicans thinking he was not Mexican because he was "Puro Indio" as my uncle and many would say, de sangre pura.

"Yeah, they think they are better than us because they were born in Tijuana, have money and we weren't. And I grew up in Bonita. We are different".

It left me bewildered because of their arrogance, who the hell do they think they are, whose the foreigner, the one with papers, I'll say it, the pollos but at the same time it shows how space really defines Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans are spatial creatures defined by space and though we might have names like them or look like them we are not. We are our own people.

Then I told my East LA buddy Ruben who told me, "Hey, they remind me of the Soldatenkos", who was the Cal State LA Chicano Studies chair who was trying to change the name to Latino Studies like an act of revolution. As we, the Chicano Task Force Committee debated him about what a Mexican American is, his answer was "I think we have a different definition". We went ballistic at that comment because he stated that our definition did not include anybody born in Mexico and we stated yes, but the arrogance of him a foreigner to attempt to tell us Mexican Americans who we were because he felt entitled to change the meaning of our definition, of those born in the United States. And what that showed was that he nor those born in Tijuana really give a damn about Mexican Americans. One can feel he can change our identity though he was born in Mexico City and ignore our comments and the others straight forward show that they do not like us because we were born in the US. At least the Bonita residents don't pretend to be inclusive, they out right exclude through their dislike. In my eyes there was nothing beautiful about Bonita and was glad I was given insight to an area I have no knowledge of. And that there are alot of Cholos who are coyotes but that's for another day.