I Am Not Mesoamerican

I recently purchased the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann on recommendation of a new friend and fellow Hawthorne High alum and Lennoxer/Inglewooder named Derek Barraza. I do not meet many fellow Mexican Americans from this area and most non South Bay Mexican Americans do not really believe we exist because we are a small community which we weren't but the perceptions are that only Whites or Blacks lived in that area. Derek and I prove that we did live there and Derek even more because he's 7 years older so he has the memory of the 1960's which I don't though my grandparents where in Inglewood too. It was refreshing to also meet a fellow Northerner from California like him because I do feel as a minority with so many foreign born and southern Mexico born. Derek's parents where from El Paso and his father was a World War II veteran. It was refreshing to meet him because I felt he understood points I say.

I followed his advice even on where to buy the book, Costco which I did and found. As I read the preface, I came across the following sentence: "I may not have even been familiar with the term "Mesoamerica, which encompasses the area from Central Mexico to Panama".

I was taken aback by this statement because as I shared this common history with Derek of Apache background we connected and I had a flashback to my childhood when most of the people I knew where of northern desert heritage the east coast Anglos call the Southwest. This is not the southwest, it is the desert northwest where ancient indigenous Mexican cultures have existed before southern Mexicans arrived and any other foreigner from Europe, Asia and Africa.  Even the Mexico born people I knew were northern Mexico born, Baja California, Sonora and remnants of Chihuahua with the occasional Sinaloa people who were tamed in those days.  Hell, even my uncle Amado's father from Baja California was born in Miami, Arizona and his mother in Santa Rosalia, Baja. My tio Amado was born south of the border because his father avoided the draft from World War II and said later. His brother was drafted and served and when he would brag about being in the US Army, Victor Moreno jokingly would say, "Shut up, callate cabron, you were a dishwasher only and you're proud of that".  One of my favorites lines I have ever heard.

Thus, I really had no knowledge of centro Mexicans my grandmother called el sur, los del sur; from the south. And when I would travel to the Imperial Valley I had grandmother's on both sides so the Mexicans in Mexicali and El Centro had a shared culture. I remember being surprised by the lowrider culture in the colonia in Mexicali on the dusty road. The dickies khaki and JCPenny attire with the gold necklace and it was not a corner gang well sort of, it was more fashion. I learned the term Chicali for Mexicali down there and my Baja California ama Alberta, the Cucapah, that's where the rancho was at spoke half Mexican Spanish, half English but couldn't understand English if it was spoken to here.  I learned the words pichel-pitcher, raite-ride, carro-car, picup, tenis for shoes, pants for sweats, chaqueta-jacket, soccer, trayler-trailer truck, tractor, baisbol, una libra for a pound (though Mexico uses metric system), milla for mile (though kilometers is standard use), and  khaki for cholo pants though it is a color. I didn't know I was supposedly incorrect until newer Mexicans from the south would tell me I was wrong and were going to knock the "Indian" out of me or South Americans who felt I was illiterate.  In essence the border culture of the  region was linked to the Mexican American culture because remnants of them being one country still existed in the oral memory of many older adults I grew up hearing them talk. Every other Mexican word on the US side proved my point.

But in essence, the world that Derek and I has died since our youth because the memory of the adults have have faded into disperse memory banks like solitaire lobos such as us who nobody wants to talk to because they sense danger. Another component has been the arrival of the southern Mexican from the center of Mexico such as Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacan, Zacatecas (too many of them), San Luis Potosi though in smaller numbers, Mexico City, Puebla and now Oaxaca. Their mere appearance with no historical connection not even to the border Mexican states has resulted in them pushing their version of southern Mexican culture which is distinct to the California born Mexican American culture which is rooted in their homelands being places such as El Centro, El Paso, Inglewood, Watts, or East Los Angeles.  When someone is from these places within the United States, there is a distinct cultural and ethnic difference with somebody from southern Mexico and for those of us who are really Apaches, Comanchero, Mescalero, are non related to somebody whose family come from Zacatecas even if born in California. What extensive history does the Zacatecano or Jalisco origen people have in California? Those Mexicans are a different version of Mexican Americans I would call Southern Mexican Americans because they don't have that geographical connection to California or New Mexico. We should not be forgotten just because southern Mexicans arrived, we were here first.

Yet we make these distinctions amongst ourselves, as a woman named Betty from Montebello once asked me, what part of Mexico are you guys from and I told her both sides of California. Really, your people even in Baja California were from there?  Yes, my maternal grandparents came from a rancho and she could not believe it. Yes, El Rancho del Schenk at the base of the Cerro Prieto is where my mother was born.  My grandfather had a US border pass where he could come and go with no trouble and never wanted to live on the US side even though he milked cows for a living and never owned any land.  I am like him now. To further prove my point, I remember being at my uncles funeral in Mexicali who lived in Lennox and his friends went. They were from Zacatecas and as I conversed with one, I could tell he was uncomfortable being in Mexicali. It was too different for him and all he kept referring was his tierra in Zacatecas. It didn't matter that he was in Mexico, what was important to him was that it was not his place even if he was in Mexico, Baja California was a different planet.  Whereas for me, I was in a very familiar place with the same name as the land across the border.  I was in my Californias and I learned to live both.

Thus as I read Mesoamerica starts in Centro Mexico I could not help but think that my heritage is not part of Mesoamerica because I have no heritage down there and have found myself always in relative conflict with many of those southern Mexicans born in California because those people are trying to impose their brand of Mesoamerican culture on those of us born here and of indigenous heritage like and Derek.This is one reason I cannot subscribe to the Lalo Alcaraz's or Gustavo Arrellano branches of whatever they are because they are trying to defind that we are all their branch of Mexican American when we are not. I didn't even grow up being told I was a pocho because my parents didn't think that way because we were all born in the same geo zone and no my father nor mother did not sneak into the US in the trunk of a car. I'm not of Zacatecas heritage and I am proud of it nor where my parents and my grandparents were not braceros either.  None of my grandparents migrated anywhere. What do they know about somebody like me or Derek?  So these southerners are trying to tell us northerners what we are. Speak for your own and don't include me because I am not a Mesoamerican from centro Mexico and am proud of having Yuma-El Centro-Mexicali-Inglewood heritage because it is my history.

And as I spent many years in the profession of Chicano Studies, even they recognize the differences.  At CSULA, the Chicano Studies Department created a minor called Mesoamerican Studies by a Professor Roberto Cantu. Why did he do that? because he's not Mexican American from the north nor even US born hence because he wants to not be left out and impose his cultural perspective and because he fits the model Mexican immigrant, academia allowed him to go through and hired him even though he's not a Chicano which is a US born Mexican American, he can legitimize his own cultural realm in a field has does not belong to. By creating the minor in Mesoamerican Studies he's saying I'm not from the north but from the south. If that's the case, the universities should create the Southern Mexican Studies because at least that would be accurate and leave the true Mexican Americans, the Northerners alone.

I am not a Mesoamerican.