The world stood still for that
moment. The whole thing could’ve ended with my brains splattered all over the
place. But no matter how scared I was, I wasn’t going down begging or crying or
nothing. If he was going to get me, I was going to be looking him straight in
the eye, defiant, angry, and stone cold crazy. (p. 157)
The community of East Los Angeles, popularly known as East L.A.,
looms large in the Chicano imagination. Whether or not we grew up in an urban
environment, in the palm-lined streets of a state such as California that
shimmers with the promise of illusions and hopes to be fulfilled, it represents
the emblematic barrio that encapsulates so much of our ideals of community and
cultural fulfillment. I didn’t grow up in East L.A., but I feel immediately at
home when I visit, as do many other Chicanos who hail from places as far away
as the Fruitvale barrio in Oakland or Pilsen in Chicago.
It is of course a compelling matter to analyze the nature of
this automatic attachment. It does not represent the quintessential suburban
experience, for it is a densely-packed, working class area far from the glamour
of Beverly Hills, the industrial base of the City of Commerce or the touristy
feel of Venice or Hollywood. It may be densely-populated, but it has also a
feeling of space, and a small-town atmosphere even though the population must
exceed several hundred thousand. And it is the heart and soul of Mexican
identity in the Southland, for it is populated primarily by Mexicans and
Chicanos, and the businesses, social life and cultural ambiance is filtered in
a pervasive mix of Spanglish.
One can almost refer to it as a self-enclosed entity, like
the Mexican barrios throughout the United States, but on a grander scale, with
a history that reaches back to the first years of the 20th century.
Because it is enclosed it has a protective feel, and it has served as our
metaphorical Ellis Island for Mexicans, serving as a secure base from which to
seek out their American dreams. Many of these immigrants have settled in the
area and raised their children, and thus we have generations who have grown up
as lifelong residents of East L.A., harboring as they do a strong attachment to
neighborhoods and streets that have been the site of much of Mexican-American
civic life, as well as the neighborhoods from whence emerged many national
Chicano political and cultural leaders.
In his collection of short stories called “The Republic of
East L.A.”, the community comes to life in stories that, while frequently
grounded in difficult circumstances, reflect an overall quality of endurance as
well as a dogged faith in achieving a small measure of acceptance and peace. It
is this search for home that is perhaps one of the most familiar and enduring
motifs in Chicano literature, a home that assumes many forms. It nurtures many
of these dreams, while at the same time reminding us of the cycle of disappointment
and displacement, all shared by neighbors whose stories seem more compelling
precisely because they are so familiar.
Such is the case with these stories. There is nothing
extraordinary about these situations, and they revolve around situations where
families are under extraordinary pressures. We have children who are growing
under the care of a drug-addled single mom (in the story Las Chicas Chuecas),
and other families that are torn apart by economic pressures, by factories and
mills that close (Boom, Bot, Boom), and throughout it all, by personal demons
that have to do with the intersection between shimmering dreams and the
everyday detritus that they leave behind.
Except for occasional stories that highlight the influence
of economic pressures, in an economy that has been unsettled by the postwar
loss of a manufacturing base and its replacement by part-time and piece-rate
work (creating a version of what I could term are Chicano Ronin, those with
skills who lose any institutional protection and are forced to hire themselves
out as in the case of the two construction workers in Mechanics), we see that
many of these characters suffer from a form of innocence that is slowly worn
down by their circumstances. They struggle to come to terms with failed hopes,
with the spectacle of a hard-working father who succumbs to cancer, or to the
failed hopes of children such as Rudy, who falls victim to a familiar scourge
(Shadows). Dreams glimmer just out of reach, while the characters become
wizened and try to hold on to something that is stable, even if smaller than
the scope that had been envisioned.
I was struck particularly by two characters. One of these is
Noemi, the 16 year old with the gangster sister who tries to navigate through
high school while also parenting a mother who seems unable to resist her drug
cravings. She would seem to be perfect for recruitment to the gang life, and it
would seem to be a natural step to take for someone lacking any other form of
stability, but she resists, and retreats into her own fantasy world. She dreams
of trolls and knights, underlining a mindset that in many ways captures a
yearning for autonomy and control that is being acted out in destructive
fashion by her sister Olivia. The chicas chuecas are, indeed, twisted, and they
fight their own battles, going out on their own expeditions and besieging
fortresses and engaging in ritual combat, but this parallelism only serves to
demonstrate the distance between the two conceptions. It seems that the
fundamental impulse is there, but no one will rescue her, not even her sister.
She will have to rescue herself.
The other was the Enrique in the story “Mechanics” (the
title can’t fail to echo the title of the longstanding series by Chicano author
Javier Hernandez from the seminal comic book titled “Love and Rockets”), a
journeyman millwright who, like the industrial base of the country, finds
himself losing his family in a slowly progressive process of divestment. There
is a slow and lethargic pace to this story, and yet, it seems telegraphed from
the beginning, a loss that leaves him bewildered and unable to come to terms
with a transformation that has taken place before his eyes. The old dream of
lifetime jobs in a mill, with substantial benefits and a reasonable income,
disappears quickly, but lingers like an after-image, blinding him to the
dynamics of a relationship that also fails to evolve. He is slowly divested of
his family and dignity, until he reaches a new plateau that feels like a
release, a form of acceptance. This is much the way it must feel to move from
adolescence to middle age, a process that can seem to be one of similar
divestment from the old certitudes, appalling but also, ultimately, necessary.
Other stories reflect issues that concern Chicano
communities, such as those that have to do with the ability to identify with
newcomers, without falling prey to a destructive nativism that may be grounded
on legality and economic fears, but that somehow seems to represent too much of
a destructive break with the past. And, there is the humorous story titled “Miss
East L.A.”, which chronicles the case of a beauty pageant winner who has been
murdered, but is compelling more for the back story of a man who was destined
to be a factory worker and managed to break free to become a writer, than for
the unconvincing film noir ambiance or the resolution of a mystery that is
grounded in no real plot twists. But perhaps, that was the point of the story,
to explore the dynamics of style, while relaying in a rather subversive way the
real story, the gritty decision that accompanies that transfiguration and
delivery of the factory worker.
Come to think of it, all the stories have this impetus, this
moment where circumstances that would ordinarily have provoked a crushing sense
of anguish and defeat, lead instead to new beginnings. What is in evidence is
the appeal to a sense of endurance in the face of calamity. The characters are
most free when they break out of these roles, and whether threatened by an
angry trucker wielding a weapon (chain-link lover), or a young forty year old grandmother
seeing her daughter fall prey to a dependent and shiftless man who offers no
real encouragement or support (sometimes you dance with a watermelon), we find
characters coming to terms and refusing to give up their dreams entirely.
There may be a persistence of illusion, but there is also
the recognition that dignity is achieved precisely through the human imperative
of dreaming. These characters don’t lose their capacity to dream, they merely
shift their objectives and engage their creative powers to come up with new
dreams. This may be why so many of these stories end with scenarios that seem
to promise new beginnings.
That may be what makes the community of East L.A. so
perdurable as well. The people who inhabit it have suffered from harsh
discrimination, and have suffered displacement, and continue to suffer from
neglect from the city authorities, but throughout it all, it has preserved a
certain character, a will to survive and hold on to its own rituals. It has
been battered as well, but it continues to stand, even while subsequent
generations leave it and migrate to the suburbs. It represents a connection
with something that reminds one that community is much more a matter of will
than an accident of location.
OGRomero © 2013
OGRomero © 2013
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