Voodoo politics

Posted on June 1, 2018 by juanzqui7

I WAS GOING through some old files today when I came across a page from a reporter’s notebook.

It didn’t look like much and I was about to throw it out when I realized what it was: Part of my notes from a 1980 news conference by George Bush when he returned to Houston aftevoodoor being selected by Reagan as his running mate.

At that session, Bush was asked whether he though Reagan’s economic plan was “voodoo economics,” as Bush had claimed during the campaign. Bush’s reply: “I never said that!”  He not only claimed he had never said those words, he challenged anyone to find a tape of him saying that.

I went back to the newsroom and wrote a story about that, and The Post had put it on the front page. Then I started to have doubts about it, because other news outlets had ignored Bush’s strange denial.

I began to get real worried when Bush tried to pass it off as a joke, one that I obviously hadn’t gotten. But if it had been a joke, it had fooled a key Bush aide I had talked to in reporting the story. She was obviously troubled by his denial and said so.

Fortunately, the story got picked up by the wires and the TV networks were able to get hold of footage of the news conference that showed clearly Bush was not joking.

My story had included interviews with several national political reporters, all of whom said they had heard Bush used “voodoo economics” at various times during the campaign, but I was never able to find a tape.

However, Ken Bode of NBC-News dug up a clip of Bush uttering the words and introduced it with the words, “Challenge accepted” on the network’s evening broadcast the next day.

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The column that changed history?

Posted on May 10, 2018 by juanzqui7

AFTER MANY YEARS of lobbying for the job, I finally convinced the Houston Post to agree to make me a columnist for the paper in the summer of 1990.

I had been working as a Washington correspondent for The Post when I moved back to Houston to begin writing a column that was supposed to run on the front page of the Metro section three times a week.

(My column was later moved to the op-ed page and reduced to twice a week, but that’s another story for another time.)

My first week as a columnist proved a bit rocky because the paper’s editor was not pleased with my efforts even though I was getting plenty of positive feedback from readers.

His main complaint was that, as a Metro columnist, I should be writing about local and state issues, and he wanted me to do some reporting, not just opining. I actually was. I wrote my very first column after visiting the AIDS quilt at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

The editor didn’t think that was hard-hitting enough. So, for my second column, I wrote about the GOP gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams’ refusal to debate his Democratic opponent, Ann Richards.

In the column (below), I called him a chicken and a spoiled brat and wrote that the real reason he didn’t want to debate was not, as he claimed, because Richards refused to sign a pledge to play nice but rather because he knew he could not control what came out of his own mouth.

The next morning when I picked up my paper, there was my column, splashed across the top of the front page! Not the front page of the Metro Section, but the front page of the entire paper.

That raised a lot of eyebrows, including mine. As much as I liked the exposure my column was getting, I was a firm believer in the theory that the front page of a newspaper should be reserved for news, and that opinion pieces should go inside the paper.

Of course, the content of the column was also controversial. Williams’ supporters thought it was unfair while Richards’ voters loved it.

Predictably, the column was widely circulated around the state.

THAT AFTERNOON, at a luncheon by the Dallas Crime Commission, to which both candidates were invited, Clayton Williams famously declined to shake Ann Richards’ outstretched hands, telling her, “I’m here to call you a liar today.”

That was pretty much the end of the Williams campaign. The man who had led Richards by 11 percentage points late in the summer ended up losing to Richards in November.

Many years later, I heard from an acquaintance who had been a Richards campaign worker that Williams had just finished reading my column before he arrived at that luncheon, and that its content had pissed him off so much that he ended up pulling his childish stunt.

The campaign worker didn’t tell me how she knew Williams had been reading my column and I was too much in shock to think of asking. Since then, I’ve asked others familiar with the Richards campaign and none has confirmed what my acquaintance claimed.

But I do find it interesting that at the luncheon Williams attacked Richards for lying about her primary opponents, former Gov. Mark White and former Attorney General Jim Mattox, echoing words at the end of my column in which I reminded readers of how badly she had mistreated the two men. (I wrote that she had “played dirty” against White.)

SO, DID MY column alter the course of the race? It’s hard to tell, even if many political experts agree that Williams’ refusal to shake Richards’ hand was the turning point in the election. Unless somebody in the Williams campaign comes forward to say that Williams had indeed just read my column (or that he hadn’t), we’ll never know.

I’m enough of a journalistic romantic that I want to believe that it’s true. And who knows, maybe by the time I die, I will go around babbling that it indeed was true!

There’s a big problem, though. If I want to take credit for Richards’ victory, I must be willing to also take the blame for some of the events after the 1990 election. Chief among them would be the election of George W. Bush as president.

How do I figure that? It’s simple: had Williams won, he would have been an incumbent in 1992 and it would have been highly unlikely that Bush would have run for governor against his fellow Republican. And if Bush had never been elected governor (or if he had been elected later), would he have run for president in 2000?

And if Bush had not been elected president would 78-year-old Harry Whittington been shot by the vice president while quail hunting at a South Texas ranch?

And if …?

That’s a lot of ifs. I’m not sure I want to go there.

Here is the column:

HOUSTON POST  |  Page 1  | October 11, 1990

Voters can see through Williams-Richards debate debacle

I SUPPOSE Clayton Williams and his campaign coterie think they’ve found the ideal way to handle his refusal to debate Ann Richards, but they’re fooling no one.

Williams is sitting on a nice lead and apparently sees no reason to give her a chance to score points against him. That would be fine if Williams were upfront about it. But it’s obvious the real reason is that, for all his bluster about how tough he is, the man is a chicken.

Williams is throwing up a lame excuse for refusing to meet Richards face-to-face to answer real live questions from real-life reporters on a real live show.

If Richards won’t promise to be nice to him for the rest of the campaign, he tells us, he won’t debate her.

Williams sounds like a spoiled brat, hiding behind Mommy Manners’ skirts and complaining that Mean Ol’ Annie just won’t play fair.

Fair? This from the man who casts not-so-subtle aspersions about Richards’ private life by questioning whether she’s running for governor of Texas or mayor of San Francisco.

This from the man who sees nothing wrong with questioning whether recovering alcoholic Richards is again hitting the bottle. This, also, from the man who won’t raise a finger to stop the negative radio ads against Richards by the GOP.

Maybe Richards ought to call his bluffand sign the stupid pledge. After all, we all know that political promises mean nothing. (Just read George’s lips.)

Of course, if she were to give in to such an inane demand, Williams would come
up with another silly excuse.

He ought to take a lesson from fellow Republican Phil Gramm, who doesn’t insult us with phony excuses for not wanting to debate.

Gramm’s response is that Hugh Parmer’s campaign can hardly be called credible and therefore he’s not going to waste his time dealing with it.

Not too generous, but at least he’shonest. Besides, no one can ever accuse Gramm of being scared he’ll say the wrong thing in public.

Williams, on the other hand, can’t open his mouth without stuffing both his West Texas boots in it. And. oh what big boots they are.

I covered two of Williams’ trips to Washington. During the first, he claimed Mexican Americans would vote for him because he met his wife at a Mexican restaurant, loved Mexican music and hunted in Mexico. Back in South Texas, we used to have a word for such patronizing Anglos: fools.

On his second trip, Williams claimed that as a result of his visit, the White House had decided to ease gas pipeline regulations. This was the week the secretary of energy had said the administration would do just that. The man was either lying or he was ignorant. Either way, it doesn’t say much for the man who wants to be our next leader.
And these are just his Washington statements. You already know what he’s said here.

The Williams folk would like us to think he’s just a good ol’ boy with an occasional slip of the tongue. It’s more like a persistent brainslide. Williams has ample reason to fear a debate. He is obviously petrified the voters will see that his primary qualification to be governor is his ability to buy the GOP nomination and maybe the office itself.

Please don’t interpret this as an endorsement of Richards, for it is not. Her inept campaign is matched only by the ineptness of her message: vote for me because I’m not crazy like the other guy.

She is obviously not a good student of Texas political history. We’ve always elected crazy people governor — the loonier the better. It doesn’t help her any that she did play dirty in the primary against former Gov. Mark White, thus giving Williams the ammunition he thinks he needs to avoid a debate. And her arrogant avoidance of Jim Mattox in the runoff makes her less than pure when it comes to debates, but at least the voters got a chance to see both in debates before the first election.

Williams is denying us that chance now. He should not be allowed to do that.

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My Barbara Bush Memory

Posted on April 18, 2018 by juanzqui7

IN 1992, I was asked to write an editorial to be published in The Houston Post the Sunday before the Republican National Convention was to open in the Astrodome.

My assignment was to welcome President George Bush to his hometown but to remind him that his presidency so far had not exactly been a success, and to point out the areas for improvement.

It was a long editorial (there was a lot to criticize!) and ended up taking up the entire length of the space reserved for editorials. In a place that normally housed three editorials, there was just this one, titled, “Welcome Home, Mr. President.”

The piece became the talk of the convention. It was mentioned in news articles and broadcasts, and The Washington Post even reprinted it in its Monday op-ed page. (It went on to win first place in the state’s three top editorial writing contests.)

During the convention, Barbara Bush went on the PBS News Hour to be interviewed by Judy Woodruff. One of the questions Woodruff had for her was about the editorial.

“Well,” Bush replied with a huff, “The Houston Post has never endorsed my husband.”

This was a lie, of course, and Barbara Bush knew that.

The Post had repeatedly endorsed her husband in his various runs for public office. In fact, it went on to endorse him in 1992 also. (The editorial page staff had decided to back Bill Clinton but its decision was overruled by the paper’s owner at the last minute, and the editorial I had written endorsing Clinton was shelved.)

YET, INSTEAD of rebutting the editorial, instead of defending her husband by citing some of what she saw as his accomplishments and qualifications, she chose to lie.

In her hometown.

Before a national audience.

She lied.

That’s my Barbara Bush memory.

I am sorry she’s dead and I feel sadness for her family and others who loved her. But I refuse to join the parade of those who are trying to pass her off as an icon of decency and truth.

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1968, a year of hope, discovery, fear and loathing

Posted on April 12, 2018 by juanzqui7

A WHILE AGO I saw a Facebook post in which people were asked about their memories of 50 years ago, of the year 1968. I was tempted to write something but I quickly realized that much, way too much, happened on that year, and that much of it was memorable.

In 1968, I was at Southwest Texas State College (now Texas State University). I had moved there the previous September to finish my college education after commuting for two years to Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde, 40 miles north of my hometown.

I had started at San Marcos majoring in political science but after struggling through one semester of history and government classes that demanded a lot of writing, I switched to art education, having decided that I was not a writer.

Even though Southwest Texas State was known as a party school, I was not part of that scene. The wildest parties I attended were those hosted by the school’s Newman Club, a club for Catholic students. Mild affairs, all of them, with very little drinking and no drug use (at least none that I was aware of).

By the end of the spring semester, 1968, I had been elected president of the Newman Club and I was excited about leading the group the following September under the guidance of a wonderful liberal and literate chaplain, Father John Salvadore. A number of us in the club would meet for dinner at Jones Hall, one of the campus cafeterias, then go across the street to the Catholic church for Father Salvadore’s mass and his always stimulating sermon.

That summer I travelled to New Jersey with two follow Newmanites to attend that annual national Newman Club convention. We drove, stopping in Washington on the way up. We toured the monuments other tourist attractions, of course, but one night we also drove to a seedy part of the city, at the insistence of one of my traveling companions, to go into a topless bar. It was horrible and it took a long time for me to forgive myself for not having the courage to tell my friends I would not go in.

I don’t remember anything about the convention itself but I do remember that one of my friends fell in love with a girl from Maine and how he became obsessed with her. And I remember watching the Chicago Democratic National Convention on TV. I remember the anger and rage against Mayor Richard Daley and against President Johnson, and even poor hapless Hubert Humphrey.

When we returned to San Marcos, it was to learn that Salvadore had been replaced as our chaplain by an obnoxious dictatorial rightwing priest. I don’t even remember his name but I remember spending long hours in his office arguing with him about the direction of the club, but also about religion. Within a few weeks I had not only resigned as president of the club, but I had also resigned from religion. I decided that the God of the Bible is a myth. I still believe that.

IN 1968 I TOOK my first (and only) speech class and I discovered the joys of exposing my life and my heart to others and thrilled in realizing that that my words, if uttered right, could move people. That year I lobbied for and got an appointment to fill a vacant seat in the Student Senate and quickly forced through a resolution commending the school’s student newspaper, the same newspaper that spent months condemning!

It was a year of activism – against the war in Vietnam and against the president of our college, who had been accused of plagiarizing his PhD dissertation (he was to resign the following year). I remember the first anti-war demonstration by a handful of students. It was quickly broken up by a group of kickers as the campus police stood by. (One of them lived on my floor in my dorm and for weeks I had to put up with his bragging about his bravery and patriotism. Within a year he too was demonstrating against the war.)

And I’ll never forget sitting in the crowded living room of Arnold Hall, my dorm, to watch LBJ announce he would not be running for a second term. I was pleased and relieved, but I was also extremely sad for this man who had already accomplished so much and was capable of accomplishing much more.

THE YEAR 1968 was a year of pain. I remember watching Bobby Kennedy on TV as he announced to an Indiana gathering that Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. I remember the sad faces of the King family at his funeral. And then, a couple of months later, I remember waking up on the morning I was to drive to California for my summer cannery job to the news that Kennedy had been shot in Los Angeles, and driving through the California desert on I-10 as the announcement came over the radio that Bobby had died, and then driving through LA as the plane carrying Kennedy’s body took off on its way east.

The fall of 1968 was a year of hope as Hubert Humphrey began to show signs that he just might overcome all his baggage and win the presidency. The highlight of that campaign for me was a huge Austin rally for Humphrey where he delivered the best campaign speech I have ever heard and made us believe a victory for this decent man was possible.

Alas, it was quickly to become a year of despair as election night revealed that it was the dark and dreaded Dick Nixon who had gotten the nod to lead us for the next four years. We were convinced that Nixon was the worst the Republican Party could give us. Nobody was around to warn us of what was to come.

 

 

 

 

 

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‘BANG’ Offers a Dark Look at the Human Cost of Mexico’s Drug War

Posted on March 17, 2018 by juanzqui7

Daniel Peña is not sparing in his assessment of Texas, where farmworkers are poisoned by fertilizer and pesticide, and Mexico, where guessing who will be next to die in the drug wars has become a lottery game.

Book review by Juan R. Palomo

To read the full review, please go to The Texas Observer site.

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Leaders and speeches: HHH, LBJ and the COWH

Posted on January 8, 2018 by juanzqui7

I HAD GREAT plans for this afternoon to do productive things. Instead, I’ve spent most of the afternoon listening to/watching old political speeches on YouTube.

I started with Hubert Humphrey’s civil rights speech to the 1948 Democratic Convention and ended with LBJ’s speech to Congress in March 1965, in which he prodded both houses to do the right thing by passing his voting rights legislation. (You can read the transcript here.)

I had convinced myself that the era of great speeches is long gone until I remembered some of President Barack Obama’s speeches, particularly the one he delivered after the church shootings in Charlestown.

I cried as I listened to those three speeches and I don’t know whether the tears were from the beauty of powerful people using their voices to bring hope to people or from a sense of loss, from a realization that those days of great speeches by great persons are long gone, that we must now settle for the weasely words of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Dan Patrick, little people with little brains and little hearts.

You have probably guessed by now that I’ve been reading Robert Caro’s LBJ books (I’m actually listening to them). For all his faults – and he had many – Lyndon Baines Johnson was a giant of an American and remains one of the country’s greatest presidents, despite his record on Vietnam.

Caro’s books are about Johnson’s quest for power. He was shameless and ruthless in this quest, and too often cruel and vicious. Caro describes in great detail the chilling details about how LBJ unabashedly used McCarthy tactics to defeat Truman’s nomination of Leland Olds, the chairman of the Federal Power Commission, for a third term.

Johnson and Olds shared many of the New Deal views, particularly those having to do with making electrical power to poor and rural Americans. Yet LBJ was willing to crucify him to prove himself loyal to the Texas oilmen whose money he would need to fuel his path to power.

Johnson was also a selfish, vain and pride-filled sadistic egotist who often treated his family and his staff, and his allies, like dirt. He was an ugly chauvinist, crude and rude. None of those personal quirks can be excused.

His pursuit of power, and what he did to amass it, however, can at least be, if not excused, then understood – if you are willing to look at the entire panorama of his life, particularly that period that formed his sense of what is right and what politics and government (a great society) can and should do for people, from his childhood in the Hill Country to his two years as a teacher in a Mexican-American school in Cotulla.

“Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face fo a young child,” Johnson told Congress that evening, speaking of his students in Cotulla.

LBJ wanted to be president. He thought he was qualified to be in the Oval Office and he also believed that only as president could he bring about the kind of changes he knew could bring hope to the nation’s poor. People like those he grew up with. People like the poor Mexican kids he taught in Cotulla.

Johnson was also in a hurry. He was convinced that, like most men in the Johnson family, he was doomed to an early death. He wanted to have enough time in the White House to make his dream of a better life for Americans a reality, and he could not afford to wait around for the nation to come to him to beg him to be president. (He also believed it would be next to impossible for a Texan to be elected to hold the nation’s highest office, so he couldn’t be just another Texas politician.)

COMPARE THAT TO the Current Occupant of the White House (to be referred to as COWH on this site from now on). COWH shares many of the same traits as LBJ: ruthless, cruel, rude, chauvinist, etc. Like LBJ, COWH is using his position to enrich himself and his family.

But that is where the similarities end. LBJ wanted to be president to do good. He put the full force of his White House behind the voting rights bill even though he knew it meant he would lose the South if he were to run again. COWH wanted to be president to avenge himself, to prove wrong all those who ridiculed the idea of him in the White House.

LBJ was a student of history and government and politics. He knew how government works better than anyone else. He knew the Constitution. COWH knows cowshit about government and is proud of it.

LBJ surrounded himself with bright, hard-working men who were loyal to him. COWH surrounds himself with ignorant sycophants who can’t wait to leak every last detail about their boss and to undercut their colleagues.

And, finally, Lyndon Johnson may not have been the greatest public speaker in the world, but he knew what a good speech was and what it could accomplish, and he knew how to get the right people to pen the right speech for every occasion. He knew the power of public words and chose to use them to uplift us, not insult and divide us.

And COWH? All I can say is, “SAD!”

 

 

 

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In defense of Yuli Gurriel

Posted on October 29, 2017 by juanzqui7

I WASN’T IN the Astros’ dugout when a camera caught Yuli Gurriel making what has been described as a racially insensitive gesture, so I don’t know what he was saying or what was going through his mind when he did that, or when he uttered the word chinito. But his explanation that he was joking with his teammates that Dodgers Pitcher Yu Darvish went easy on him because Darvish thought he too was Asian is plausible to me.

If you look at Gurriel’s face you can tell that he, like many Latinos, have hints of Asian features on them. It is possible that, after having played baseball several years in Japan, Gurriel thought of himself as having Asian looks. As to the word chinito, I categorically reject the charge that it translates into “little Chinese boy,” as The Washington Post reports.

Yes, if you’re talking about a Chinese boy, you most certainly use the word chinito. But for many Latinos – including me and my family and most of the people I grew up in South Texas – there is nothing racist or demeaning about using chinitos when referring Asians.

I grew up never knowing how to say “Asian” in Spanish. Like Gurriel, and like most of the people I grew up with, I would say chinito if I was referring to anyone of Asian descent. If I were to ask any of my relatives how to say it in Spanish, they would either shrug their shoulders or say chinito. If you were to ask the same question of an upper- or middle-class educated Mexican or Cuban, you’re likely to get the correct word, Asiático. I doubt Gurriel grew up among people who used such words.

And, to be quite honest, if I were to be talking to family members today about an Asian person whose nationality was unknown to me, I would probably still use the word chinito or chinita. Why? Because I wouldn’t be sure I’d be understood if I said Asiático or Asiática. And because I’d be afraid I’d be thought of as putting on airs by using such fancy language.

Maybe Gurriel does know the word asiático, and maybe he would use that word in a more formal atmosphere. At a news conference, for instance. But in a dugout, in the excitement over just having hit a homerun, talking to his fellow Latino teammates, I can see how he would use the word chinito instead of asiático.

As to the “ito” part of the word chinito: there is nothing demeaning about it. Absolutely nothing. Spanish speakers use the diminutive suffixes “ito” and “ita” at the end of nouns and adjectives to denote small size or youth or affection. Yes, when I say chinito, I could be talking about a Chinese boy or a small Chinese man, but I could also be talking affectionately or respectfully about any Chinese male, regardless of age or size.

When we say simply un chino or una china, we are taking away a bit of that respect. Chino and china are cold, disrespectful words. Adding the suffixes “ito” and “ita” adds warmth and respect.

It’s the same when we’re talking about people of African descent. We almost always say negritos or negritas. The only time we use negro or negra is when we intend to convey a lack of respect. Two doors from where my sister lives in Crystal City is Mount Olive Church, the town’s only black church (where one of my nephews and his wife were married). We refer to it as la iglesia de los negritos. Never, la iglesia de los negros.

And when we say that, we’re not saying the church of the little black boys, just as when we say mamacita and papacito, we don’t mean little girl mother or little boy father, and just as when we say Diosito we don’t mean little boy god.

Likewise, when Gurriel said chinito, it is very, very unlikely he was saying “little Chinese boy.” In fact, I would argue that the fact that Gurriel said chinito and not chino is proof that he in no way was showing disrespect for the LA pitcher.

The use of the diminutive suffix when talking about other minority races does not indicate hatred or disrespect. It indicates the complete opposite. It shows there is a sense of connection, of shared experiences. (That may be why you almost never hear us say gringuito, unless we are indeed referring to a little white boy.)

SO I WOULD argue that the penalty assessed on Gurriel by the baseball commissioner is excessive. However, I don’t believe there was anyway the commissioner could adequately explain all the intricacies of the Spanish language to an American audience, so he had no choice. He did the right thing, though, by delaying the punishment until next season.

 

 

 

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Potato-picking World Series memories

Posted on October 26, 2017 by juanzqui7

[I wrote this column for USA TODAY in 1998 (October 14), shortly after yet another disappointing Astros year. A friend suggested I post it here. It starts off talking about my penchant for choosing underdogs when it comes to sports. Those days are long gone; this year I’m rooting for the best team!]

 

 

THE ELIMINATION OF my beloved Houston Astros from the National League championship contention has, sadly, left me with very little at stake in this year’s World Series. And perhaps it’s for the better. I’m not sure I have ever recovered from the first two times Houston fought for and lost the National League title. Nobody should have to

face such numbing heartbreaks too many times in one lifetime.

Oh, but it would have been so sweet, so precious – so glorious.

It would have.

It seems that when it comes to baseball, my life has been filled with would-haves, with wait-till-next-years.

From the very beginning, from my first-ever exposure to professional baseball, it was always “maybe next year,” because from the start I was somehow always choosing the underdog, the least favored.

lapapa

My family picking potatoes in North Dakota. Circa 1952

THAT IS HOW it came to be that I became a Dodgers fan – a Brooklyn Dodgers fan – at a very early age. I’m not sure whether I could tell you exactly how old I was when professional baseball entered my life, but I can tell you that it made its presence known through the tinny car radio of my Uncle Adrian’s old Pontiac, as it sat on the edge of a flat North Dakota field where the grownups picked potatoes out of the black earth.

Because of our ages, my sister Carmen and I were not allowed to help in the fields; so we spent most of our days huddled inside the old green Plymouth that was our family car. It was a lonely time and often scary, for there were many times when the stooped workers were at the other end of the field, half a mile or so, and we felt utterly isolated.

We looked forward to the noon break when the rest of the family gathered around the fire my father had lit an hour or so before the appointed time, so that it could bake to perfection the large red potatoes he had nestled under its orange embers. It was those glowing shapes, also, that warmed and toasted my mother’s chorizo-and-bean tacos.

A few yards away, Tio Adrian’s family would be going through the same routine, and next to them, Victor and Lupe, my godparents, would have their own fire. And there would be other families beyond them.

Despite the cold and the harshness of the work, the mood was almost always cheerful, with much banter between the campfires. It was a time for jokes and for tales, all of which we were eager to consume. However, every year during that one week in October, we sat and ate mostly in silence, so we could concentrate on the muffled and crackling noise coming from Tio Adrian’s car radio – the broadcast of the World Series.

As I said, I was very young, and at that time, English was mostly an alien language. I knew very little about baseball and almost nothing about the major leagues. Actually, all those years I assumed there were but two teams that faced each other in that rite of autumn, and those teams were – you guessed it – the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I’m sure the Dodgers must have won at least once during that time, but if they did, I don’t remember. I do remember that each victory by the Yankees ­– each home run, each hit – was celebrated with a raucous grito by Tio Adrian, who was a diehard Yankee fan. Even worse, my cousins – his children – took great delight in gloating over every win by their father’s team.

It was that – the gloating and smarmy celebrating – that made me not only a Yankees hater, but also forever a National League devotee.

In those simple days, I divided the forces of the world into two columns, the good guys on the right and the others on the left. And so the National League was entered on the right column, under Catholics, Democrats and Ford, while the American League joined the Protestants, Republicans and Chevy on the other column. (To this day, I have yet to buy a GM car, although I have been known to vote Republican once in a while — and some of my best friends are Protestant.)

The thing that was really special about those days was that the team loyalties were never able to overpower the sense of community, of oneness, that the series brought into our lives out there in the cold Dakota plains. Yes, we had been a community all along, with much in common. But almost always we were a community united against the frightening forces of nature and the outside world. During the World Series, however, we were united for something. During those days, we were brought together by 18 men whose faces we’d never seen, whose uniforms we could only imagine and whose stadiums we wouldn’t have been able to fathom had somebody tried to describe them to us.

I WAS TO remain a Dodgers fan, even after they moved west, but they had to be content with sharing my loyalty with the Braves (before they moved to Atlanta and became perpetual winners) and the Mets (until they won their first championship) and now my poor, hapless ‘Stros.

But it really doesn’t matter to me which two teams make it into the final round. The World Series remains a special, magical time and place. And somehow no large-screen color TV can replace or replicate the sensuous autumnal memories: the striking smell of freshly turned Red River Valley soil, the sibilant static of a distant and often-disappearing AM radio station warring with the grumbling roars of a field-side fire, the scent of a steaming black-skinned potato newly split in two, and always – always – the ricocheting rumble of a title-happy crowd that follows the electrifyingly beautiful bopping sound of wood whacking a tiny ball into the bleachers.

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A week in paradise, San Miguel de Allende

Posted on August 14, 2017 by juanzqui7

ON MY LAST morning in this beautiful colonial city, I am sitting outside on the patio. It rained last night and the air is crisp and cool. The sounds I hear are those of a nearby wall-mounted fountain, which, despite its size, produces a mighty rippling soothing sound that could become addictive.

There’s an occasional bird, a steady coo-coo of a dove, and every half-hour or so, the sonorous gong of the towering pink Parroquia, a few blocks away, and the clanging peals of other nearby churches. It’s past 8 and I’m sure the city is wide-awake and going about its business, but there is no traffic noise from the adjacent narrow cobblestoned street. There are probably cars and trucks moving up and down the streets, but their sound doesn’t penetrate the thick walls of this house. It’s so quiet, you can pretend you’re somewhere out in the countryside. This morning, shortly after I woke up around 5:30, I heard for the first time a train whistle blowing in the distance. Like the fountain, it too was a soothing noise.

I’m staying in a huge house in the Centro, the central part of the San Miguel de Allende that surrounds the Jardín, a small park in front of the Parroquia, a beautiful church that dominates the skyline like a massive pink and orange jewel. The house has four or five bedrooms but it’s part of a building that includes other apartments, so it’s huge. Yet, anyone walking on the street would have no idea that such a beautiful and immense residence hides behind the pink wall that faces the street. Unlike Americans, who invest greatly in making the parts of their houses facing the streets into a showcase, Mexicans (and the thousands of North Americans who also call this city home), would rather spend their money on what’s hidden behind the walls.

There are many houses like this in San Miguel, owned by Mexicans and foreigners, who spend a few weeks or months here then go back home and let strangers rent out their homes. Many of the renters come from the United States and other countries, but many of them are Mexicans from Mexico City, although I’ve heard several homeowners who say they refuse to rent to Chilangos, as Mexico City residents are called, because too many of them have no respect for the properties and treat their household staffs like dirt.

Of course, rude, crude behavior is not limited to Chilangos. Ugly Americans (and ugly other foreigners) also can be found in San Miguel. A few minutes ago I gave María, the woman who takes care of this house (and whips up some mighty tasty breakfasts), a small gift of appreciation and saw tears form in her eyes as she said she’ll miss our group. “Not many groups treat me as you all have,” she said. “You have been wonderful to me.”

I am lucky that I am with a group of people who are considerate and loving toward all the people with whom they come in contact in San Miguel. I don’t think I would have stuck around the entire week had any of them behaved otherwise.

I HAVE BEEN to San Miguel twice before and I really thought I would not be coming back, even though I am in love with this city, for the simple reason that there is so much more of this country that I have yet to see. But my host, a dear friend, insisted and persisted until I found it impossible to say no. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Each time I come here, local expats, as the Americans and other foreigners who live here call themselves, inevitably ask if I would consider moving here. I always reply that of course I would. Who wouldn’t want to live in paradise? And each time I do give it serious thought and even pore over real estate newspaper ads and websites, but inevitably inertia and apathy and fear and all the other forces of nature settle in and I forget about moving here.

But, as I get older and I become less patient with Houston’s humid summer heat and I think more and more about getting rid of shit and simplifying my life, I may be giving it more serious thought. The good thing about San Miguel is that it’s not just for rich Americans. I have two friends who live here. One survives strictly on her Social Security check and the other one whatever money she earns teaching tango lessons. One rents a studio in a nice neighborhood for $500 (which pays for utilities, cable, phone, internet access, etc.). The other one rents a room in a house for less than that. They are both happy as hell and could never consider moving away, especially to the United States.

And why would they? There is so much going on here, so many opportunities to get involved, to get out and meet people. In my short time here I went to a poetry reading, a performance by an American string quartet and (for free), a concert by a local string quartet. There are museums and private galleries everywhere. Fine restaurants can be found on every street, and for every fine restaurant there are many more inexpensive establishments that offer great food.

And for people who love to cook, the mercados offer fresh fruits, vegetable, spices and meats at ridiculously low prices.

The climate is perfect. Cool in the evenings and early mornings but warm (not hot) during the afternoon. Hardly anyone has air conditioning; a good fan is all that’s needed.

Because there are so many rich foreigners here, there are a lot of excellent doctors and some great hospitals here. For those who can’t afford to pay for this first-rate care, there are good alternatives. My friend who lives on Social Security says she pays $54 a year for free medical care, including medicines.

Whenever I talk about San Miguel back home, inevitably I get this yeah-but from others: “Yeah, but do you really want to live in a city that is overrun by Americans?” San Miguel, these people claim, has been ruined by foreigners. (Some of these critics have never been here.)

Listening to these people, you’d think you can’t go anywhere here without risking being trampled by hordes of Americans. That is far from the case. True, you see Americans everywhere, but you see Americans in almost every other popular Mexican city. Foreigners have not taken over this city. You can still walk around in San Miguel and be among Mexicans.

And foreigners have contributed a lot to this city and its economy and way of life. Most expats are involved in volunteer efforts and they raise money for various causes. Many salaries are paid by the expat community, so even if the locals were to resent such a large expat presence, they tolerate los gringos – kind of like how Houston tolerates refineries.

SO THERE’S A lot to be said for this beautiful city, and a lot to be said for how it’s evolved as a haven for expats. Will I ever be one of them? I don’t know. But I’ll continue to dream about it.

 

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Applying weight to the memories that feed our souls

Posted on July 20, 2017 by juanzqui7

[Six years ago I posted this on another blog. I’ve long since abandoned that blog but it still resides in the Internet. One day it will probably die of neglect. So I’ve decided to migrate some of my favorite posts to this blog. ]

DID YOU EVER wonder how your elementary school teachers pictured you?

Not many of us ever get the opportunity to go back into the minds of those old teachers to find out what they thought of us. A year or so before The Houston Post folded, I wrote a column about some of the great teachers I had in my hometown of Crystal City, Texas. (See previous blog post.) I wrote primarily about my junior high teachers, but I also mentioned Lucille Busby, my second-grade teacher.

A few weeks later, I received a copy of a letter written by Mrs. Busby to the town’s newspaper editor. Apparently somebody had already mailed a copy of the column to where she lived, in an Austin nursing home. This is what she wrote:

“I’ve a friend … who once lived in Crystal City, briefly, several years go. She is now in Baytown and has been sending me articles by Juan occasionally from the Post, including this one. I feel very proud of that little second-grader that I taught many years ago at Zavala [it was actually at Grammar School]. He was a little migrant child, cute, quiet, very bright, hard-working and has always been at the top of a long line of mostly second graders that I’ve remembered thru the years – Hispanic and Anglo…

“I lost track of [Juan] after he reached the higher grades and desegregation had begun. But I can see the hurt, even anger that might have been growing in the mind and heart of a middle-school migrant child. They [migrant students] usually came in weeks [after school started] and left weeks early, feeling second-class and trying so hard to catch up and keep up. That hurt applied to his classmates, both Hispanic and Anglo. Oftentimes the Hispanic child had less understanding and tolerance than the Anglo.

“I wish Thelma Ford and Mary Campbell [teachers I wrote about in the column] were around to read Juan’s tribute to them. They were deserving and would have appreciate his feelings so much…

“Emma has sent me a few of Juan’s Post clips in recent weeks on various subjects. I especially remember his tribute to Carmela López on her death that you printed in your paper several months ago. Rubén López is his maternal uncle. It was well done, tho I seem to feel a heartbreak in his writing that was deeper than sadness of the occasion. Maybe I’m reading something into it.

“Since leaving Crystal City in June, ’70, just at the beginning of La Raza [La Raza Unida Party, which took over control of local government in the early 70s and ruled for about a decade], I know nothing of my children’s (Hispanic) grown-up years, pro or con, or of their leanings in their adult politics.

“I’m proud of Juan and of his efforts in reaching the goal that he has set and hope for only the best for him. I know that he has worked hard to gain what he has against mighty odds. I wish that I could know that second grader as a man…”

I’M SORRY TO say that I never took the opportunity to pay a visit to Mrs. Busby so she would get to know me “as a man.” I would have liked to ask her what she meant by “hurt, even anger that might have been growing” in my heart. Did she actually see that when I was in her class? Or was that what she read in me through my columns, many of which, I have to admit, were filled with anger at the many injustices suffered by Hispanics and other minorities in my home state.

I would have loved to learn what she meant by “the Hispanic child had less understating and tolerance than the Anglo.”

Frankly, I don’t recall any of my teachers ever asking us what we understood or thought about what we saw around us – the segregate schools, the outright and intentional discrimination, and the institutional neglect of the Mexican kids by the school district.

ONE OF THE reasons Mrs. Busby may have lost track of me was that after spending second grade in her class at Grammar Elementary School, which was three blocks from my house and was attended by all the Anglo and non-migrant Mexican kids – and a few of the migrant kids, including my two sisters – I was told the next year that there was no room for me and I was dispatched to Airport 2 Elementary (so called because it was near the town’s airport, which during World War II was part of the Japanese-American internment camp that also housed German POWs and South Americans of Japanese descent), which was a couple of miles away. The school was one of two that had been used to teach the camp kids; we called it El Campo. Each year I tried again to enroll in Grammar and each year I was again sent to Airport 2, a drafty school equipped with leftover desks and no playground equipment – and which no bus service. Some of our teachers were certified; others had received emergency teaching certificates after a year or two of college (some of these teachers were better than the certified teachers).

In the fourth grade, we had four teachers. The third was an ex-jock named Darrel Bailey, who’d attended two years of college, if that much. To his credit, he never pretended he knew anything about teaching. The only academic topic he liked was spelling. We were expected to memorize the words from the spelling book and then wait of him to call on us to spell a word. If we got it right, we got an “OK.” If we misspelled it, we’d get a paddling. Of course, he knew who the better spellers were, so people like me never got called on and some of the other students would be honored with several paddlings by the time the spelling lesson was over.

But I was not so lucky when it came to art class, which consisted of Manuel Palacios and me – the other class “artist” – drawing pictures with colored chalk on the blackboard. When we finished, the class would vote on the winner. Unfortunately for me, Manuel was a much better artist, so he got the prize – a Coke – and I got the loser’s reward: you guessed it, another paddling. (The one time the class chose my drawing, Mr. Bailey exercised his veto power and I got a paddling anyway.)

The rest of the class day, Mr. Bailey would sit on his desk, holding a softball in his hand and looking up and down the rows of desks. With no warning, he’d toss the ball at one of us. Those who failed to catch the ball got a paddling. When he got tired of these games, he’d sit down to write love notes to a cute female teacher whose classroom was at the other end of the school. It was then up to Manuel or Hector Sánchez or me – or a few other students – to deliver the notes to the teacher, and wait for her reply.

Fortunately, Mr. Bailey didn’t last long. Without explanation, he was gone one day and he was replaced by a wonderful, caring teacher, Mrs. Jett. She was everything Mr. Bailey wasn’t and I will never forget how quiet the classroom became when she would read to us – “Lassie Come Home” and other classics.

I’ve often wondered why none of us ever complained about Mr. Bailey – to the principal, or to our parents. But I realize that none of us knew we could complain. During my entire 13 years in the public schools (grades 1 through 12 plus what was called pre-primer, the year before first grade when we were supposed to learn English), it never once occurred to me to complain about anything that happened in school to my parents. Our families, our church and our culture taught us that we should be subservient, that we should never rock the boat. And even if we were to tell our parents, what could they do? Most of them didn’t even speak English, and most of them never imagined that, as parents, they had a voice, much less one that would be listened to.

As for the principal, how could he not have known what was going on in his school? What would complaining to him have accomplished?

So, with all due respect to Mrs. Busby, intolerance was not exactly one of our vices.

IN THE COLUMN that prompted Mrs. Busby’s letter, I wrote glowingly about some of my teachers, most of them Anglo. Like Mrs. Jett, all of them were superb and cared deeply about their Mexican students. At least that was what I saw. How they treated the Mexican kids in other classes, I don’t know.

However, their excellence in the classroom does not erase the fact that they were also part of a school district – run by Anglo administrators and Anglo trustees – that systematically and unabashedly treated us as second-class citizens. Why would such otherwise God-loving, church- going teachers never bother to speak out against the injustices that were committed against the Mexican kids? Did they believe that doing their duty inside the classroom was all that was required of them? Wasn’t at least one of them ever moved to say, even in a private, whispered conversation with another, This is not right, what we’re going to these people?

Maybe these teachers privately hated what was being done to us. Maybe they quietly worked to end the institutionalized apartheid. If they did, none ever chose to confide in any of us after La Raza Unida liberated the schools about their quiet protests. None, as far as I know, ever expressed joy at finally having the opportunity to work in a free school. Indeed, most of them quickly packed their bags and moved to neighboring towns – still under Anglo control – to pursue their teaching careers.

I often fantasize of sitting down for a long conversation with one of those teachers and asking her these questions. Not in an atmosphere of recrimination and accusations, but in the spirit of shedding light on a great mystery. I fantasize about that because I’ve always been curious about how large numbers of people are able to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing, or rationalize it to themselves.

You may be asking yourself, “Why doesn’t he just get over this? Why can’t he forgive and forget? What can be accomplished by re-living all that?”

Good questions, all. I am quite capable of suppressing many of those memories for long periods of time. I do have a life to live and I don’t spend much time dwelling on the past. However, it is impossible to forget that which helped shape who I am and what I am. The soul feeds on memories, the good and the painful. It is up to us to assign weight to those memories to determine how to react to today’s realities.

NOT LONG AGO, I read how National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, an African American whose family is a product of the Old South, believes that it wasn’t the Civil Rights movement that toppled and desegregated the South. Rather, she believes the Old South was already on the verge of collapsing from its own weight. She’s a perfect example of someone who assigns no weight to the memories of the injustices suffered by her family. In doing so, she dishonors not only her family, but also the thousands of men and women – black and white – who were beaten, imprisoned, intimidated, insulted or killed to ensure that she would have the opportunities she’s enjoyed.

My bad old days may be gone, but it would be foolish for me to claim they never existed, or that they’re over for everybody. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read about somebody somewhere in this country taking advantage of somebody else, of those who lack the power to fight back. It is important that, every once in a while, we are reminded of what one group of people is capable of doing to another.

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