Lazy Mexican: The Fallacy By Edith Prado Lemus All throughout my life I had been following the aspirations, dreams, and wants of those around me. I grew up in a few different neighborhoods being born in Torrance then moving to Inglewood, Hawthorne, and finally settling in Lawndale. I will not say that the former cities were bad neighborhoods, but I have seen a stark difference in population, facilities, and overall social/community atmosphere. Despite the fact that my neighborhoods and consequentially, schools, have been predominantly Latino and African American, I have always felt out of place; that there was something wrong something was missing in my life. I suppose that is why I started volunteering at my church as a youth mentor. I saw errors in the education system and I wanted to help my peers in the way I knew best on a more personal one-on-one level. Though I left the church mentoring program, because I also saw major flaws within that institution, I knew somewhere in my core being that I had to make a difference. I suppose this sentiment has inherently been with me but it took coming to UCLA to truly begin to understand why I felt compelled to help my community. Before coming to UCLA, one could say that I was a good student ; a studious person who was always at the top of her class and never gave up. However, I did this not because I had a particular goal, I was simply following my mother and father s mostly mother s mandate of needing to go to school. You must get excellent grades, mija, so that you can go to college and become a professional she would say to me, but I never knew why I had to do anything of the sort. It is not only until my senior year of high school that I even heard the term Chicano thus sparking my interest in what is now my major
here at UCLA. Like many of my friends, I had no one s footsteps to follow in terms of attaining a college education, but with the help of teachers and counselors, I was able to reach my goal of going to college. Though I may have initially carried out my mother s wishes, being here at UCLA has been one of the most transformative experiences of my life. Coming to UCLA has allowed for me to not only delve into my cultural heritage but to also delve into my family history and find exactly why my parents constantly urged me to attain an education. After having taken a few Chicano Studies classes I decided to inquire about my family history, which I found contributed to the building and eventual success of not only Los Angeles, but California. Although some may say that this is rather a stretch, I say it is befitting of the fact that not only was Los Angeles founded by mostly those who are now considered the minority, but California, and the nation s economy for that matter, have depended on imported, immigrant labor. This is where my family comes into play. Initially, I had always thought of my family as having remained in Michoacán, Mexico their entire lives, but as I interviewed my mother, I discovered that my great grandparents initiated migration to the United States. My maternal great grandparents, Epimegnia Alvarado and Ignacio Hernandez eloped when they were just 13 and 21, respectively, in Huipana, Michoacán, Mexico. When Epimegnia had her first two children, one of whom was my grandmother Maria de Jesus, she immigrated with Ignacio to Los Angeles. This was due to the recruitment of Mexican workers in order to build the various rail roads sparking up in the early 1920s in the United States. This migration, however, was temporary, as Epimegnia and Ignacio only immigrated to attain sufficient amount of income until they could return and obtain jobs in Michoacán, Mexico. At around this time, my maternal grandfather s
parents, Aurelia Alvarado and Francisco Lemus, immigrated from Huipana, Michoacán, Mexico to Los Angeles as well. They immigrated with their only son, my grandfather, Geronimo, due to financial need as well once again, working on building the railroads in Los Angeles. However, after having lost his wife and a son, my great grandfather decided to take my grandfather back to Mexico so as to raise him there. Although my grandparents did not continue this migration to and from the United States as my great grandparents did, my parents Isabel and Rodolfo Prado chose to immigrate to Los Angeles for the same reasons my great grandparents did to earn the income needed to provide for a family. Having heard all of this from my mother, I then saw just how my family echoed the same sentiments as those Mexicanos at the time of Porfirio Diaz s regime. I had learned in a Chicano Studies history class that many Mexicans came to the United States not to take the jobs from U.S. citizens but to acquire the resources that were scarce, insufficient, or unsecured in Mexico. As Porfirio Diaz sought to attract foreign business in order to have Mexico thrive industrially, many small farmers were put out of business and lost their livelihoods, not to mention the illnesses, and lack of employment (consequentially, insufficient pay) all which set the perfect conditions for many Mexicans to immigrate or migrate to and from the U.S. and Mexico. Additionally, with the incentives that rail road companies offered Mexican laborers in order to recruit them to work on the tracks, more Mexicans found it beneficial to migrate to the United States for a certain period of time then return home when their work was completed especially when pay rates were practically guaranteed higher than those in Mexico at the time. I was thinking of all these facts and histories when listening to my mother relate to me that my great grandparents did what the citizens under the Porfiriato regime did in order to
survive in their dramatically changing homeland of Mexico. For me, to have a real connection to U.S. Mexican history within my own family allowed for me to better understand the reasons why my parents came to this country and consequentially, why they wanted me to attain an education they were not so lucky to have had. As previously mentioned, it was not until my senior year of high school that I first heard of the term Chicana. During the second semester of my senior year, my AP Spanish class was taught by a UCLA senior who wanted to be a teacher and was teaching us in order to fulfill a requirement. She told me broadly about what Chicana/o Studies was and that she was majoring in it, but she did something more pertinent than this she taught the class about what had been going on in Chiapas, Mexico. Never before had I been privy to this kind of de-centered U.S. view in school, we were focusing on something that mattered ; an issue that was real and we could help if we wished to. It was this socio-political knowledge that first sparked my interest in Chicana/o Studies and now, while at the University, I identify as a Mexicana/Chicana/Latina because of what I have learned thus far. As a first-generation University student, and having been born in the United States, I cannot truly understand the hardships my family went through in order to get me, and my siblings, to such a privileged position. I can only imagine how frightened and anxious my mother felt while immigrating here crossing by way of the hills patrolled by border patrol and getting sick along the way, while she, my two oldest brothers, and uncle journeyed here. However, it has been because of my family in conjunction with the University that I see it more pertinently than ever the need to bridge the gap between the community and the University to educate and be educated on matters of social and political justice, not only through strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations, but also by learning one s history and doing some personal/psychological work in order to figure out what one s purpose is in
shaping the future of their community. To not aid my community would be a major disservice to my parents and to myself they sacrificed so much to get me here, and I in turn have also painstakingly worked through hardships and hurdles in order to further my goals while continually and constantly working and reworking my consciousness in order to define what being Chicana means not only to me, but to my community. I firmly believe that my family s migration and immigration to this country has not only resonated with very specific events in history, but has ultimately led to my current consciousness about the issues in my community. Though I now carry out my own wishes and aspirations, I still have yet to find what it is I want to contribute to the present so as to shape a better future. What I do know, is that in participating in tutoring/mentoring programs, going to immigration marches like the March 2006 marches, and simply attending the University, I am shaping a better future for myself and specific members of my community. With the knowledge I have acquired thus far in my collegiate career, I feel that I am in a much better position to use my newly found agency in order to impact the lives of others even on the most miniscule of planes. Above than anything else, however, what I want to demonstrate to those prejudice and racist members of society that they posses unfounded and deeply ignorant views of the immigrant population here in the United States. For instance, there has always been this idea of the sleeping giant something that I recently discovered has not been true at all of Mexicans/Latinos. Throughout Los Angeles history at least, there have been constant protests and challenges to imposed regime as seen with the use of the justice system that America, and Spanish before them, imposed on the Californios in the mid 19 th century. That is, to label Latino activists as the giants who have been sleeping throughout the heavily oppressive governmental and educational system would be a false statement. Latinos have been showing
constant mobilization and organization throughout history, from the early bandidos (bandits) who took social justice into their own hands, to the parents who fought for the desegregation of Mexican only schools, to Chicanos during the Chicano movement, to present-day student activism such as the walkouts, all of this has made me realize that the image of the lazy Mexican is a fallacy. That is why I feel so compelled to do my part in order to continue the constant struggle and enlightenment of not only my community, but other ethnic minorities who have parallel issues. The only problem or challenge I can see about discovering how my life has indeed converged with history is the burden I feel now that I have reached the process of consciousness. That is to say, now that I realize why I have even come to be, I sometimes feel an overwhelming sense of obligation; obligation to, for lack of a better phrase, do something about the injustices afflicting Mexicans in the United States, or Latinos as a whole for that matter. With the knowledge that I have acquired, I cannot continue living as if I am blind to the issues around me, I have been burdened with knowledge and I feel required to either enlighten others and/or continue participating in the ongoing struggle for socio-political rights. That is the brilliance of my realization though I may be on a path to consciousness, the gift of having the ability to help improve my people s plight outweighs the sense of burden I may sometimes feel.