Caramelo
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1846 U.S. invades Mexico. The Mexican War. Or, the American War of Intervention, depending on your point of view.
1847 The “Boy Heroes” of Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle leap to their death defending this military stronghold, rather than surrender to the incoming U.S. invaders.
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the basis for bilingual education and bilingual ballots, is signed, ending the Mexican-American War. In theory, it protected the cultural and property rights of Mexicans choosing to remain and become U.S. citizens.
1860–1870’s New immigrants are attacked, especially the Chinese and the Irish. Most U.S.-citizen Mexicans are stripped of their lands and rights, and some are lynched.
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act suspends Chinese labor immigration and naturalization. Mexican immigrant numbers increase.
1891 Immigration Act. The first comprehensive law for national control of immigration.
1900–1933 An estimated one-eighth of Mexico’s population moves north to the U.S.
1907 U.S. economic depression. Teddy Roosevelt’s “Gentleman’s Agreement” bars entry of Japanese laborers. • Francisco Gabilondo Soler, Cri-Crí, the Singing Cricket, is born in Orizaba, Veracruz; the composer of three hundred children’s songs famous throughout Latin America and Europe, especially in the former Yugoslavia.
1909 U.S.–Mexico treaty imports Mexican laborers to California to harvest sugar beets.
1911 Mexican Revolution begins.
1916 General Pershing sent into Mexico to get Pancho Villa.
1917 $130 million later, U.S. troops return from Mexico without Villa. • The U.S. imports Mexican workers again in face of labor shortages caused by their entry into World War I. • Immigration Act further restricts entry of Asians and introduces literacy requirements and an $8 head tax for entry. • German Americans living in the U.S. viewed with suspicion due to World War I. German communities, once separated from each other by religion, unite against anti-German sentiments. German disappears from pulpits and from street signs, as well as from newspapers. American flags are raised overnight on the porches of German American homes, and children are punished by their elders for speaking anything but English.
1920 Mexican Civil War ends. • U.S. Congress proposes a ceiling on the number of Mexican immigrants allowed to enter. • Buster Keaton fills his swimming pool with champagne so that the bubbles will tickle the soles of his guests’ feet. • The Charleston is outlawed on the sidewalks of New York.
1921 November 14, a bomb is planted in la Virgen de Guadalupe’s basílica in Mexico City, but, miraculously, the tilma is unscathed. • The U.S. Temporary Quota Act creates the first step toward immigration quotas.
1924 Immigration Act imposes first permanent quota system, biased toward admitting North and Western Europeans, lasting until 1952, establishes the country’s only national police force, the U.S. Border Patrol, and provides for deportation of those who become public charges, violate U.S. law, or engage in alleged anarchist or seditionist acts.
1926 José Mojica, the Mexican Valentino, records “Júrame.”
1927 Lupe Vélez and Douglas Fairbanks make a film together. • In Belgium, the ex-empress Carlota dies. Adiós, mi Carlota.
1928 As a result of the Cristeros uprisings and postrevolutionary Mexico’s feuds between Church and state, Mexican president Obregón is assassinated by a Catholic nun and a religious fanatic in La Bombilla Restaurant in Mexico City.
1929 Legislation fixes the quota system, guaranteeing the numerical predominance of white people in the population and making it a crime for a previously deported alien to try to enter the country again. • Stock market crashes.
1930’s “Mexican scare” in early years of Great Depression rounds up and deports hundreds of thousands of Mexicans from the U.S.
1933 Separate immigration and naturalization functions are consolidated in the Labor Department, creating the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service).
1935 Mexico inaugurates the Pan American Highway on July 1, crossing tropical canyons, valleys, rivers, and mountains.
1940 The brilliant Gabriel Vargas initiates El Señor Burrón o vida de perro, precursor to La familia Burrón comics. • Frida marries Diego—again! • Tens of thousands of U.S.-citizen Japanese stripped of their properties and thrown into concentration camps. • Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees refused permission to enter the U.S. again. • INS is transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to international tensions and war.
1941 The U.S. enters World War II. Mexican migration to U.S. reinvigorated during the war. • Ensconced in a house called La Escondida, Dolores del Río returns to Mexico because she loves Mexico, she says, but in reality it’s because the love of her life, that gordo Orson Welles, the only one she really loved because we always love the one who doesn’t love us, has dumped her for another Latina—Rita Cansino, or Rita Hayworth, who will dump Orson for the Aga Khan.
1942 Bracero program provides 5 million Mexican laborers for U.S. employers during the next two decades. • Mexico joins the Allies in declaring war on the Axis; Mexico’s chiquitos pero picosos Squadron 201 sent to the Pacific.
1943 Repeal of Chinese Exclusion Act. • The Los Angeles “Zoot Suit Riots,” or “Military Riots,” depending on your point of view, weeks of U.S. servicemen hunting down and beating up zoot-suit-dressed pachucos, make front-page news in newspapers all over the nation. • In Mexico, baby volcano Paricutín is born in Dionisio Pulido’s cornfield.
1945 World War II ends. Mexicans earn more Congressional Medals of Honor than any other ethnic group. • María Félix’s new film, La devoradora, The She-Devourer, just released.
1948 Tongolele erupts in Mexico City.
1949 Economic recession causes massive roundups of undocumented workers. Korean War breaks the recession, but after the war, 1953–1955, another roundup of Mexicans begins anew because of another recession.
1952 Immigration Act. National origins quota is continued, as well as quotas for skilled aliens whose services are needed.
1953 “Professional, longtime Mexican hater” Joseph M. Swing appointed commissioner of the INS. An ex-soldier who was in Pershing’s expedition to hunt down Villa in 1916, he requests $10 million to build a 150-mile-long fence along the border to keep out Mexicans. Military sweeps in the mid-1950’s subject Mexicans to raids, arrests, and deportation drives.
1957 Earthquake rocks Mexico City.
1963 Elvis has Fun In Acapulco, dives off the cliffs of la Quebrada, is chased by Ursula Andress and a Mexican lady-bullfighter, and finishes the film singing “Guadalajara” with a bunch of mariachis.
1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments. Repeals national origin quotas. Establishes system for family unification. Sets 20,000 per country limit for Eastern Hemisphere, and a ceiling for Western Hemisphere is set for the first time.
1973 U.S. troops leave Vietnam. Chicano soldiers are the highest per capita of the number receiving medals for bravery in the Vietnam War. They also died in disproportionate numbers.
1976 Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments. Limits the number of legal visas issued to Mexican immigrants each year to 20,000.
1980 Refugee Act. Establishes first permanent procedure for admitting refugees; defined according to international standards.
1985 Major earthquake devastates Mexico City.
1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Employers are sanctioned for knowingly hiring illegal aliens. Legalization programs are created; amnesty to foreigners who can prove they have resided in the U.S. continuously since 1982. Border enforcement increases.
1990 Immigration Act increases legal immigration ceilings by 40 percent, establishing, among other things, temporary protection status for those jeopardized by armed conflict or natural disasters in their native land. • Mexican composer Francisco Gabilondo Soler, Cri-Crí, dies on December 4.
1994 Zapata is not dead, but rises up again in Chiapas.
1996 Mandatory de
tention of everyone seeking asylum in the U.S. without valid documents. More border enforcement. A fourteen-mile triple fence south of San Diego is constructed, and penalties increased for smuggling undocumented workers into the U.S., as well as for using false documentation. • Lola Beltrán, the great singer of Mexican rancheras, dies on March 26. Although already a legend in her time, she performed at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City only a few years before her death, and the auditorium was half empty.
1997 The bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform advisory group, appointed by Congress and the president in 1990, recommends abolishing the INS and parceling its duties out to other federal agencies.
2000 Census reveals Latino and Asian immigrants, their children and grandchildren, are remaking small towns and big cities across the American heartland.
2001 Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas march into Mexico City on behalf of indigenous rights. • Mexican Bracero laborers sue for back pay withheld since the 1940’s. • The World Bank estimates 1.3 billion people around the world live on less than one dollar a day, 75 percent of them women. • In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the U.S. tightens its borders.
2002 Pope John Paul II canonizes Juan Diego as a saint despite controversy over whether Juan Diego ever existed. Some state that he was simply a story told to the Indians in order to convert them from their devotion to Tonantzín, the Aztec fertility goddess. • María Félix, Mexican movie diva, star of El rapto and ex-wife of Agustín “María bonita” Lara, dies at eighty-eight in Mexico City. Her funeral cortege from the Palace of Fine Arts to the Panteón Francés causes pandemonium in the streets.
All over the world, millions leave their homes and cross borders illegally.
¡Ya pa’ que te cuento!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book has been like making a walking pilgrimage to Tepeyac from Chicago. On my knees. Many fed and sheltered me along the way, and to all, I am grateful. A special thank-you to my friends Barbara Renaud González, Josie Méndez-Negrete, Josie Garza, and Ellen Riojas Clark. Bert Snyder, thanks for my daily dose of Vita-Berts. A Vita-Bert a day keeps the writer’s block away! To Ito Romo and to Gayle Elliott for driving me along the route my father drove from Chicago to San Antonio, thank you. Gracias a Dorothy Allison and Eduardo Galeano for the manna and water of their words. Thanks to the angels who kept my home in order while I was away: Juanita Chávez and Janet Silva, Armando Cortez, Mary Ozuna, Daniel Gamboa, Roger Solís, and Bill Sánchez. Thanks as well to Reza Versace for nurturing body and spirit.
For research assistance I am indebted to several individuals for their testimonios and investigations. First, to my father’s cousin, mi querido tio Enrique Arteaga Cisneros, hombre de letras, cuyas páginas me ayudaron para inventar el mundo “when I was dirt.” Mr. Eddie López for sharing his personal papers on World War II, and to his wife, la Sra. María Luisa Camacho de López, for her invaluable knowledge on rebozos. Mario and Alejandro Sánchez assisted on library research. The historian Steven Rodríguez reviewed my historical references. I would also like to thank my friends Gregg Barrios and Mary Ozuna for memories of San Antonio in the early 1970’s, and thanks too to my sister-in-law Silvia Zamora Cisneros for her Chicago memories. Garrett Mormando, Pancho Velásquez, Marisela Barrera, César Martínez, Franco Mondini, Jasna Karaula, Ito, Barbara, Alejandro, thank you for conversations that allowed me to steal from your past. Liliana, I owe you for the grandfather story. Prayers were provided by spiritual mothers Elsa Calderón y la Sra. Camacho de López. Quality-control proofreaders: Ruth Béhar, Craig Pennel, Liliana Valenzuela, Ito Romo, Norma Elia Cantú, Barbara Renaud González, Gregg Barrios, Macarena Hernández, and Ellen Riojas Clark. Thank you! The patient staff at Mail Boxes Etc. on West Avenue off Blanco in San Antonio, Texas, deserves to be publicly thanked for their excellent care with this manuscript and with me: Felicia, Dorothy, Connie, Jeffrey, and Priscilla. Thanks to María Herrera Sobek for song research.
A writer is only as good as her editors. I am indebted to Dennis Mathis, who pilgrimed alongside me the entire trek. Ito Romo and Alba De León were my coyotes across the borderlands, and Liliana Valenzuela was my scout into the interior. Susan Bergholz, the literary agent/guardian angel who never sleeps, read these stories as I slept, and sent them back with comments before I resumed my journey the next morning. Thanks to la santísima Robin Desser, my editor at Knopf, whose absolute faith in me kept me hobbling forward.
I thank my family in Chicago for patiently accepting the distance and silence this book required. I wish to thank my spiritual family in San Antonio for the same.
The book’s epigraph comes courtesy of Ruth Behar’s Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), p. 18. I am indebted to the excellent research of Rodolfo Acuña’s Occupied America, James D. Cockcroft’s Outlaws in the Promised Land, Carlos Fuentes’ The Buried Mirror, and Elena Poniatowska’s Todo México.
Doy gracias a las ánimas solas, those souls in perpetual fire, my fellow writers clanging their chains in support. Denise Chávez, Julia Alvarez, Norma Elia Cantú, Norma Alarcón, Helena Viramontes, Sonia Saldivar-Hull, Tey Diana Rebolledo. Gracias a todas, todas.
I would like to give thanks to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for their assistance, wings that allowed the manuscript to take flight and become the book I saw in my heart.
There are many individuals, many circumstances in my life that helped me to become a writer, but five major elements bear repeating here. My father’s opposition to my life as a writer. My mother’s support of my choice. The Chicago Public Library. Dennis Mathis, the most wonderful friend and my literary mentor. Susan Bergholz, my agent, who dreamed beyond my dreams and allowed me to earn my keep with my pen. I am indebted to all.
During the decade I was writing Caramelo, these lives slipped across the border from this life into the next: Thomasine Cordero Alcalá, Eulalia Cordero Gómez, Efraín Cordero, Joseph Cordero, Dolores Damico Cisneros, James P. Kirby, Gwendolyn Brooks, Carolyn Schaefer, Jeana Campbell, Marsha Gómez, Arturo Patten, Jerry Mathis, Albert Ruíz, Kevin Burkett, Kip, Danny López Lozano, Drew Allen, Paul Hanusch, Emma Tenayuca, Libertad Lamarque, Federico Fellini, Lola Beltrán, Astor Piazzolla, Wenceslao Moreno, Manuela Soliz Sager, José Antonio Burciaga, Ricardo Sánchez, Jim Sagel, Eugene P. Martínez, Hector Manuel Calderón, Jozefina Martinovic Karaula, María Félix, Peggy Lee, and my father, Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral. Countless whose names I do not know, die daily attempting to cross borders across the globe. As I was completing this book, thousands died in the disaster of the 11th of September, 2001. Thousands of deaths led to these deaths, and, I fear, thousands will follow. Each connected each to each. With them die a multitude of stories.
A la Virgen de Guadalupe, a mis antepasados. May these stories honor you all.
Permissions Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Ruth Behar: Excerpt from Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story by Ruth Behar (Beacon Press, 1993). Reprinted by permission of Ruth Behar.
Fairyland Music: Excerpt from the song lyric “Moon Men Mambo,” words and music by Paul Parnes. Copyright © by Fairyland Music (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Fairyland Music.
William Peter Kosmas, Esq.: Excerpt from the poem “Es Verdad” from Obras Completas by Federico García Lorca, translation by Sandra Cisneros (Galaxia Gutenberg, 1996 edition). Copyright © Herederos de Federico García Lorca. All rights reserved. For information regarding rights and permissions, please contact lorca@artslaw.co.uk or William Peter Kosmas, Esq., 8 Franklin Square, London, W14 9UU.
Little Crow Foods: Excerpts from “CoCo Wheats Jingle.” CoCo Wheats is a registered trademark of Little Crow Milling Co., Inc., Warsaw, Indiana. “CoCo Wheats Jingle” copyrighted to Little Crow Foods. Reprinted by permission of Little Crow Foods.
Maytag Corporation: Excerpt from “Norge” appliances jingle. Reprinted by permission of the Maytag Corporation.
Peer International Corporation: Excerpt from the song lyric “María bonita” by Agustín Lara. Copyright © 1947 by Promotora Hispano Americana De Música, S.A. Copyright renewed. Excerpt from the song lyric “Cielto lindo” by Quirino Mendoza y Cortez. Copyright © 1950 by Promotora Hispano Americana De Música, S.A. Copyright renewed. Excerpt from “Veracruz” by María Teresa Lara. Copyright © 1938 by Promotora Hispano Americana De Música, S.A. Copyright renewed. All rights controlled by Peer International Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Peer International Corporation.
Solutia Inc.: Excerpt from the “ACRYLAN Jingle.” ACRYLAN is a registered trademark of Solutia Inc. for acrylic fibers and textiles. Reprinted by permission of Solutia Inc.
Warner Bros. Publications: Excerpt from the “Yogi Bear Song” by Joseph Barbera, William Hanna, and Hoyt Curtin. Copyright © 1960, 1967 by Barbera-Hanna Music. Copyrights renewed. Yogi Bear is a trademark of and copyrighted by Hanna-Barbera Productions Inc. Excerpt from the song lyric “Pretty Baby,” words and music by Egbert Van Alstyne, Tony Jackson, and Gus Kahn. Copyright © 1916 by Warner Bros. Inc. (ASCAP), EMI Music Publishing Ltd. (PRS) & Redwood Music Ltd. (PRS). Excerpt from the song lyric “Think About Your Troubles,” words and music by Harry Nilsson. Copyright © 1969 (Renewed) by Golden Syrup Music (BMI). All rights administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Warner Bros. Publications, Miami, FL 33014.