by Oscar Lewis
That night, after supper, the head man in the kitchen called me. “Hey, boy, would you like to work in the restaurant? Do you know how to wash dishes?”
“Man, but of course. Everybody knows how to wash dishes.” So they put me to work in the kitchen. My job was to serve the oatmeal and coffee and prepare the box lunches. The work I was paid nine hours for didn’t take more than three. Imagine, just because I had said something to Tony that morning! Alberto said, “What luck! Who knows what saint you pray to. Me, I’m going to beat my brains out in the field. Why don’t you see if you can get me in with you?”
Later, I managed to work on other jobs between meals. A Filipino came around every once in a while and offered us a dollar an hour to work in his fields. We were not supposed to do this, but we hadn’t come there to spend the time sleeping. We grabbed extra jobs whenever we could.
When we got our first check, Alberto said, “Let’s go to the dance hall.”
“Nothing doing,” I said, “I won’t go, brother. It’s going to be a matter of spending money. Then it’ll be ‘Let’s have a beer.’ And the next thing you know we’ll be without a cent. No, I won’t go.” To make a long story short, we went—in Tony’s car. Tony was a Mexican but born in the United States—a “pocho,” not really Mexican and not really American. The girls at the dancehall were also Mexican-Americans. They wore elegant dresses and we thought they wouldn’t want to dance with us.
But Tony introduced me to Inez, a friend of his girl friend, and I danced with her all evening. She was pretty and spoke Spanish. It seemed strange that she spoke to me right away and let me dance with her. Before the evening was over she said, “Why don’t you come to my house tomorrow to talk? I’d love to hear about Mexico. Come at seven.”
Well, that night I dreamed of little pink elephants. I really felt happy again. The next morning I worked with lots of will and served the whole camp. In the afternoon, the Filipino came and took me to pick pomegranates. I worked for five hours and made $6.25. Then in the evening, I went to see Inez.
I was a little embarrassed about going into her house. She lived alone with her two kids, who were sleeping in one of the bedrooms. She had been married, but I didn’t know what had happened to her husband. Well, I went in and we talked and had coffee. Later, she turned on some music and we began to dance. She kept looking at me and we kissed. And then, well, that night we made love, right off the bat. I said to myself, “Now, that’s more like it.” I had got myself a girl friend.
The following evening I was sound asleep in my bunk, when I heard a knocking on the window. It was Inez. She had come to camp looking for me. “I felt like having you sing me a song,” she said. So I got into her car, and off we went. I had learned to drive on Tony’s car, and it sure felt good to drive her around all night, singing and kissing.
She caused a lot more commotion one day by driving me right into the middle of the camp, just when everyone was coming out of the dining room. The men watched her leave and then the comments started. “How do you like that? Look at that guy! He finally caught himself one with shoes.” All of them kept kidding me.
Inez was pretty, all right, but I didn’t fall in love with her. After what happened with Graciela, I didn’t want love mixed into my life ever again. To me love meant suffering. Love was what killed me, it left me scarred. When I felt myself going for a girl, I immediately remembered all the errors and wounds of my affair with Graciela. But I didn’t regret it because that was the only true love I ever had, the only real passion I have felt. Graciela helped me live and feel great emotion at an early age, and I am grateful to her for life! But how much it cost me!
In the United States, I noticed that marriage was different. I liked the independence and the blind faith the husband and wife had for each other. I think it exists because it is based on a strong moral principle. The more sweetly they treat each other, the better they behave. There, they don’t like lies. When they say “No” they mean “No.” Even if you kneel and beg, it is still “No.”
In Mexico, it is not that way. Right off the bat, I can say that fidelity of the husband for the wife does not exist here. It is exactly nil. Out of one hundred friends of mine, one hundred are unfaithful to their wives. They are always on the hunt for new emotions, they are just not satisfied with one woman, you know what I mean? The wives are more faithful … I would say that out of a hundred about twenty-five are absolutely faithful. The rest, whew! they run the gamut.
Several of the men in the camp began to get sick because of the bad food. They complained to Greenhouse and he said that anyone who didn’t like it could pick up his things and consider his contract terminated. Immediately they got scared and kept quiet. Then two hundred braceros in a nearby town got food poisoning, and everybody began to protest again. Greenhouse decided to send people away, one by one.
There weren’t many men around, so they sent me out to pick. It was the third tomato picking by then, and we didn’t earn much any more because it was piecework. I didn’t like the work and it didn’t pay. My compadre Alberto was in the hospital for an emergency gall-bladder operation. I wanted to be with him when they operated, no matter what. I thought, “They might kill him and I wouldn’t even know about it.”
I felt a throbbing in my side, and it really hurt a little, so I pretended to be sick in the appendix. I went to the manager and he took me to the hospital. I wanted to be there two days, just until Alberto’s operation would be over. They put an ice pack on my stomach and when I said I felt better, they telephoned the manager to come and take me back to camp.
But I wanted to get back to the hospital, so I began to act sick again. “Ay, ay, my appendix.” They took me off to the hospital and this time I was put to bed, next to a North American. I figured they would put on another ice pack and send me home the next day. I lay in bed very calmly, trying to talk to the North American through my English book. He was very nice and even invited me to visit him when we both got out. He was the first and only North American to do that and I wish I could have gone.
Then I saw them come in with a rolling table. They made me get on it and rolled me down the hall, with me whistling and the nurses saying, “How brave! How brave!” They spoke English and I had no idea what they were trying to explain or where they were taking me. Well, they stuck me in the operating room. “Move onto the table.” I figured they were probably going to take an x-ray. It was not going to be just an ice pack this time.
The doctor came in, wearing a mask, then the anesthetist and two nurses. But me, I wasn’t nervous. I thought they were going to give me an examination. They tied down my hands. It wasn’t until then that I began to get excited. I said to myself, “Well, well, what’s going on? What are they going to do to me?” They tied my feet and covered my eyes with pieces of cotton. I began to holler, “No, no, I don’t want to be operated. Nothing hurts me any more. No!”
But nobody there understood Spanish and I couldn’t speak English. They put a mask on my face and began to pour on the ether. I kept shouting, “Please, please. Nothing is wrong with me. I don’t want to be operated, please.” I felt as though I was smothering. “I’m dying … my heart, my heart …” Then I thought, “They are going to kill me for sure.” My heart was jumping, palpitating.
I don’t think there is a worse horror than to have to keep still when you can’t breathe. I desperately tried to free myself and couldn’t. Ever since they did that to me I have been afraid of being buried, of being held down, unable to move. Now I know that Hell means the grave, and I am so afraid of burial and the Infinite that I feel like crying when I think it’s going to be like that.
I was sure they were trying to kill me there in the hospital. But why? “For money?” I thought. “But what is money to these people? With such a luxurious hospital, what is a thousand dollars to them?” Then I said to myself, “You see? Why did you put yourself in their hands? Why did you trust them? Why did you come here?” I tried not to breathe, so I wouldn’t be put t
o sleep.
I heard a humming, and I felt I was falling, falling, at a terrific rate. I saw a light, like a headlight being driven away fast, at supersonic speed. Then, in the middle of that well, of that abyss into which I was falling, I saw my wife standing … my dead wife, looking me full in the face with an expression of anger in her eyes, I called, “Paula, wait for me. Wait, old girl.” She turned away and walked down the abyss. I wanted to fall but I was floating in the air, with my hands and feet out. My daughter Mariquita appeared … she was saying, “Papá.”
“Have you died, too, daughter?” I asked. In the middle of all this, I heard the anesthetist say, “Now, doctor?” I said, “Not yet! I’m still not asleep. Don’t put the knife in yet. Please!” Then I didn’t know anything any more.
Little by little I started coming to. I tried to get up and heard Alberto say, “Be quiet, compadre. You will hurt yourself.”
“Is that you, Alberto? Is it you? Listen, don’t let them operate on you. Run, compadre! Leave me here and go, because they’ll screw you up.” Something was burning me and I tried to pull down my pants. It was my bandage, and then I knew they had operated on me. The nurse gave me an injection and I fell asleep.
The next day I kept saying, “I want my compadre. Take me to Alberto.” He had been operated on and was saying the same thing in his room. “I want my compadre, Manuel,” I found out the number of his ward and got out of bed. Supporting myself against the wall, little by little, I went toward his room.
He was in bad shape. They had his stomach open and a tube coming out so it would drain. I saw the hole and said, “Why are they leaving it open? Something is liable to get in and you’ll die.” Madre Santísima! I really thought he’d die on me. What would I tell his aunt … his children? But Alberto wasn’t worried.
“Go back now. Nothing is going to happen to me.” Just then, the nurses came with a cart and bawled me out for getting out of bed.
Actually, everyone was very nice to us. The nurses taught me more English words and corrected my pronunciation. I was jumping around, getting in and out of bed, as if nothing had happened. But when the doctor came and took off the bandage to remove the stitches, I took one look at the gash they had made and didn’t feel like moving any more. I couldn’t even walk after that.
I spent seventeen days in that hospital. The insurance company took care of everything … a very pretty room, luxurious beds with radios in the headboard … telephone in the room … everything that was out of our reach in Mexico. It didn’t cost us a single penny.
I really felt like somebody in California! Everybody treated me well, both in the hospital and on the job. I like the life there, even though I found its form too abstract, too mechanical, in the sense that the people were like precision machines. They have a day, an hour, a fixed schedule set up for everything. It must be a good method because they have lots of comforts. But the government charges them a tax for food, for shoes, for absolutely everything. If our government tried that tax business here, I believe it might even cause a revolution. A person doesn’t like to have what’s his taken from him.
The braceros I knew, all agreed on one thing, that the United States was “a toda madre.” That means it’s the best. Every once in a while someone complained … like Alberto said the Texans were lousy sons-of-bitches because they treated Mexicans like dogs. And we looked badly upon the discrimination against the Negroes. We had always thought of American justice as being very strict and fair … we didn’t think that money or influence counted there like it did here. But when they put a Negro on the electric chair for rape, and let whites go for the same thing, well, we began to realize that American justice was elastic too.
But we all noticed that even the workers who were not so well off, had their car and refrigerator. When it came to equality and standard of living, well, they’d lynch me for saying this, but I believe that the United States is practically communistic … within capitalism, that is. At least it was in California, because I even heard a worker shout at his boss, and the boss just shut up. The workers there are protected in lots of ways. Here in Mexico, the bosses are tyrants.
Thinking of Mexico’s system of life, I am very disappointed. It is just that when I was living in the United States, I could see that people were glad when a friend got ahead, you know what I mean? “Congratulations, man, it’s great that things are going good with you.” Everybody would congratulate him if he bought a new car or a house or something. But in Mexico, when a friend of mine, with a lot of sacrifice and hard work and skimping on food, finally managed to buy a new delivery truck, what happened? He parked it in front of his house and when he came out all the paint was scratched off. If that isn’t pure envy, what is it?
Instead of trying to raise a person’s morale, our motto here is, “If I am a worm, I’m going to make the next fellow feel like a louse.” Yes, here you always have to feel you are above. I have felt this way myself, that’s why I say it. I guess I’m a Mexican, all right. Even if you live on the bottom level, you have to feel higher up. I’ve seen it among the trash pickers; there’s rank even among thieves. They start arguing, “You so-and-so, all you steal is old shoes. But me, when I rob, I rob good stuff.” So the other one says, “You! Turpentine is all you drink. At least, I knock off my 96-proof pure alcohol, which is more than you ever do.” That’s the way things are here.
It is not that we hate anyone who has had better fortune. I don’t feel hatred against a rich man any longer than it takes for three drags on a cigarette. It would be bad for me to get too wrapped up in thinking about that, because then I would feel less than what I am. And I would at least like to be what I am. That’s why I don’t want to analyze things too carefully. Maybe it’s a case of running away or of not looking at the reality of my condition. Anyway, when one of my class hates another person, it is almost always for reasons of sentiment. I can’t ever remember it being for economic reasons. Whenever you hate the world, it is practically always because of something a woman has done to you, or because a friend has betrayed you. The women are the ones who go most against the rich, possibly because women feel privations more than men, don’t you think?
The thing is, there is no equality here. Everything is disproportionate. The rich are very rich, and the poor are infamously poor. There are women with babies in their arms and a few more hanging on their skirts, going from door to door to beg for food. There are plenty like my uncle Ignacio, who give their women three pesos a day for expenses, and others who don’t know where the next meal is coming from, with nobody to give a thought to them. If the rich people knew how the poor managed to exist, it would seem like a miracle to them.
Look, when a rich man throws an orgy, one of those fiestas or receptions those millionaires in Lomas make, in one night they spend enough to support a whole orphan asylum for a month. If they would come down off their pedestals to share the lives of their countrymen and see their misery, I believe that out of their own pockets they would install electricity, sewage, and do something to help. If I were rich, I would ease the pain of the poor, at least some of those closest to me, and let them have a few necessities. But who knows? Maybe if I were a rich guy sailing in my boat or traveling in airplanes, I wouldn’t remember any more, eh? The poor stick to the poor … they know their place … and the rich, well, they go to the Hilton. The day I dare go to the Hilton Hotel, I’ll know there has been another revolution!
I don’t know about political things … the first time I voted was in the last election … but I don’t think there is much hope there. We can’t have any kind of social welfare for the working people, because it would be used only to make the leaders rich. The men in the government always end up rich and the poor are just as badly off. I have never belonged to a union, but my friends who do say they can be fired at any time without indemnification, because the union leaders and the bosses make agreements among themselves. Yes, we have a long way to go down here. I tell you, progress is a difficult thing.
&nb
sp; Alberto was discharged from the hospital first. As soon as he got back to camp, Greenhouse took him to the bus station, to send him home. Alberto managed to give him the slip and went to live with his woman, Shirley. When I got out, I had a little trouble getting away from the camp manager, but I hid in a ditch until I got a lift to Shirley’s house.
Greenhouse reported us to Immigration and we had to lay low for a couple of days. Shirley fixed a bed for me on the floor and Alberto slept with her. Later, we worked in a grape camp, and twenty days after my operation, I took a job as a swamper, loading heavy crates. The work was hard and I got sick. I wrote to my father to send me some money so I could go home. But he answered that as my money had arrived, he kept investing it in materials to build a house in the El Dorado Colony. He didn’t have a single centavo to send me.
So I had to keep on working to save money to go back. I picked cotton, but I saw it was a job in which I wasn’t going to get very far. Besides, my hands swelled up from the cotton and got real nasty looking. Finally, I said to Alberto, “Look we have stuck together up to now, but I can see you are in love with that woman, so if you want to stay, just tell me. I’m leaving.”
So he tells me, “No, compadre, I can’t leave now because my clothes are at the cleaners.”
The next day I took a bus to Mexicali. I had been away nine months and was really anxious to see my children, my father and my friends. In Mexicali, I couldn’t get a train or a bus out of the city. It was so crowded, there wasn’t even a hotel room anywhere. It was dangerous for me to walk the streets with about two thousand pesos in my pocket, carrying my carton of clothes. The bodies of returning braceros who had been murdered and robbed, were often found on the streets of Mexicali. This time, I was afraid all right.
I decided to take an airplane to Guadalajara. It was very expensive, right? It cost over five hundred pesos, but it took only nine hours, instead of fifty-two hours by bus and I saved a lot of time. All I wanted was to get back. In Guadalajara, I took a first-class bus to Mexico City.