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We have fully recovered after the shock to our nervous systems. We learned that the United States Census Bureau might ask a question in the coming Census (a Constitutional requirement) concerning whether or not the respondent is a citizen, legal alien, or person who is in residence without authorisation.
It has been stated, repeatedly, in the media that this is the first time anyone has ever inquired about illegal aliens being in residence. A furor has developed over this matter, and it is quickly pointed out that this is a Crime Against Humanity, a return to the gas chambers when Hispanics and left-handed people were led to the gas chambers in Alabama and Bavaria like back during the Battle of the Cinco de Mayo, on the 4th of July, in Puebla, Louisiana, in 1917. Everybody knows that.
The only problem is that all the above, as any OROG knows, gibberish. But gibberish-thought is what is ruling and guiding us now. We enumerate the maddening falsities of the "common understanding below:
(1) My mother took the Census in 1950. That census included a question concerning illegal alien status of the respondent. Almost all the illegal aliens censused responded honestly. There was a follow-up re-assessment of the census in 1953, and I was even more aware of what was going on, now being 6...going on 7 years of age. My mother had been a Lead Enumerator, supervising a team of Census Takers. She and some of the same people did the re-assessment.
We were all racists in those days, and hated Mexicans worse than Negroes, so it logically follows that my mother and her lackeys were trying to pry out the dirty Mexicans and ship them to the Salt Mines State Correctional Institution for Subhuman Criminals. That is the present day image the professorial class has of us, our time, and our attitudes.
We put the above paragraph into this submission for two reasons. We fulfil the image the Left has of us, as ruralist Texians in the early 1950s. And we give them the opportunity to get off at this stop so they can run screaming, "We found the people Steinbeck was describing in his book "Tortilla Flat!!!"...we found them, we found them!!!"
Of course, Steinbeck was the one who re-invented the image for the Left of Emiliano Zapata as a poor Zapotec Indian, hat in hand, who was simply searching for a return of a few properties that had been stolen by the Church and the Rich and the Politicians. It turns out that the real image of Zapata is that he was easily the richest pure-blooded Zapotec Indian in the large area where the Zapotecs dominated. Easily, he was a multi-millionaire.
How else, one might ask, could and would he group up one of the fiercest infantry and cavalry peasant armies in the history of the world to help bring down one of the most entrenched "legally elected" dictators in the history of the world, José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, known to the world as Porfirio Diaz, General and Presidente de Mexico...for over 30 years of rule. He was expulsed from Mexico in 1911, and died in France soon after and was buried in the Montparnasse
Cemetery of Paris...perhaps an appropriate end to a Mexican dictator from Oaxaca.
The fact is, especially for anyone under the age of 50...they, in their broad majority, don't know, don't care, don't want to be bothered by old stuff.
(2) We were very careful with our Mexican workers. The local Mexican / Spanish American (of biological origin) residents in the Rio Grande Valley who were in the main, various types of colonial and older Mexican sorts who had always been either "from around here, or nearby" were all obligated, employed, and already spoken for by reality. Our workers were not among those folks, because they, the local residents, were already working...small proprietors, clerks, office workers, skilled blue-collar, doctors of various types, nurses, teachers, farmers and farm-management.
Our workers came from distant parts of the Republic of Mexico...a times 1,000 miles, at times 200 miles away when those distances were considerable, even in Texas. Mexico, after all, is three times the size of Texas...(do not tell anybody). Many of our workers could not speak Spanish at all or very well, due to the fact they spoke native indigenous languages.
We had Braceros - the legal, temporary workers, and the "tourists", people who just happened to show up, because they had heard that my mother and father paid fairly, a little better than the going rate, and only directly to the worker or his wife in Mexico (by Telegrafos de Mexico)..no contractors.
Our people always returned when they were called, and if they could, sometimes they would call and say they were "available". In those days, either way, the caller could be charged 16 - 22 American dollars for a 90 second call. This is not a joke.
Of course, Steinbeck was the one who re-invented the image for the Left of Emiliano Zapata as a poor Zapotec Indian, hat in hand, who was simply searching for a return of a few properties that had been stolen by the Church and the Rich and the Politicians. It turns out that the real image of Zapata is that he was easily the richest pure-blooded Zapotec Indian in the large area where the Zapotecs dominated. Easily, he was a multi-millionaire.
How else, one might ask, could and would he group up one of the fiercest infantry and cavalry peasant armies in the history of the world to help bring down one of the most entrenched "legally elected" dictators in the history of the world, José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, known to the world as Porfirio Diaz, General and Presidente de Mexico...for over 30 years of rule. He was expulsed from Mexico in 1911, and died in France soon after and was buried in the Montparnasse
Cemetery of Paris...perhaps an appropriate end to a Mexican dictator from Oaxaca.
The fact is, especially for anyone under the age of 50...they, in their broad majority, don't know, don't care, don't want to be bothered by old stuff.
(2) We were very careful with our Mexican workers. The local Mexican / Spanish American (of biological origin) residents in the Rio Grande Valley who were in the main, various types of colonial and older Mexican sorts who had always been either "from around here, or nearby" were all obligated, employed, and already spoken for by reality. Our workers were not among those folks, because they, the local residents, were already working...small proprietors, clerks, office workers, skilled blue-collar, doctors of various types, nurses, teachers, farmers and farm-management.
Our workers came from distant parts of the Republic of Mexico...a times 1,000 miles, at times 200 miles away when those distances were considerable, even in Texas. Mexico, after all, is three times the size of Texas...(do not tell anybody). Many of our workers could not speak Spanish at all or very well, due to the fact they spoke native indigenous languages.
We had Braceros - the legal, temporary workers, and the "tourists", people who just happened to show up, because they had heard that my mother and father paid fairly, a little better than the going rate, and only directly to the worker or his wife in Mexico (by Telegrafos de Mexico)..no contractors.
Our people always returned when they were called, and if they could, sometimes they would call and say they were "available". In those days, either way, the caller could be charged 16 - 22 American dollars for a 90 second call. This is not a joke.
(3) In those times there was a requirement that a legal alien, seeking resident alien status so as to begin the process to naturalisation have legal status in the United States, and finally citizenship, would have to endure, and endure, and endure, finally arriving at that point when the "examination" would come, and thing would move very quickly.
I remember driving back from Brownsville and the Federal Court with my mother and Godmother and another gentleman (name forgotten), and Aunt Marty Clopton (not a real aunt, but a Southern "aunt"). They had been sponsors to Guadalupe Herrera as a petitioner for American citizenship, and she had complied with all the language, civics, and moral requirements and was noted as a productive and positive person. She was sworn in with 16 others, and received the incredibly elaborate, Magna-Carta quality parchment, lots of original ink and signatures, I had never seen anything like it.
It was troubling that in spite of all this formal falderah, and her becoming an "American", Guadalupe was weeping, controllably, but weeping, none-the-less. "Mom, why is Lupe crying?" I asked. My mother said, "She is not crying, she is weeping with joy for now being an American, and she is weeping with a bit of sadness because the country she left is one of the very most beautiful and interesting countries on the Earth. You will learn those things as you grow older. Now Lupe is your Auntie, like Lucille and Marty." I sat in silence back to McAllen, sixty miles, remembering all my maps and language works. It was 1953.
It is not fair for people to come over and slob onto the welfare system, when the woman identified above was a legal alien, provided for herself and others, and paid taxes during her legal stay in Texas. She paid legal fees from her own efforts and purse and attorney's fees that arrived at something like 1,400 dollars, American. You can imagine how much that is worth, when we bought our first Volkswagen in San Antonio, in cash for 1,660 Yankee dollars in 1956. Suffice to say, all of Guadalupe's children...not her worthless husband...wound up being very, very high level blue-collar construction experts, RN nurses, or white-collar managers or business owners. Guadalupe's husband was a third generation American Citizen and the laziest pontificator and dominoe player in McAllen.
His number one son became a crew leader with my Godfather's construction company, and then a Site Superintendent, approved by the Corps of Engineers, during the time of the completion of the Falcon Reservoir Project. He had masters certificates in plumbing, electricity, and gas control from the Republic of Texas...having passed all of the tests with a 105 average. He was awarded five per cent for his service during the Korean War in the United States Army.
(4) Yankees and liberals would come down and blatantly ask how we could live with the idea of "keeping down" the Latin "underclass". The low wages, the demand to speak English, signs here and there, like the ones for Negroes up around Austin and Houston...how could we endorse such things? We, as most Southerners, would not respond to the questions, except, perhaps obliquely.
Finally, to make a very, very, very difficult question to answer understood we wish to leave you with this thought.
The Latins were just ....there....The majority was White by law, and many were whiter than the Angloids. But everyone attending public schools in McAllen would go to neighourhood schools for the first six years. After that, it was "WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!!" I can imagine the Latin girls going back home and telling their mothers that all the Anglo boys had lots of pimples and were very pallid and sickly looking.
There were many, many very attractive and well-presented Latin girls that would have been reported by the Angloid boys to their mothers in a substantially different manner, (if they were telling the truth).
Many wanted to know more about about the life on the farm for the workers. Reporters, preachers, Border Patrol, etc. But we were not into that . We built cabins that were way beyond the minimum, required. But the "dumb Mexicans" declared that they would like to build bamboo and cane and palm portales and cabanas. We had plenteous supplies of bamboo and palm, so we said, "Okay". They made almost elegant places there, right by the main terciary canal and well under the canopy of "growies" that dominated the two acres adjacent on the east of that canal.
You can imagine when the "dumb Mexicans" brought us buckets of dates for Christmas. They were from our same palms (McAllen was known throughout Texas as "the City of Palms"). The dates had been cured by soaking in brown sugar, rum, and mescal for 30 days. Nowadays they would have been worth 250 dollars. Back then, my father had to hide them from his parents-in-law and portion them out to his fellow farmers.
We shall try give a few more glimpses into the real life of farm / rural people during those times. I have to go to the peculiar precincts of Central Texas early Saturday Morning. For that reason we shall be picking up where, here we have left off. Upon return, we intend to be at the Quinta by the 4th of April...and it will be necessary to be there for a while. Our Mayordomo is also a small businessman, and he has to dance on the pinhead we both pass to each other...something like a relay race baton.
More Later
El Gringo Viejo
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