Caramelo (62 page)

And I remember along with that feeling fluttering through the notes of “Farolito,” so many things, so many, all at once, each distinct and separate, and all running together. The taste of a
caramelo
called Glorias on my tongue. At la Caleta beach, a girl with skin like
cajeta
, like goat-milk candy. The
caramelo
color of your skin after rising out of the Acapulco foam, salt water running down your hair and stinging the eyes, the raw ocean smell, and the ocean running out of your mouth and nose. My mother watering her dahlias with a hose and running a stream of water over her feet as well, Indian feet, thick and square,
como de barro
, like the red clay of Mexican pottery.

And I don’t know how it is with anyone else, but for me these things, that song, that time, that place, are all bound together in a country I am homesick for, that doesn’t exist anymore. That never existed. A country I invented. Like all emigrants caught between here and there.

CHRONOLOGY

1519 Cortés and Moctezuma meet in Mexico City. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of four Spanish eyewitnesses to have left a written account of the conquest, notes in his wonderfully detailed memoirs: Moctezuma “was seated on a low stool, soft and richly worked …”

1572 The first published mention of the
rebozo
is made by Fray Diego Durán.

1639 The first deportations. Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock authorize “pauper aliens” removed from their community. Virginia and British Colonies follow their example.

1776 Upholstery business owner Betsy Ross, struggling to make a living, is approached by three wise men to make a flag. The rest of the story, they say, is history. Recent historical research, however, claims this famous anecdote is nothing but story invented by Ross’s descendants a hundred years after her death. Which just goes to show the power of a good tale told well.

1798 Alien and Sedition Acts bar entry to “aliens,” who jeopardize the peace and security of the nation, as well as making possible their expulsion.

1830–1840s Catholic, German, and Irish immigrants are attacked. The Know-Nothing “nativist” movement is formed.

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 detention 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.