Go back to Mexico!

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I got a care package from my parents this week. Underneath the toothpaste, soap and cough drops they sent me was a t-shirt. Green with a lizard sewn on to the breast.

It shouted, Cozumel!

My mother is from Mexico, not from from Cozumel though. She’s from a small town in Chihuahua State. The only reason I know the name Cozumel is because it’s a tourist destination. This gift was a souvenir from their recent cruise.

At first I moaned, how bourgeois!

We’re not the kind of people who go on cruise ships! That’s for decadent upper class Americans! We’re down to earth! We don’t need with luxury, we’re immigrants!

Apparently, our family values are different from what I imagined. I was judging them too harshly though. Maybe I’ll feel entitled to some luxury when I reach their age. It’s easier for me to practice an ascetic lifestyle because I’m younger.

When they were my age, their lives were harder than mine. My father was uprooted from his home in Cuba after Castro rose to power. He came to the states with only “the clothes on his back”. My mother crossed the Rio Grande the same way. They had to start from the very bottom and, as far as hardship goes, I have nothing on them.

Once I checked my self-righteous attitude, I looked at the shirt and laughed.

I remember walking past a house under construction in my neighborhood once, years ago. The workers were mostly Latin American and someone had scrawled on a port-o-potty: Go back to Mexico! Well, thirty years after coming to this country, my mother did go back to Mexico…on a cruise ship, motherf*****s.

Yes, many of us came over illegally. Sorry. What more can I say though? Wouldn’t your parents do what it takes to make sure you didn’t live in poverty? Don’t your parents want you to have a better life than they did? If they weren’t already in this country, your parents probably might have done whatever it took to get here. Despite dubious origins, we’re here now.
We’re not just “takers” though. The people who choose to leave the old country to take risks in a new one are tenacious and ambitious. Our success is the success of the country. Our hard work adds to the vigor of the nation.

My family lived the American Dream, materially at least. Is that why my parents came to this country? Only for economic security? Well, the answer is probably yes.

This is a generational study in Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”.

My parents generation did not compose a Mayflower Compact on the journey here, outlining their reasons for leaving and justifying their intentions once they arrived. I can’t imagine my mother-at nineteen years old-coming to this country considering the responsibility inherent in our political system. I think she was just hungry. Was my father considering the long history of enlightenment theories that he was going to inherit? No, he was just a kid. He probably wished he could go home.  

The job of the immigrant generation is just to survive. It’s an accomplishment learn the language, to find work and afford a place to live. My parents were blessed to do that and more. Truly, I’m grateful to tears to be here. So what’s my job now, and the job of my generation? Are we to laze about in the house our parents built and consume inheritance they gave us? Of course not! We need to educate ourselves, add the prosperity we inherited and work to secure the blessings of liberty for the next generation.

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