Backflash: ¡Gracias Americana!
by Caprice YoungOriginally printed in Synapse, Spring 1983
I returned from seven weeks of study at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, in Mexico City, on March 22. As a kid who had grown up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Tampa until then, total immersion in the Mexican city life was almost overwhelming.
Although the city looks like an everyday dirty metropolitan center, with a nice park, some terrific museums, and crumbling old Catholic churches every few blocks, the feeling of the city is different from big cities in the United States. In Los Angeles, for example, the slums and barrios of downtown are horrible. Gangs, derelicts, and prostitutes commonly live in the streets, adding to the decay of society. But in the suburbs and country, the quality of life is generally much better.
In Mexico City, even the wealthy have to worry about the sporadic water, electricity, and phone shutdowns. Downtown, the derelicts and prostitutes roam the streets too, but there are other street-people as well. In the past few years, despite the hope that the discovery of oil would help the failing economy, peasants from the farms and villages, many of whom do not speak Spanish, but one of the many Indian languages or dialects, have come to the city looking for opportunity. Unlike the U.S., the people who live in the suburbs and country live in squalor and extreme poverty. These people who move to the city generally become manual laborers or street-dwellers. My daily contact with the street-people jumps from my memory to the front of my mind without even having to close my eyes. I stood out in front of a Vip's, the Mexican equivalent to a Sambo's, waiting for a bus to take me to the subway station.
It was a Saturday at noon and every teenager and family in Mexico City was out on their way to Chaputapec park to flirt, play games, and picnic. That is, everyone except the street-people. For them, work continues all week long and business is best on the weekends. Along the Reforma and at every major park and intersection in the city, families of street-people make their living. One such family works from the island in the middle of the boulevard. The father was dressed in western style clothing: beige, corduroy, bell-bottomed pants and a maroon polyester shirt, no shoes. He carried a gas torch and a bottle of thinned gasoline. Next to him stood two sons of about five and eight-years-old. Their faces were filthy, but they did not seem to be bothered by the dirt. It was part of their complexion, as natural as the hollowness of their round brown eyes. Because of their starchy diet, the boys were not scrawny. Yet, their puffy cheeks didn't have the rosy glow that radiates from the cheeks of upper class kids. As the stoplight changed to red, they looked up at their dad, the fire-eater. The man stepped out in front of the waiting cars and took a swig from his bottle. He lifted his torch before his face and ceremoniously spit the gasoline into the flame. A bolt of yellow ten feet long sparks flew into the air as the little boys rushed around the car windows collecting pesos. The drivers give, not out of admiration, but out of pity. As the light changed to green, the man and boys returned to the island divider to wait for the next light. The cars sped off. Still young, the children had clear supplicant eyes; however, the eyes of man were foggy, his brain numbed by the gasoline he spits into the air. What kind of a man would ruin his body, eyes, and mind in order to feed his children?
His wife sat by a blanket with a toddler in her arms and packs of gum, candy, cookies, pens, and combs spread neatly before her. She wore the traditional colorful skirt and blouse of her village. Her hair is plaited into two long braids that reached the concrete on which she was sitting. A girl of ten, maybe, and another boy of about the same age walked from car to car when the light was red, holding packs of gum to the drivers and staring. Some, not many, of the people in the cars bought gum. When the light changed, the children went back to the lady. Mexicans called these street-women "Marias," because there are so many of them and no one knows their names.
From the bus stop, I could also see a [disabled person] working his way up to the street on his one good leg; his wooden crutch was a bit frayed at the bottom. He was still half a block away. I prayed that my bus would come before he reached me. It wasn't that I hadn't any money to give him. I had and would. It was just that I didn't want to see his face and feel the guilt, pity and resentment fill me.
He neared. His bony leg was bare from the knee down. His foot was calloused and this toes had boils on them. I could feel that emotion coming. My stomach tightened. Come on, bus.
He reached the line of people waiting for the bus. They either stepped away in disgust or shoved a coin into his hand angrily. I could hear dry breaths and see his leathery scalp beneath his thin, wiry, grey hair. I gave him a 50 peso piece (about 30 cents in the U.S.) thinking, "Just go away." He stopped and smiled a huge black-toothed smile. His breath reeked of decay. I walked away.
"Gracias, Americana," he said dryly, then continued his business.
The bus came a couple of minutes later and I pushed on. By the end of my stay in Mexico, I had hardened to the poverty some, but not much. It was with me every single day.
Ric Masten once wrote a poem about the callouses that a guitar player must develop on her fingers in order to be effective at making any music at all. Without the callouses, she would bleed to death.
In India, in Mexico, I grew callouses to the poverty around me. I had to. Yet I ask myself, how hard a callous must I grow? The pain of my guilt, my bruised spirit, is small compared to the daily agony of so many of the world's people. How else would I know that they are there?
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Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
