This is the story of some paisanos traveling North to take some jobs in the USA, despite the overcrowding of the labor market having reduced wages and benefits since the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 (and free trade, automation).
Returning from my weekend job Sunday afternoon (11/30), I read the section dealing with THEIR bus trip through Mexico. The author depicts well their miserable journey, plagued by petty thefts from fellow Mexicans such as the bus driver and serious bullying from officials (just as La Opinion has long reported for both emigrant journeys and Xmas visits). As I read it, I contrasted the bus journey John Masters took in the Empire of India in 1935 when he was going to join the 4th Gurkhas as a 2LT (crowded, but orderly, honest--
"Bugles and a Tiger" pp. 70-72).
My reading was interrupted by a fellow passenger shouting, "I have to take a piss, NOW" as the subway train left 7th Street. He did so at the end of the car as the two fares nearby scuttled away. A group of yuppies in the middle of the car complained bitterly about their children being present, but he noted that he had to go, did shield himself, and 'chinga tu madre.' He and they were alighting at 5th Street as was I; the urine running along the floor hadn't reached me anyway. It would gradually dry up during the five or six service hours remaining for the train.
But I could read the book no more because we see this cohort making no effort to work alongside each other as we all have to do. My ancestors came out to the Left Coast in the 19th C. and certainly had to 'go along to get along' and thus be valued for their contributions to the comminity even though they were used to a different culture of the South or Maine, a different religion, or whatever.
Walking along San Pedro Street to the bus stop early on December 1st to ride to a wi-fi hot spot and list the book, my decision to read no more of this book was confirmed. There were two piles of excrement on the sidewalk of a building (former elevator mfg & service) with lofts, one pile already being tracked around. 'Waste particles'(term from junior high biology class) that are increasingly encountered on the the sidewalks are not from the residents' dogs--they are very good about cleaning up. The Midnight Mission is a block away (the City of LA contracts for four toilets to be available 24/7 for $180,000 per annum) and two custom built toilets are nearby, built and maintained by a firm that is then allowed to plaster the city with ads. And population geographers expect another million immigrants in LA in the next few years.
It is profoundly depressing to write this review--in the
Southwest we valued our friends whose parents or grandparents who fled Don Porfirio's Mexico and served in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam with us, were great to work alongside of. This well written book is likely to be appreciated more by someone who is not enduring the problems of the population of the Republica Mexicana increasing to 110 million or so from the 16.5 million when Don Lazaro Cardenas became president in 1934.
Postscript: On October 11th I was coming from work on the subway when there was a disturbance, apparently because an old soldier (per his cap) wasn't keeping a small bag of aluminum cans for recyling quiet enough as he held them on his lap and so was cursed out by an angry man. I was reading a magazine and the angry man moved to a seat across from me and denounced in Spanish all veterans and 'the horse they rode in on' to a couple of ladies sitting there. The ladies enthusiastically agreed with him when he went on to express his hope that the troops now in Liberia will catch Ebola. La cultura inmigrante rules! (Elemnents of the 82nd Airborne are building clinics in Liberia. When the Marines were there a few years ago many caught malaria, which recurs for a lifetime).
Returning from my weekend job Sunday afternoon (11/30), I read the section dealing with THEIR bus trip through Mexico. The author depicts well their miserable journey, plagued by petty thefts from fellow Mexicans such as the bus driver and serious bullying from officials (just as La Opinion has long reported for both emigrant journeys and Xmas visits). As I read it, I contrasted the bus journey John Masters took in the Empire of India in 1935 when he was going to join the 4th Gurkhas as a 2LT (crowded, but orderly, honest--
"Bugles and a Tiger" pp. 70-72).
My reading was interrupted by a fellow passenger shouting, "I have to take a piss, NOW" as the subway train left 7th Street. He did so at the end of the car as the two fares nearby scuttled away. A group of yuppies in the middle of the car complained bitterly about their children being present, but he noted that he had to go, did shield himself, and 'chinga tu madre.' He and they were alighting at 5th Street as was I; the urine running along the floor hadn't reached me anyway. It would gradually dry up during the five or six service hours remaining for the train.
But I could read the book no more because we see this cohort making no effort to work alongside each other as we all have to do. My ancestors came out to the Left Coast in the 19th C. and certainly had to 'go along to get along' and thus be valued for their contributions to the comminity even though they were used to a different culture of the South or Maine, a different religion, or whatever.
Walking along San Pedro Street to the bus stop early on December 1st to ride to a wi-fi hot spot and list the book, my decision to read no more of this book was confirmed. There were two piles of excrement on the sidewalk of a building (former elevator mfg & service) with lofts, one pile already being tracked around. 'Waste particles'(term from junior high biology class) that are increasingly encountered on the the sidewalks are not from the residents' dogs--they are very good about cleaning up. The Midnight Mission is a block away (the City of LA contracts for four toilets to be available 24/7 for $180,000 per annum) and two custom built toilets are nearby, built and maintained by a firm that is then allowed to plaster the city with ads. And population geographers expect another million immigrants in LA in the next few years.
It is profoundly depressing to write this review--in the
Southwest we valued our friends whose parents or grandparents who fled Don Porfirio's Mexico and served in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam with us, were great to work alongside of. This well written book is likely to be appreciated more by someone who is not enduring the problems of the population of the Republica Mexicana increasing to 110 million or so from the 16.5 million when Don Lazaro Cardenas became president in 1934.
Postscript: On October 11th I was coming from work on the subway when there was a disturbance, apparently because an old soldier (per his cap) wasn't keeping a small bag of aluminum cans for recyling quiet enough as he held them on his lap and so was cursed out by an angry man. I was reading a magazine and the angry man moved to a seat across from me and denounced in Spanish all veterans and 'the horse they rode in on' to a couple of ladies sitting there. The ladies enthusiastically agreed with him when he went on to express his hope that the troops now in Liberia will catch Ebola. La cultura inmigrante rules! (Elemnents of the 82nd Airborne are building clinics in Liberia. When the Marines were there a few years ago many caught malaria, which recurs for a lifetime).
