by Ron Arias
[A column for Hispanic Link by Ron Arias, written in the form of a message to his mother, who died in 1969]
A mi madre, Emma Estrada: You would have liked this book — Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, by Alex Moreno Areyan, It’s new and I think you’d like it not just because your picture is in it — the one of you in 1938 wearing a china poblana skirt and white blouse when you used to sell cigarettes at the Cafe Caliente on Olvera Street. You told me that was the nightclub where you sold to people like Anthony Quinn, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart and other Hollywood stars.
I don’t think that picture of yourself is why you’d like Areyan’s book. I think you’d like it because you would finally see what some of us have become, what achievers we are: movie stars, musicians, mayors, sheriffs, pop singers, artists, pro athletes, filmmakers, journalists, union leaders and many other successful people.
It’s a photo book but the captions would tell you that for the most part these people were the role models you didn’t have. They were barrier breakers, people like Edward Roybal, East L.A.’s first U.S. congressman, or tennis great Pancho Gonzáles, the first Latino local to win national tournaments.
If you could see your picture, you would see a pretty, teenage girl who left her hometown of El Paso to make a life for herself in L.A. You eloped with my father, Bonifacio “Frankie” Giner, a bartender at the Caliente. By 1942 you had a broken marriage and two children — my older brother Bob and me. So among other odd jobs you worked as a Rosie the riveter in an aircraft plant where they made planes for the war.
As you told me, it was a time when being Mexican or of Mexican descent was the same as being inferior in just about every way, from the kind of work you did to how much education you had. You weren’t even allowed to use public swimming pools until the end of the week before the city drained the plunges, as you called them.
Back then, the more you wanted to fit into the Madison Avenue image of white, Protestant America, the more you hid whatever fingered you as Mexican. So you did what Rita Hayworth did. You dyed your black hair auburn, wore it long with loose curls as she did, and added your own touch by telling new friends and others that you were French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Fortunately, you didn’t need to change your name, as many early movie stars with crossover appeal often did. You probably knew that Rita had been Margarita Cansino, Quinn had dropped his birth middle names Rudolfo Oaxaca, and handsome hunk Gilbert Roland (aka the Cisco Kid) was born Luis Antonio Damaso Alonso. If you didn’t know it then, you would find this out in Areyan’s book. It’s mainly a photo book but there’s a lot of history mixed in. In fact, your picture is in the “Landmarks” chapter because you worked on Calle Olvera. Maybe you didn’t know it but this idealized Mexican marketplace street was created in the late twenties on an alley of decrepit buildings next to where the city was founded in 1781.
In this chapter you’ll see other familiar landmark places, like the downtown plazita or the Chávez Ravine neighborhood that was destroyed to make room for Dodger Stadium. And you’ll see new commemorative sites that didn’t exist when you were alive, like the Rubén Salazar Park, named after the Los Angeles Times columnist who was reporting an anti-Vietnam War rally in East L.A. when he was killed by a sheriff’s deputy. As much as you tried to hide your Mexican roots around new friends and strangers — never mentioning you once sold cigarettes in a quaint, Mexican folk costume — I think you would be pleased to see that today it’s quite acceptable to be proud of our heritage, stereotypes and all. It’s okay to speak Spanish in school, it’s common to have local and national leaders with Spanish surnames, and everyone accepts TV and movie stars with latino looks. Jimmy Smits, a Latino actor you wouldn’t have known, even became president on national TV’s West Wing! I know prejudice and bigotry don’t really die — they just take new forms, like the paranoia spawned by fear-mongering along the Mexico-U.S. border. Yes, it still exists, just as it did in your childhood and for generations back. But, as you would see confirmed in Areyan’s book, this is no reason for us to start feeling inferior again. You would feel proud. I’m sure of it. Hispanic Link.
(Known best for his novelita The Road to Tamazunchale, L.A.-born Ron Arias was a teacher and journalist for four decades. Now 68, he lives in Hermosa Beach, Calif., with his wife Joan. He is working on a novel about a Los Angeles man hunting for the treasure of his past in today’s Mexico and in the land of Nueva España more than 400 years ago. Email rarias3@mac.com)
