This
May Was More Than Cinco de Mayo
by Rodolpho
Carrasco
May 27, 2000
in the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
[ Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee
Christian Family Center in Pasadena. Email him at rudy@qvo.cc
May has been a heart-wrenching month for this Mexican-American, and I'm not talking about Cinco de Mayo.
In sports, the fans have finally been served: Luis Hernandez, Mexico's star soccer forward who led the Tri-Colores to within twenty minutes of the 1998 World Cup quarterfinals, has joined Galaxy, which plays in the Rose Bowl.
For the major league soccer team in a city where the fan base is overwhelmingly of Mexican descent, it's about time. For U.S. soccer fans like me, it's the equivalent of a Michael Jordan in his prime joining the Lakers. Ironically, Hernandez is one of our nation's chief tormentors, notching game-winning goals in a number of U.S. Mexico clashes in recent memory.
The joy of the fan, however, has taken back seat this past week to a sad neighborhood tragedy. Two long blocks from my home, Olivia De La Torre was shot by robbers as she arrived with her husband to open their Pasadena meat market and restaurant, La Guadalupana. She died hours later at Huntington Hospital. She was buried on Monday.
The crime came as a shock. We learned about it on my block when police cars and sniffings dogs began scouring the neighborhood on Monday morning. The newspaper noted a particularly wrenching detail: As they mourned, the family awaited their maternal grandmother, who was scheduled to arrive from Jalisco, Mexico on her first visit to California.
Alongside news of this tragedy a different type of hardship caught my eye. An Urban Institute study says at least 200,000 young illegal immigrants have reached their late teens and are faced with limitations getting a driver's license, obtaining federal education aid, or finding a good job because they are illegal. I was surprised, but thankful, that some group has quantified this dilemma.
I know a young man who was brought by his parents to America from Mexico when he was seven. He is fully bilingual, graduated from high school, played football and basketball as well as soccer, has earned numerous commendations from service clubs and places like the Police department but he's illegal.
There is proposed amnesty legislation working its way through Congress that would allow people who have lived in the United States since 1986 to seek amnesty, but too bad: he came in 1987.
When confronted with people like this young man, I often blame Mexico's political morass and economic policies for driving so many of its people north. Mexico is stuffed with poor people with dim prospects, and any one of us in the average Mexican's feet would be deciding between the Tijuana or Otay Mesa border crossings right about now.
But I'm biased. The other day, as I was gathering old family photos, I found my mother's green card. She entered the country on January 7, 1957. I'm praying for the day that my friend will have papers of his own, like my mother did.
I believe that the election of Vicente Fox as the next president of Mexico would hasten my friend's day. Fox is the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) who this month passed the ruling party candidate, Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in general polls.
Following a first-of-its-kind televised presidential debate, Fox led Labastida 46%-41% (margin of error: 3%).
I attribute most of Mexico's problems to the stranglehold the PRI has held on Mexico's politics and economy. The loosening of that grip is equivalent to freedom after bondage. The one word on July 2 election day in Mexico - that will make Mexico more hospitable for its poorest citizens starts with an "F."
I've imagined most Mexicans feel like I do, but then again we are talking politics. A friend in Mexico City, who is a month away from graduating from Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM), made the common person's case for the PRI:
"Everyone knows what they (the PRI) have done. But no one knows what the PAN will do if they get in to power. Many people say, 'Better the devil we know"
Better the devil we know a history of glacial-paced reform in one byte-sized phrase. But I take her opinion to heart, because significant and lasting change usually takes time.
Meanwhile, thank God for the Internet. Through a pure Internet exercise I've discovered afresh how Latinos are making dramatic impact across this country.
I help run a web site for the Hispanic Ministry Center of Santa Ana that allows individuals to sign up online for a mailing list. This week, as I surveyed the online database, I learned that innovative, sacrificial work among at-risk young people is being done by: Maria Figueroa, Columbus, Ohio; Angel Morales, Hartford, Connecticut; Juan Pagan, Lafayette, Louisiana; Gus Reyes, Lebanon, Tennessee; Monique Hernandez, Jefferson City, Missouri; and Salvador Soto, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The Internet doesn't make these people do the good they do. But the information it transmits inspires others to do likewise.
The joyous arrival of Luis Hernandez, the anguish-filled loss of Olivia De La Torre, the resiliency of a Government-issued green card, the fickleness of independently commissioned voter polls, the incantatory effectiveness of online databases it's been quite a month.
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