Bracero

Joe Leyva

Leyva 1

Alex Lemon Creative Nonfiction Workshop 26 March 2015 Bracero, or The One Who Works with His Arms 1. By no means am I a religious individual, but I can’t help but find ties and truth in stories of the bible. It seems like a jumble of words that maybe some schizoidtype of man claimed about and decided to write down for all to see. Then again, mortal man did write it, but for all we know these men could have been on hallucinogens. Yet, the claims of men who lived to be 300+ years old, building giant arks with their bare hands and having every animal sent in pairs to be saved for the new world sparks my interest. I wonder more about the family of this man. How do his sons feel about all of this craziness? How do they feel about their father being chosen for such a task?

2. The biblical character of Noah, who is known by virtually everyone I would argue, was chosen by God to build an ark. The ark was to be used to house together two of every animal, one male and one female, for the new world once God created a terrible flood to rid the world at the time of horrible sin and chaos. Noah, along with his three sons and their wives (whose names we don’t know according to most historians), were given the duty of repopulating the world. Note that the flood wasn’t meant to kill everyone, but it was meant to wipe out the world of bad, which happened to include basically everyone expect Noah and his family.

3. One evening Ham, who historians and researchers argue is the youngest son of Noah based on the order of the names presented, walks in on his father’s drunk spew with wine and “saw the nakedness of his father.” Upon describing the event to his brothers, and maybe even mocking it (some historians would argue that something more sinister happened in the tent during that moment), his two brothers walked backwards carrying a blanket to cover their father’s nakedness and reduce his shame by not laying their own eyes on him. When Noah had

Leyva 2 awoken from his drunkenness, he knew what his son had done, and he cursed his grandson Canaan to be a slave of slaves for the world to come. Why?

4. This is something I wrote about you; well I guess something for you. The Real Somethings of Somewhere; that’s my tentative title in the moment of conception and it probably doesn’t make sense as it spews from my fingertips. I’m sitting at the dining room table when the neon green clock struck 1:00am while I’m studying for an upcoming exam. The Black English tea stains my lips and burns my insides like whiskey. I’ve always been more of a night owl, just like you. That’s always been my pet peeve, when I realize the things I do are just like you. The night is my best friend, but it leaves me high and dry in the morning. Anyway, like I said, this is for you. But you probably won’t hear about it; at least not for a while.

5. My father was the first-born son out of seven children. The day was November 4th, 1961 - an easy date to birthday to remember because it usually falls on Election Day, most of the time. Sometimes it falls on weird days like Tuesday. One time it fell on the day mom had a hysterectomy, when the cancer had touched her like it touched her own mother and it was a last resort for a life without pain.

6. He was also the first one my grandmother gave up on in the beginning. The first one to know what abandonment felt like in his litter, like he was left alone in a cardboard box along the highway. Every so often, I wonder why she did what she did. We even make jokes about it now about you being raised by wolves (derived from the folklore tale of a wolf-girl that roams near the Rio Grande). Maybe out of embarrassment? Maybe out of depression, but who really knows? I know that it happened and it made you who you are today. Your relationship with her has been better now. We see her twice every year, and you call her all the time. She acts as if nothing ever happened. She talks about how great of son you were. 7. It’s funny how history repeats itself. Your sister did the same thing to her own

Leyva 3 first-born son. She left him with her parents to raise as their own while she went to live her life, and her parents gave her hell for doing it. The irony is that grandma was there too when she did it and didn’t speak up, didn’t realize this was the same thing that she did. The circumstances surrounding the conception are dreadful, something the family knows but hides away from the sun, and they don’t realize the shame it brought.

8. On August 4, 1942, Mexican and American legislation established the Mexican Farm Labor Program and it was signed into law some time thereafter. The heart and soul of the program was to allow and establish control of Mexican migrant workers along the southern border of the United States for farmer labor. The act established that these migrant workers be paid at least 30 cents for every hour and that they be treated humanely – unfortunately this wasn’t the case, and most were not paid on time or at all. Contracts were created with these Mexican migrant workers, mostly men, and they were allowed to cross into the country legally to work in the fields while WWII raged on in the European nations. 9. She left him with her own parents and lived her life, which wasn’t for long in terms of her freedom without children. It wasn’t that she died (maybe on the inside). Funny thing was that she had more children not too soon after he was born. I wonder what was wrong with him and not the others? Truth is that there was probably nothing wrong seeing how she had more children not soon after. Maybe it was the man that she laid down with? Or the men she knew might be his father.

10. I remember the time you told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. When I sat on the dusty brown couch, the ones mom bought from the Mexican shop on the north side of town, the ones that wouldn’t last more than a year, and everyone knew that: you turned to me and said that if I wanted, I should be a writer. You told me that I should tell a story. Maybe, now, I want to tell your story. Or maybe I want to tell a skewed version of your story; a one-sided/my sided version.

Leyva 4 11. The term “Bracero” came with the sweep of Mexican migrant workers into the farmer’s fields for hours on end. During this time, these men relied on manual labor, mostly using their own hands and little to minimal tools were available. These men were commissioned to work fields while their white counterparts left to fight in the World War; wouldn’t it be safe to say these men are the backs broken to keep a nation alive? Loosely, the term bracero means manual laborer, or as chicano literature likes to refer to it, the one who works using his arms.

12. Far southwest of here, you were born in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico - a quaint border town filled with hopes of those wanting to run across that gated bridged, now with heavily armed soldiers, over the murky brown water to some sort of Dream that they think waits for them. It’s pronounced C-U-DA AH (like you’re opening your mouth wide-open for the doctor)-Coo-Nauh. I tell people who wonder how to say it, and it makes me feel cultured. It makes me believe that the New World poison hasn’t consumed my Old World seed. 13. Your other spawn, the first one who I don’t care for very much, my brother only in half the blood that traces my veins, makes an appearance. His name, the same as yours with junior tacked on the end like a tail, invokes this annoyance for me. I remember when he threw that bottle at you, and it shattered on the wood patio pallets. It started on the back patio, and I had to clean it up the next morning. Crying over spilt milk because he believed you weren’t who he needed you to be. I’m still not sure if you are who I need you to be, who I wanted you to be. Still, you didn’t deserve that.

14. My bare-walled room was filled with joy and laughter that night back in November. All family, cousins, tías, and tíos squished in the house or on the patio; cousins were lining the foot of my bed griping controllers and fixated on cartoon explosions. Passing around controllers every so often, drinking from soda cans much like the adults drinking from their beer cans. It was a celebration. It had been a year since grandma’s passing, and we were celebrating her life. Then

Leyva 5 your other spawn went and fucked everything up for you. For us. For me. This isn’t about him though. It’s about how he left you feeling, recoiled in your sorrow and remembering a different time of dread and doom that you wanted to leave behind. 15. Maybe he was Ham, and he brought on the wickedness and curse…

16. In an interview with The Telegraph, Julian Lennon, the first son of John Lennon, expressed jealousy of his half-sibling, Sean. Sean was the only child of Yoko Ono and John Lennon. During his interview, Julian said: “I remember thinking, when Dad gave up music for a couple of years to be with Sean, why couldn't he do that with me?”

17. I am Sean Lennon, the half-brother that dad gave up music to spend time with. You were Julian, the one everyone forgot about. I guess, in this analogy, that would make my mom Yoko – I don’t think she would take too kindly to that.

18. Interior. My bedroom. A focus on the windows in the corner of the room with the lights turned off, and only the patio light illuminating shadows of two adults standing. They’re each yelling words in Spanish that the children can’t seem to understand. “Mijo, we should go to the other room…” my Tía says. Lines of worry are traced on her face like ants. “Okay.” 19. Mom told me that we’re more alike than I’d like to think. She told me that, almost with regret in her voice, that she acted the same way to her own mother. Stains of resentment and angst loaded her tongue like a gun during her youth, my mom’s youth. She told me to “cool it,” before something happened or I would end up feeling regret in my bones. 20. The newly termed “Bracero” program formally ended in 1964, three years after the birth of my father. He was not explicitly apart of the original Bracero

Leyva 6 program; however, later in his life he worked crop fields in Illinois during the spring months when demand was high and probably during other months too. Coincidently, this is still something occurring today; my tío does it every year instead of working a full time job. My dad says that this is his flaw because he doesn’t just work.

21. There is a picture I have of you saved on my phone; I found it when we were rummaging through photos at your tía’s house. You’re with your mom, embracing her with a slight side hug. Siblings stand along side the two of you, cracking forced smiles for the lens. Everyone is standing in a parking lot of supermarket under a propped up hood of station wagon. Everyone is standing around in a huddled group, and you’re in the center. You’re long black hair hides under your beige cowboy hat and covers the left side of your face as you hunched over for the hug. A white button up shirt drapes across your shoulder blades with only the first few buttons from the bottom were being used. Your maroon pants complement your dark complexion, and your silver watch gleams in the sunlight. There’s this mystery to you. Almost like you could be anyone you want to be. A drifter, a chameleon. I joke to mom saying that you were Johnny Depp before Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp. She laughs.

22. Those nights were your breath is stained with alcohol and the Tejano music blaring distorts the computer speakers are my favorites, even with my disdained look. You talk about your life growing up, being an immigrant until the years after your first marriage were you decided to do things right and abide. Then other things began to fall apart, things became broken, and bruises began to show. Then you met her, my mother, who you said changed everything for you. A breeze of change in a world of chaos. It makes me want to write about you. To write about your life, about all the things that you’ve been through. Everything that I probably don’t know about you. Everything you say that I think should be written on paper. 23. What if Ham, the youngest son of Noah, did not see his father’s literal nakedness?

Leyva 7 What if, instead, Ham witnessed his father during his drunken state reveal truths and laid bare his history under a drunken slander where walls ceased to exist? Does that still make him bad for relishing that moment to his brothers? Maybe they were jealous. Does that still warrant the curse brought onto Canaan to be a slave of slaves?

24. There was a moment back in 2006 when you took me to the movies: a first for you with just me. We saw that chainsaw wielding maniac terrorize a group of model-like 20-somethings back in 1970 something. It was, in our books, fatherson bonding. It wasn’t something typically of you, but I still had a good time. I remember the one who brought her kids with her. The boy looked like he was only five, and it was just the two of them. Mom was even surprised, in a good way, that it was just the two of us. I was surprised too.

25. I have a file lost somewhere on my hard drive that spins around with ideas of what I would do if I were to write about your life. Is it bad that I want to give the father character an Alzheimer’s spin? It does run in the family on your side. Maybe I’m afraid you’ll get it, but then it wouldn’t be fiction anymore…

26. According to statistics from the last year, over 200 million Mexican Americans can trace back their families’ origins and roots in America to the beginning of the Bracero program through their own fathers and grandfathers. Though the program ended in 1964, I wonder that many can probably still trace their fathers and grandfathers to a type of Bracero. You may not have been in a program tainted by racism and pity, but you still worked with your arms. I think to myself that maybe I’m not the only one who finds myself in this middle of uncertainty. 27. The drunkenness that Noah’s son witnessed, along with his nakedness, what if it was something like witnessing his father being vulnerable because of his drunkenness? Allowing his sorrows and tribulations seep through his pores much like the alcohol does during deep sleep when all senses are fleeting. What if that

Leyva 8 was the case?

28. If so, then I am Ham. You are Noah. This thing I call life, my home, is the ark you built.

29. I remember when we sat around watching old home movies. I was lying on the floor under the brown oak table – it was easier to work the VHS player if I just stayed near it. I was a child, at least two or three in the video. I had this puffy grey jacket with a yellow stripe across my chest, and a head full of hair that was unmanageable. You held the video camera in your trembling arm, trying to keep up with me while the wind was cutting into your pace. I took off ahead of you laughing and flailing my arms as I was going towards the swings. You turned away, focusing on your suburban. “You just let me run free?” I joked. He smirked and shook his head. When the camera jolted back I was already on the playground, climbing steps and living freely. You can only imagine what happens when you just turn your head away for a second. 30. When I was younger, my family and I would make trips to Del Rio – it’s on the American side of the country, the border town to cross into Acuña. It’s a shanty little town that’s up and coming with a single movie theater and a Walmart that now acts as the hub of socialization, almost like a watering hole. Before the drug cartels overran the streets and strong-handed people into fear, he would drive us around his old neighborhood in Acuña. It was deeper into the town, up a snake of roads and almost hidden in some hills. The run downed homes were missing front doors, windows, or bathrooms. Sometimes they would be missing all three. The children would lean in their doorways, or run up and down the streets kicking a deflated soccer ball embodying their favorite soccer players in their stained clothes. I knew then that the luxuries I’ve had have no meaning to them; they don’t even know about such things. Their foreign tongues

Leyva 9 whipped and wailed into my ears when I got out of the truck. Ten year old me smiles and nods, as if I knew what they were telling me.

31. I was named after the man that raised my father, his grandfather. He died years before I was born, before I was even thought of by my parents. If I remember correctly, without bringing up feelings of sorrow for my father, he died of a heart attack. Life was just too much, and his heart was full and heavy. His hands were, I’d like to imagine, like leather that showed a map of his life and his hard work to build something. Something that carried down through my father, and became stagnate when it reached my door.

32. I know that my name was whitewashed. For whatever reason, that silent elephant sits in the room and follows me around as I write my name on forms and documents. It was done, no doubt, in a way to protect me. He knew better and wanted better for me. They both knew better than to push my brother and I into the world with ethnic-sounding anything. They knew about the world that we would find our selves belonging too. I bear his name, even in code, to honor him. I hope he thinks the same. 33. “Black” “That can’t be your favorite color” “¿Por que no?” “Because it’s not a real color.” It’s the absence of color.

34. Mom use to say that before I was born, before you met her, that you would smoke daily. Pack after pack. I think you still did it when I was born; I remember finding an ashtray filled to the brim inside the old off-burnt orange Suburban in the driveway. Mom said that you were reckless with your drinking and insistent driving. You only smoked when you had a drink, and at the time that was every day. It’s funny because we are more alike then I would like to think.

Leyva 10

35. I only smoke when I drink too, but I lost my lighter in a field last time and haven’t bought a new one since. The cashiers at the gas station always look at me funny. 36. In Michael Hainey’s After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story, a memoir chronicling his search for the truth about his father’s death, he states: “Each of us has a creation tale - how we came into this world. And I'll add this: each of us has an uncreation tale - how our lives came apart. That which undoes us. Sooner or later, it will claim you. Mark you. More than your creation.” 37. What struck me the most about Hainey’s memoir was how strange it is that most individuals are so interwoven into different aspects of other people’s lives. We know people, like our own fathers, who are primary characters in our own world, yet who are secondary and maybe even insignificant characters in other people’s worlds.

38. My half-brother evaporated after that night with bottle throwing and the name calling for the next ten years. I remember his then girlfriend, Sandra, sliding the patio door open like a red velvet curtain you see on theater stages – something to hide the production woes and intermissions. Can you come here please she would mumble to my mom who was sitting at the dining room table. Urgency raised in her voice like a mouse being squeezed between your palms. He didn’t talk to you for ten years, and it tore you up. Then, one day, he showed back up. You gave him all the attention in the world. Why? After all, he was the biblical version of Ham that brought curses; I, the contemporary Ham that witnessed your truths.

39. In May of 1954, the director of Immigration and National Service, Joseph Swing, established the law enforcement initiative titled Operation Wetback. The program was used to utilize a special task force, which would eventually become today’s border patrol, to help with the illegal immigration of Mexican migrants crossing into America. Ironically enough, it was Mexico who pressured America into

Leyva 11 creating such an initiative. Mexico wanted to keep the legal stream of migrant workers under the Bracero program from being tainted by those who crossed illegally; however, America eventually, being on the cusp of civil races issues, took the initiative a step to far and was met abuse allegations and subsequent deported families with persecution. 40. This wasn’t written to signal an estranged relationship or a lack of a relationship. This was written to understand where you came from, how your life was lived. An unconventional creation, but much like Noah, you built your life up in the face of a great impending flood of doom and destruction. You did it for us.

41. There are moments where I want to be destructive. I want to start the flame in my forest of blandness and boring. I want to tear the old pictures of you, us, the family into shreds, throw them into a pile, and let the flames engulf everything. Maybe then you’ll pay more attention to me; however, the underlying question is why do I feel that I need more attention? Do I need to disappear for ten years, with only bits and pieces you hear from extended family members being the only bits of reassurance of my life you get?

42. Then I think, no. That this idea of destruction is not something that you deserve. Then I tuck it away in a mason jar and bury it in the backyard. 43. “Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav'st me; whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?” John Milton’s Paradise Lost