The Stillness of Love and Exile

The Stillness of Love and Exile

Extract from the book by Rosa Martha Villarreal

Prologue

IN THE END, LILIA WOULD FIND THE HAPPINESS THAT CAN ONLY COME with the complete surrender into another's being. The kind of love that is desired by all and is the birthright of every soul; the kind of love that is disguised and denied by so many except by those who believe dreams are omens.

Love would have never been Lilia's destiny. Her fate, perhaps, but not her destiny. Fate is that which happens upon us, an accident born of impassivity. Destiny is the journey which we choose, an awaken­ing of the deepest desire for self-destruction and rebirth in the love of another.

Misfortune, thus, roused her from a dull fate. Her debasement by a man she detested propelled her on a journey along a highway of de­sire, still called by its ancient name, El Camino Real, the royal Spanish road that extended from Mexico City to Santa Fe to the Netherlands of Alta California, where the many movements of people, their desires still intact and hovering like invisible bees, collected on the edges of the highway as debris upon the shores of a river.

It was along this road where, century after century, men and women searched for the sanctuary created by their longings. The dispossessed sought land; the unfree, anonymity; the persecuted, tranquility; the for­saken, love. An epoch later, the highway would recognize the unfulfilled desires of Lilia Cantú.

She would find love three times, but ultimately she chose to believe it was only once and only one man whom she had loved.

Lilia

SEVEN YEARS BEFORE SHE BEGAN HER JOURNEY ALONG THE

highway of desire, Lilia was a mere sixteen-year old and had lived an uneventful but happy childhood in her Coahuila hometown of Nueva Rosita. The eldest of four siblings, she had been a gentle and sympa­thetic child. But time betrayed her to misfortune because as she entered adolescence, her spirit of gentleness adorned itself with the symbols of a premature sexuality. Her body grew up before she could discern what the changes meant, and she began to experience a persistent restlessness alien to her innocence. Anxiousness—her immature sexual desires—constantly interrupted her sleep, and when she did sleep she dreamed of being awake all the time. Suddenly, she lost interest in those things she had once loved: her books, her friends, and their games. She had no comprehension that her restless and formless sexuality could one day transform itself into the desire for a man's love even though, un­known to her, she already inspired an intense longing in men because her femininity was not kinetic but a serene-like liquidity that suggested she could decipher their death anxieties.

Lilia's sexual magnetism did not escape her parents' notice. They worried that she would marry too soon before she could make a wise choice for a husband. Still, despite everything, Lilia was too shy to have a boyfriend and too inexperienced to understand the suggestions of men. Her parents encouraged her to continue her education after secondary school, hoping that when the moment came for her to have a boyfriend, at the very least she would be exposed to the young men of promise. But Lilia found herself unable to concentrate on her stud­ies. What gave her pleasure was physical work, as though her body subconsciously sought sexual relief and release in the most mundane activities. Against her parents' wishes, she got a job as a waitress in one of the nicer restaurants in Nueva Rosita. Her parents worried that, as in times past, a young girl could be subjected to the sexual predations of her employer. But they were relieved to learn that the proprietor was a devout and strict Christian who insisted that his em­ployees go to church at least once a week. Still, Lilia's mother worried, her intuition warning her of impending danger, but her young daugh­ter dismissed her premonitions.

Not long after she started working, Lilia decided to go to the mar­ketplace to shop for some earrings after she had just finished the break­fast and lunch shift at the restaurant. When she approached the en­trance of the marketplace, she noticed a group of rude men congregated nearby and experienced an animal's terror of imminent death. Even from afar, she could hear the male voices, the savage ring of impunity in their collective echo. Like a restless pack of predators mocking their victims, they made disparaging and crude remarks not only to Lilia, but to the other women in the vicinity. Rather than leave and return home, Lilia, impelled by her pride, walked past the jeering men, de­termined not to be intimidated. The loudest and most vulgar man, the leader of the pack, was smitten by her false bravery and her nascent and serene femininity. He silenced the men as she passed before them and devoured her image. At that very moment he was determined to possess her and days later he ambushed and violated her.

After he had raped her, he told her, "Either you come with me or you can live out the rest of your life as a whore."

At that moment she experienced an utter paralysis of her will. Only her pride retained its clarity. Too ashamed and terrified to return home, she decided it was better to endure the vicious love of her rapist than to face her family's anguish at her dishonor, to repeatedly encounter the scrutiny and curiosity of her neighbors whom she knew would con­stantly reinvent her violation in their minds whenever they would see her. She did not even bother to go home after the incident. She went to the man's motel room, cleaned up, and returned to the marketplace to find someone who would send a message to her parents. She saw one of the boys from her neighborhood playing soccer in a nearby playground, and it was he who delivered her note.

"I've left for Ciudad Juarez to be married," said the note. "I'll write soon.

Her parents and neighbors were shocked by her letter and her disappearance because she was not only a shy and virtuous girl but she was never known to even have had a boyfriend. Those were the years when gangs were kidnapping people for ransom. Since Lilia's uncles had recently inherited the profitable department stores of their Grandfather Pierre Gemayel, her family suspected foul play and called the police. The police did nothing, believing she ran off like so many others.

A few weeks later, her parents received a letter from her, telling them she was all right. But the letter had no return address, offered no phone number where she could be reached. She did so to perpetuate the illusion of having chosen her fate. For Lilia’s parents the letter did not console them. It was as though their daughter had died, and they would constantly grieve her absence. Many years would go by before they would see her again.

                                                      >>>*<<<

Lilia did not learn the name of her rapist until after he had taken her away to Ciudad Juárez.

Almost from the first moment she saw Ciudad Juárez, Lilia was filled with the presentiments of imprisonment. The city: ugly, sprawl­ing, chaotic; that disorder of fractured hopes that infests the urban cen­ters on the border crossing. It was as though the city symbolized the despair she felt.

The man who raped her leaned close to her and spoke soothingly, "This is not where your home is, amor..."

Lilia flinched at the word amor. She knew nothing of love though her captor had possessed her again the night before. There was no vio­lence this time, only submission. She obeyed his commands, undressed for him, and endured with a comatose patience until he satisfied him­self. She replayed the events of the last two days in her mind as though she were trapped in a headache-induced dream, where all of the imagery is configured by pain and the suffocating desire to wake up. She wanted so desperately to go back in time, to that moment before she entered the marketplace, before she detected her rapist's presence and felt her animal-like desperation to flee.

"The house is in a respectable neighborhood. Not like this." He waved at the sight before them, the chaos of futility: the cardboard shacks, potholed streets strewn with garbage, children, and skinny dogs driven by hunger to wander in the loveless alleys. He looked at the sight of poverty but instead of sadness he welled up with triumph. He had risen from these streets and fought his way out, destroyed enemies, and taken what he wanted, even this beautiful child-bride who watched with undreaming eyes.

"If you dislike the house, I'll buy you a new one, I swear it," trumpeted the man, whose name, Kiko Mendoza, condemned to be mere syllables, would never signify a human being to Lilia.

"I'm certain I'll like the house." Her voice was flat, without a hint of resentment or resignation. It was devoid of everything, both hatred and love.

Kiko Mendoza smiled at what he interpreted as her docility. She'll be a good wife ... She’ll learn to love me when the pain goes away... Lilia did not see the smile, nor would she really truly discern his face until much, much later. It was as if she had reduced him to her peripheral vision, even when she appeared to look at him directly. Then there was her smile: distant and Madonna-like, inscrutable, barring him forever from her heart.

The house was situated in a moderately affluent, but unpretentious middle-class neighborhood. It was a single story building behind a brick and wrought iron fence. It was not much different from the house she had grown up in except that the driveway and car port were covered with expensive tile. Lilia stepped inside an air-conditioned house filled with expensive furniture and state-of-the art stereo equipment and a large screen television. The wealth on display contradicted the appear­ance of the crude man. But in her paralyzed mental state she did not given much thought about his line of work. She looked around vaguely and said finally, "I've no clothes."

"What size do you wear?" After she told him he picked up the tele­phone and ordered someone to the mall. "Bring the clothes here imme­diately. Buy her a nice dress for the wedding... When? Not that it’s any of your business but the day after tomorrow, after she's had some rest." When he hung up the phone he ordered her to go bathe. "And don't stand around like a frightened servant. You're the mistress of the house. Your clothes will be here in an hour. Have my supper ready by seven."

Kiko Mendoza went into a room and locked the door behind him, leaving her among his other possessions. There was no one else there, no one who would prevent her from walking out and returning home. She could have done so, gone to the church-run home for women they had passed on the way, or disappeared in the downtown neighborhoods among the displaced, faceless multitudes, among those waiting for a job in a factory or for the human traffickers, the coyotes, to take them across the border; those for whom despair and desire were all the same thing. Lilia was now one of them, but she did not leave. Not because she suddenly coveted Kiko Mendoza’s wealth, but because it would all be the same whether she stayed or left. She was one of the dispossessed now because she no longer had those who loved her nor could she go back home in her shamed position. What she did not know was that her rapist had fallen in love with her already. But even if she had known this, it would never be enough for her to be loved, because she could never love him.

He did not touch her that night though he watched her until she fell asleep and many hours afterwards while she slept. She did not feel him contemplating her, admiring her beauty and serenity, as if he wanted to absorb her very image. Had she loved him, she would have unknow­ingly invited him to penetrate the layers of her slumber, to search the pit of her desires, but instead even in sleep she remained aloof, indiscern­ible, and utterly indifferent to his deepest longings.

In the morning she awoke and found herself alone. He did not re­turn until two days later, the day he had promised to marry her. He burst through the back door, agitated, his clothes covered in filth and reeking of perspiration and gun powder. Without so much as acknowl­edging her, he went directly into the shower and emerged half-naked, still dripping with water. He brusquely tossed her his clothes and told her to burn them in an outdoor fireplace in the patio. The clothes were caked with dried blood. Frightened, she quickly lit the clothes on fire and came back inside the house. Kiko had the television turned on. He stood motionless as he watched the news report, now calm, relaxed and self-assured. The news alert reported the mass murder of a family con­nected to one of the Juarez drug cartels by a rival gang. Among those killed was a six month old baby. The newscast announced the name "Kiko Mendoza," and Lilia's captor's chest swelled with pride. He knew she was spying him. Now you know, Lilia ... It satisfied him immensely to repeatedly reveal himself to his bride through his acts of viciousness.

"It'll be a civil ceremony," said Kiko without turning around, unable to detach himself from the carnage on display. "We can marry in the church later, if you like..." When he turned to look at her, she averted her eyes, and that, too, gratified him, that she feared him.

"Whatever pleases you," she said.

Kiko's eyes covered her image from head to toe, a mix of contempt and the inexperienced sensation of love. "Get dressed, we leave in an hour."

Rosa Martha Villarreal is author of several books including Doctor Magdalena (TQS Publications) and Chronicles of Air and Dreams: A Novel of Mexico (Archer Books), and The Stillness of Love and Exile (Tertulia Press). Also a teacher and essayist, she lives in Nevada City, California, hailing originally from Houston, Texas. Posted with the author’s permission.

Breaking the Silence of Shadows

Breaking the Silence of Shadows

By Albert Ledesma

We'll call him Jim--Jim Garcia. Before this night in late May 2009, I had never met him. He stood about five foot seven in his Crocs-my height, but he was about 40 pounds heavier. He wore rimless glasses, but unlike me he sported a scruffy beard and a buzz haircut. We were assembled at a Holiday Inn bar in Albuquerque, where we were all attending a Latino writers' conference. I'd been told that he was a children's book writer, that he had just won some award in Texas for his first picture book and that he was funny. All I noticed at first was that I liked how he giggled.

The other two writers sitting at our table I knew from a past conference. To protect their privacy I've changed their names in this essay, but suffice it to say that all of us, it seemed, identified as Latino writers: Rafael the Nicaraguan, Andrew the Puerto Rican, and I the Mexican immigrant. As for Jim? I didn't know but assumed he was Latino. ??? as opposed to Chicano? I would soon find out differently.

After a long day of seminars on how to write marketable fiction and the like, the four of us had sat down to unwind over a few drinks. By half past midnight, we had the bar to ourselves and were sitting at the far corner of the tiny place, while behind us, on a flat screen above our heads, analysts discussed again the Lakers' lopsided win over Orlando and the bartender cleaned glasses.

We crowded around a table no larger than a Little Caesar's pizza box, its surface a cityscape of nacho platters, half-full schooners with remnant arcs of salt on their rims, a nearly empty third pitcher of margaritas, and four of those ridiculously small plates that make you realize just how impossible it is to scoop guacamole and Monterey Jack when someone offers a corn chip-at least not without dripping it on your shirt.

I held my lemonade on my lap, grasping the cool glass with the fingertips of my right hand, taking sips as the minutes of conversation passed and the voices of my new friends began to slur. Having long ago made a commitment to avoid drinking, I smiled, still painfully sober in spite of the hour. I laughed when they laughed, happy to be in a community of writers like me. I listened as they spoke of their work and the places they'd been. After ten years of living there, Rafael still missed Spain. Andrew was happy that his new novel was getting so many positive reviews. Jim was thinking of a new idea for his second children's book. Some day soon, I thought, that would be me--recently published and still ambitious.

Someone raised a glass. "Here's to the writer's life!" And I, too, raised my lemonade. Then it happened. Jim sighed, downed the last of his margarita and leaned forward on his chair.

"Don't get me started with these damned illegals," he said with a giggle. "I just think we ought to deport them all." This remark seems out of the blue; did some remark prompt him to say it?

The rest of us froze, then gazed at each other, as if each of us was waiting for the other to say something. Even the bartender stopped the flurry of his towel.

That pause, that moment while we waited to continue the conversation seemed to last forever. Now, the fatigue our eyes had betrayed just seconds before transformed to something different: anger, confusion, fascination.

My heartbeat quickened. I drank the rest of my lemonade in one gulp and placed the empty glass at the edge of the table. I took in a deep breath, slowly seeking to calm the beginning of convulsions in my asthmatic lungs. And I spoke.

"Excuse me. What exactly did you mean by that comment?"

His smile dissolved until his mouth was left agape. He looked at me, seemingly puzzled at first, and then he tilted his head, pensive as he weighed his approach to my question. He pushed his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger.

"Look," he said, his once nasal, high-pitched voice now deeper and more serious. "I've spent my whole life living in Eastern Texas. My family has been there for generations. I am sick and tired of all these illegals coming over the border and making a mess of things for the rest of us. It's about time we do something about it."

There was no hesitation in his remarks, not even a hint of discomfort or of the irony of what he was saying and where. Here we all were, at a writers' conference by and for Latinos, most of us feeling optimistic about our growing demographic of readers, and even here there was an immigration debate.

I crossed my arms and massaged the stubble on my chin as he continued. He was not backing down. Instead, he looked at Rafael and Andrew and nodded as he commented about how much undocumented immigrants were costing our country. "Isn't that right?" he asked rhetorically.

Rafael and Andrew shrugged, their faces mirroring one another like identical Rorschach blots. Rafael took a drink from his nearly full margarita. Andrew looked away, towards one of the empty tables of the restaurant adjacent to the bar. Then Jim spoke again.

"Hispanics are never going to be accepted as true Americans so long as we condone the flood of illegals coming to this country. They have absolutely no respect for our laws."

*        *        *.

In that moment, I felt the urge to tell Jim about my past-that for a decade my family and I had lived in the heart of East Oakland's African American ghetto as undocumented Mexican immigrants. That even now, 25 years after normalizing our status, I held my breath whenever a police cruiser pulled close. But my undocumented immigrant past is not something I can easily talk about. In fact, years after becoming a citizen, I avoided talking about it altogether, even when I felt the urge to do so. The more I suppressed the urge, the greater it grew.

For a while, I thought I could appease that restless desire to confess my undocumented immigrant past by pursuing an academic degree. I wrote a dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley that focused on the ways undocumented immigrants have been represented in Mexican American novels and stories. I was proud of my achievement, of documenting, as it were, the silences of undocumented immigrants who have been part of the Mexican American community for most of the last 100 years. I discovered that even in stories where authors did not intend to focus on undocumented immigrants, indocumentado experiences were chronicled as part of the setting. They were the aunts and uncles, the long-lost cousins, the nameless faces of passersby that have appeared here and there in many Chicano classics.

When I worked as a faculty member, I taught courses that compared Mexican undocumented immigrant experiences to those of previous immigrant generations from Asia and Europe. I also looked at the parallels between the exploitation of undocumented immigrant and African American labor. "Mexican undocumented immigration is another kind of American experience," I argued.

Still, I was not satisfied. It was my story I wanted to tell. The problem, however, was that I was scared, that I am still afraid that any disclosure of my family's undocumented immigrant past will come back to haunt me. Who in their right mind would embrace an illegal immigrant identity at a time of increased ICE raids and deportations? And, even if I were successful in publishing a memoir about my life as an undocumented immigrant, what would happen to my family? Would they be okay with it? Would they be okay that I wanted to confess what I thought was an unforgivable sin--that I actually resented my parents for bringing our family to the United States to suffer one humiliation after another?

But, there are so few trained writers, scholars with doctoral degrees or educational activists who have actually experienced life in the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Is it not my responsibility to represent?

The dirty little secret is that regardless of all the credentials I have accumulated, of all the books on law and argumentation that I've read, of all the impassioned speeches I have recorded and reviewed, talking about or writing stories about my undocumented immigrant past has not gotten easier.

In truth, it's only been a few years since I gave in and started calling myself a writer. Even now, I writhe in my seat whenever I have to confess to an old friend or new acquaintance that I've yet to publish something more than the poetry and critical essays I produced decades ago. Yes, I have a lot of material that I've sketched out in journals. What I lack is the courage to follow through, to finish editing my work so publishers seriously consider it.

Because I'm that afraid.

So I recognize the fear that compelled Jim's comments--a fear that, like mine, probably comes from shame. A fear that, similar to mine, is likely born out of the pain of being associated with what society tells us is repugnant. A fear that reminds us that others, particularly those who possess power over our lives, will see us solely as illegal and nothing else.

*        *        *.

Maybe it was the lateness of the day. Maybe it was the thought that unless I spoke up I could never honestly belong to this or any community of writers. The fact is that there, in that tiny hotel bar in Albuquerque, I heard myself verbalizing a sequence of words with a speed, precision and volume I had never experienced before.

"I don't understand how you can say these things when you are attending a Latino writers' conference. Do you seriously think that Mexican immigrant experiences have no business being included in this conference?"

The fire that had lighted Jim's eyes seemed to cool. He sat back, his glasses now perched near the tip of his nose. He held the padded armrests of his chair tightly, as if at any moment he would need to jump to his feet and walk away. Now, the lines across his forehead grew deeper, and tiny beads of sweat condensed everywhere on his brown skin, reflecting the bar's green-hued lamp lights in a nervous glow.

"It, it, it's just that where I grew up near Waco..well, you know, everybody's a redneck, and illegals are really screwing things up."

The more he leaned back, the more I leaned forward. The fainter his voice became, the more I felt my nostrils flaring and my top lip quivering. And the fainter his voice became, the louder my words sounded in the empty bar, until all that I could hear was the echo of an unknown voice emanating from my lips.

"But why do you even call the undocumented illegals?" I heard myself asking. "Are you an immigration judge? How many deportation trials have you adjudicated to determine if any of these immigrants is worthy of residency? Aren't people in the United States supposed to be innocent until proven guilty? If there is even one person who can convince a judge that she should not be deported, how can you deny any undocumented immigrant the opportunity to appeal their status?"

He said nothing. He looked at me as if he were the illegal and I the agent deporting him. Rafael and Andrew said nothing.

The bartender walked to our table to tell us he was closing for the night. In unison, we turned to look up at him. In turn, he focused on Jim and me, apparently disgusted with one or both of us.

That night, as we walked across the pastel pink and turquoise carpet of the empty hotel lobby and headed towards the elevators, I realized Jim wasn't the person with whom I had been arguing most. It had been towards myself that I felt the most anger.

I thought back to a summer morning in 1974, when I was 8, in our little blue house in East Oakland. It was a few weeks after papá had arranged for mamá, me and the rest of our family to be smuggled across the border at Tijuana. It was early--maybe six or so--and my parents were sitting at the kitchen table sharing a cup of coffee. That's when I overheard papá asking mamá why I was so miedoso.

"He's not scared," mamá had answered matter-of-factly. "It's just that this place is too new for him.".

But I had been scared. Very scared. And because of it I grew up to become a man who was overly cautious, nauseatingly polite, always worried about offending others. I was the perpetually smiling, self-effacing immigrant Cantinflas, who deflected insults as if they were the most natural and innocent wisps of autumn air.

But that fear, that approach had failed me. Silence would not protect me from being caught.

Oddly enough, Jim stayed close to me that night. We waited several minutes for the elevator to come down, all of us staring at the flashing lights above the elevator doors until one of us remembered that no one had pushed the button. It was then that Jim pushed his glasses back up his nose and turned to me.

"Look, man, maybe I was wrong to have said that stuff. It's just that when you said you wrote stories about undocumented immigrants, well, I just snapped."

Earlier that night, long before Jim had blurted his comment, Andrew had asked me about my work. I had told him what I do, that I write stories about how a family of undocumented immigrants struggles to adjust to life in East Oakland and ends up having all of the kids graduating from UC Berkeley, two of them with doctorates.

It's my family's story.

When Rafael had asked if the agents at the conference had been interested in my work, I'd told him they had, especially if I wrote the work as non-fiction.

"So, are you?" he asked. I didn't respond.

*       *        *.

Psychologists say that fear is an emotional response to real or imagined dangers. Humans react to threats by confronting, evading or becoming paralyzed by them. The truth is that I don't really know what will happen to my family or me if I publish the details of my undocumented immigrant past.

What my confrontation with Jim made clear is that unless Americans of undocumented immigrant heritage break our silence about what it feels like to live undocumented, unless I publish this and other work, the notion that undocumented immigrants are brain-dead parasites incapable of intellectual and ethical reflections regarding their social, political, and historical condition in American society will persist. And, unless these ideas are challenged, undocumented immigrants will continue to be regarded solely as cheap rental equipment, machinery devoid of spiritual or intellectual worth.  .

But I know what I am worth. I am more than a label or my citizenship status. My parents are more than their third-grade education. And my Berkeley Ph.D. means nothing if I remain quiet in the face of anti-immigrant attacks.

*       *        *.

The day I confessed to my parents my intention of attending college they were rightfully afraid, especially my dad, concerned that such an action would reveal my status to school officials and jeopardize any chance our family would have at legalization under the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill. That bill became The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and with it my family and I gained amnesty and I a legitimated role as a college student.

In an effort to do the right thing, to make sure we all kept clean, my parents were willing to see me reject the acceptance letter Berkeley had sent me.

It was only when I argued that I would enroll in the Army if I was not permitted to attend college that mamá and papá agreed to let me go to Cal. In all likelihood, I wouldn't have been able to volunteer for military service without also revealing my undocumented status. That did not stop me from thinking about it, from hoping that such a gesture would earn me points as a potential patriot that I could use if I were ever caught.

"I'll help you as much as I can, but you have to pay for most of your education yourself," papá said the morning my confirmation of acceptance letter was due. As I sped through the rain-slicked streets of East Oakland up 82nd Avenue and down East 14th to the post office on 90th Avenue, I played George Benson's "On Broadway" on my father's car stereo at least five times. And yet, the terror I saw in mamá's and papá's eyes as I left, and every day that I attended Berkeley after that, told me that boot camp might have been an easier road to take.

I saw that same terror in mamá's eyes 15 years later when I told her I was leaving my academic position to pursue the life of a writer. She looked at me from where she had been standing in front of the kitchen sink. She turned off the faucet, straightened up after wringing her towel and wiped her hands on her apron.

"Pero mi'jo, why would anyone ever want to read stories about our lives? We are little people just struggling to make it from one day to the next." She smiled when she sat on the chair next to mine.

We spoke for almost an hour; she asked questions and nodded as I tried to explain. She never asked me not to write about what we had been through--the dozens of times we had almost gotten caught--she didn't have to. I could see it on her face, in the subtlety of her frown and the way she crossed her arms, as if that self-embrace was the only thing keeping her from collapsing mere inches in front of her first-born son. She seemed anxious about what I had in mind, worried about the kinds of secrets I might expose in my stories. Still, she said nothing and merely sat tense, quiet, looking at me as if I were a puzzle she would never learn how to solve.

It reminded me of the way she had sat in the passenger seat of papá's green station wagon in the summer of 1976 as we rode home after a hot day at the San Jose Flea Market. Papá had bought a box full of strawberries-big, luscious, perfectly ripe fruit. On the way home, as we moved slowly through the Sunday afternoon traffic on the Nimitz Freeway, papá, really all of us, had one of those moments where we forgot about our status. A coworker had told him about a park not far from the highway we were now stuck on. It had a lake, dozens of pine trees and a picnic area where we could enjoy our strawberries. As soon as he saw an off-ramp, papá exited the freeway and headed towards the area his friend had told him about. As we looked for a place to park, papá found himself driving the opposite way into the City of Fremont Police Department's parking lot, just as a police cruiser was exiting.

"It is a common mistake," the officer said to my sister Silvia as he pointed towards the right entrance to the park. Mamá remained quiet in the passenger seat, her eyes towards the front, a subtle frown on her face and her arms wound tightly across her torso. That's the way she stayed all the way home. And, that's the way she sat as I told her I would no longer be a college professor, that I would instead write our family stories.

Maybe I learned my own fear from mamá. More precisely, the main lesson I learned from her was to protect family at all costs, that the needs of the many must always outweigh the wishes of the few. This, after all, is the way she has always led her life, the reason that she ventured to the United States with her children in tow to find her husband. This also seemed to be the reason for her concern about my writing and why she silenced her terror so many years ago in that Fremont Police Department parking lot.

Today, the family needs have changed. I am no longer hunted. Today, I am a Mexican American citizen of the United States. Safety is no longer contingent on remaining silent and invisible. And every endangered community eventually learns that silence equals death. If I want my citizenship to matter I must learn how to speak to the Jim Garcias of the world. If I want my people to know their worth, I must learn how to speak for the immigrants in the United States who cannot yet speak for themselves.

Alberto Ledesma is a writer in Northern California. The author can be contacted at albertoledesma@comcast.net. This essay originally appeared in ColorLines Magazine.

The Immigration Question: Towards a Common Sense Answer

The Immigration Question: Towards a Common Sense Answer

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

There is a scene from the film, Gladiator, where the emperor’s sister Lucilla appeals to General Maximus to help with an uprising against her tyrannical brother. The enslaved General replies that he has nothing but the mob. “The mob is Rome,” she replies.

Despite the fears of diverse notables such as Thomas Hobbes and Alexander Hamilton, in America the mob, or more accurately the body politic, is America. When all is said and done, no true change has ever occurred without the overt or tacit consent of the people. Thus, a woman’s reproductive rights are her own because most men and women give their consent. If they did not, we would have divergence of opinion as we do with the issue of gay marriage. Although the courts have for the most part agreed that gays can marry, voters in state after state have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

When President Obama once again announced his determination to advance “comprehensive immigration reform” in his 2010 State of the Union address, he evidently does not believe that there is a deep-seated opposition in the body politic against this reform. As I’ve stated in previous essays, to simplistically label the opposition as “racist” (though a minority of opponents are undoubtedly racists) not only misses the mark but obstructs any effort to find a just and humane solution to the problem of 11 million or so illegal immigrants, most of whom have put down roots and started families in this country.

We cannot create a solution without considering the objections of the opponents of immigration reform, which consists of two camps, the first of which is the right-wing xenophobes exemplified by the late Samuel Huntington. Easily threatened by diversity, urbanity, and eclectic intellectualism, this group resorts to ethnic baiting and slander, seeking to win the argument by weaving a narrative of selective truths. No amount of proof or reason can move this camp. This brings us to the second group.

The core of the opposition actually comes from the political center of the body politic, including many U.S.-born Mexican Americans especially from the second generation and beyond. The objections of these centrists stems from a cultural sense of fairness. Their argument goes as thus: Why should people who jumped ahead of the line be rewarded for their actions when millions are waiting through legal channels to enter the country? One can counter-argue that it was a booming economy that attracted these illegal migrants. However, though difficult, there are legal channels for workers to enter the U.S. based on need of certain industries. Be it desperation or misinformation, these migrants have fallen into the belief that the only way to enter the country to work is illegally.

Though most Americans truly do sympathize with the plight of these desperately poor migrants, they are taken aback by the polemics of the pro-legalization forces who argue that the fact that people are already here and have American-born children entitles them to legalization. Most centrists recognize the fallacy of this circular argument. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, centrists worry about the future consequences of mass legalization, i.e., the distinct possibility of imploring the over-burdened social services and attracting more illegal immigrations in the future.

Can there be a humane solution that does not disrupt those portions of the economy dependent on migrant labor and does not traumatize families? There can be a solution but only if we concede that it will be neither a perfect nor comprehensive endeavor. First of all, the American public, for better or for worse, does not want it. Any solution that goes against the will of the people is not only elitist and condescending but potentially dangerous, especially to Hispanic American citizens who could find themselves the targets of retaliation against an imposed solution.

A better proposition is normalization, where, instead of a new apparatus of non-enforceable laws, employed illegal immigrants become immediately eligible for work visas. These work visas would ensure free movement to and from the U.S. and the immigrant’s home country. These visas would be renewed for a pre-determined amount of years, say, 10-15 years, thus allowing for those with families to remain here until their children are grown rather than breaking families apart.

Henceforth, all workers, but especially those in labor markets that have favored unauthorized labor, would be checked through the E-verify system. Chronic addicts to illegal labor would be subjected to heavy fines and future illegal workers to immediate deportation.

With the competition of illegal labor eliminated, wages in the low end sectors would rise, raising the standard of living and giving native workers an opportunity to return to jobs that they would otherwise find undesirable due to low pay. Internal enforcement would be more cost-effective and free up our border enforcement to deal with drug and weapon trafficking.

Possession of a worker's visa would not constitute legal residence or eligibility for citizenship. Persons with work permits who wished to obtain their legal residency would do so through the process provided by current laws. No preference would be given based on possession of a work visa. Persons with a worker's visa could also purchase car insurance by returning to their native countries and obtaining a valid license there. In this manner, our U.S.-issued drivers’ licenses would remain a valid form of identification for citizens and legal residents.

Additionally, these workers would pay taxes but must have legal residency or citizenship for eligibility to receive public assistance. On its face value, this may be unfair; however, we must recall that the goal of most illegal immigrants has always been to work and not to settle in the country. It wasn’t until the passage of the disastrous 1986 Amnesty Bill that people began to smuggle their families into the country because re-entry was so difficult and settled here by default. Especially for many Latino migrants, seasonally returning home is more cost effective than trying to weather period of unemployment in the United States.

The issue of Social Security taxes and eligibility is more complex and could result in a constitutional challenge if not properly handled. It is up to the public to decide what course to take. However, if these workers are exempt from paying Social Security taxes, there can be no grievance of their ineligibility to collect a pension. Persons with a work visa, however, should be eligible to open IRAs and receive the same tax deduction for the traditional IRA. The cost of health care for immigrants, furthermore, could be defrayed by a 5% remittance tax that would go into the individual state’s Medicaid program.

As for students on the cusp of a university education, the process would be similar to that of foreign students. They would be eligible for a combination of student and work visas. Upon obtaining a college degree, they should be given preference---as all well-educated foreign applicants are---for residency. Exceptional graduates would be eligible for special status just like all talented foreigners who desire entry.

This path, normalization versus comprehensive reform, will not quell the histrionics of the extremists on both the Right and Left, but it is one that moderate Americans could live with.

Rosa Martha Villarreal is author of several books including Doctor Magdalena (TQS Publications), Chronicles of Air and Dreams: A Novel of Mexico (Archer Books), and The Stillness of Love and Exile (Tertulia Press). She places all her books in Mexico with a Mexican American protagonist, which “in an imaginative recreation takes us back to the mysteries of ancients and the whispers in the night winds.” Also a teacher and essayist, she lives in Nevada City, California, hailing originally from Houston, Texas.