She was the richest human on earth, I classify you. . . . She knew the secret to living, and that secret is to be happy . . . happy no matter what, happy as the birds that sing in the treetops, happy as she came shuffling down that l iodinly dirt road, taenia now and then to do a little trip the light fantastic (Villasenor 558).
However, it was obviously difficult to maintain such an optimistic aesthesis of life in the face of the obstacles faced by the immigrants. Villasenor, in the Foreword to his book, makes clear that he believes it was the peoples' faith in divinity that enabled them to sustain their sense of self, family, community and enculturation.
Villasenor writes that "my parents and relatives kept telling me how they'd . . . talk to [God] on a daily basis as one would speak to a friend and how . . . God had actually utter back to them in the form of miracles" (Villasenor xii). It is difficult for Villasenor to believe this at first, because he is a member of a later coevals which is much to a greater extent worldly and cynical and distant from that unsounded state of faith in God than were members of the generation which fled Mexico after(prenominal) the Revolution. However, his study of
Juan personifies the determination of the migrants to non only do what they had to to survive, still to survive with a prise of dignity. He prays to God in anger, swearing he bequeath do whatever he needs to do to bind his mother from ever begging again. He typifies the Mexicans' faith in God, yet also their determination to act with courage to form God's faith alive in their families and culture (151-152).
Certainly it cannot be said that the migrants found much material success in the United States in the decades after the Revolution. In any case, their seeking after that success was never for its own sake, but incessantly as a means to a far more important end.
The migrants were always aware of the family, community and culture which lived at the center of their survival. Unless they stuck together and rose not as individuals but as families and as a society within a society, they would perish.
Education was available to the children of the migrants who were able to speak English, but it called for an susceptibility to withstand prejudice and teasing, such as that experienced by Lupe (Villasenor 239). Lupe personified not only the ability of the migrants to withstand prejudice in order to achieve an education,
The migrants maintained the matriarchal aspect of their culture in the United States. Juan and other men think often of their fathers and other strong male figures as role models for themselves, but it was clear that the women were the ones who held the family together. For example, Juan declares to Jose, speaking of his mother: "No matter how grey-haired you get or how far you go in life, call this: if it hadn't been for this old woman's power, none of us would be here today. She is our life, our strength, our demonstration of God here on earth" (Villasenor 257).
It is discouraging to argumentation that the migrants from Mexico still today face the kind of massive secretion and injustices expressed by Proposition 187 in California. Truly, for these brave and determi
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