Tonia or Latina?

After reading about Stephen Colbert speaking infront of congress a few days ago surrounding the issue of immigration reminded me of a story told to me by my mom. My mom came to this country in the early 1980s. She told me at that time, seeing another hispanic was so rare especially in the suburban areas. She says that by seeing someone who spoke spanish was the thing that made their day. My mom also told me that even if you saw them on the other side of the street, you had to walk up to them and say hi. When she started working, her pay was the medium wage at the time which was $5.25/ hour. Compared to what it is now, that's abismal. Well my mom told me a story about a lady that she knew by the name of Tonia. This lady came to the United States around the same time as my mom and she quickly wanted to take part in the American culture. Tonia would then dye her hair so that it would be blonde and tried the fashion as well (mind you this is 80s fashion). This however impeded the fact that she still did not know english at all. This lead to confusion. People would ask her on the streets for directions but she had no idea what they were saying to her. "¡No especke inglish!" she would respond.

For a lot of immigrants, this time was maybe worst than how it is nowadays. In the 1980s, La migra (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) would actually stop the buses to find illegal immigrants so that they would deport them. Mind you this was in Washington, DC, not Texas.

As the story goes, Tonia was coming home from work on the bus. The bus was one the place to meet other hispanics. I'm assuming that customs knew that too, which is why they came to the bus that day. Customs actually stopped the bus and made their way in to find illegal immigrants. The bus itself acted as a holding cell, trapping any immigrant that try to escape. Talk about racial stereotyping, they questioned everyone that "looked hispanic." Tonia was in the back not even noticing what was going on. When the customs agent came to her and asked her, "Are you Latina?" Tonia, thinking that they were looking for a lady whose name is "La Tina" responded, "No, Soy La Tonia (No, I'm the Tonia)." The Customs agent looked at her and thought she was white and left. Noticing that the bus became more spacious, she asked her friend what had happened. She was oblivious to what had happened. Customs actually took close to 10 people that day.

The winds of a new beginning

Hi everyone! I have created this blog so that I could be able to tell others about the stories of my family. You may asked what made me to write about these stories and the significance of it all. To explain this, it goes back to High School.

In eleventh grade I had a great english teacher (Ms. Poeppel if anyone knows her) who I first told one of these stories. It happened when we had to take our school pictures for the yearbook. We were in line and she asked me how her teaching was. She recently came back from Germany where her husband had been working for three years. As the conversation progressed, we began talking about the great title, "Cronicles of a Death Fortold" by the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. On the subject of Marquez's books, I told her about what my Grandma told me about how she grew up and raised her own brothers and sisters because her parents were killed by lightning (later on I will tell you more about this). Ms. Poeppel at the time was writing a book and she tought that these stories would be great in a book.

During my studies at the University of Maryland I took many classes that involve worldly experiences. The one class that really interested me was MUET200 during my freshman year. As the course description described it:

"Perspectives of world popular music as contested terrain, in terms of gender, nationality and aesthetics. Students will read case histories of specific movements, social commentaries on genres.The unifying factors are cross-cultural perceptions and displays of national identity, cultural retentions, stability and change." -Testudo

The one section in this class that interested me was the Mande Jeli of Senegal. These people had the task of story telling about their past history and stories. This is what I plan to do with this blog, tell the stories of my family so that I can have a form of data base so that in the future, these stories can continue to live on in the lives of others.

Some of these stories seem very farfetched. Granted, like the game of telephone, stories that are told orally often get changed or modified. I will be telling you these stories the way my family have told me. Fiction or Non-fiction, take your pick because most of these stories seem very ridiculous. I'm not the best writer so bare with me and in the next post, I will be telling you a story about a lady that Mom told me about when she first came to the United States.

Thanks for reading! :D