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A future stone-cold Chicano − Joaquín 3 in ultrasound Chicano Confidential Yo soy Joaquín, puro Chicano, hasta in utero By Sonny Boy Arias My third grandson is about to be born any day now and I can’t help but think about how it is that he will become “Joaquín.” What I mean to say is that in becoming “Joaquín,” he will become Chicano—and he has no transformation to go through as he will come to see the world through my big brown eyes. Encounters with one’s surroundings, both positive and negative, start in the womb. Whether in-or-out of the womb I want to contribute to a colorful, engaging, truly inspirational, meaningful environment for my grandsons. I want for them a dignified and morally honorable and heroic existence. Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’ epic poem “You Soy Joaquín,” is laden with political significance and expressions indicative of a Chicano not letting the dominant society silence the voice of the resistor, in this case, me (a.k.a. “Sonny Boy”), in my capacity as “Joaquín” symbolically the Chicano with an existential soul. I am rather hopeful that I can contribute to the modern-day imaginations of my boys through “heroic muses” and fantasies (mentiras) as well as through the Chicano experiences in everyday life, because, from Sonny Boy’s perspective, life-Chicano can be rather amusing. I will show them a world with realities they will face from un espejo differente, a different mirror, a critically contemplative mirror if you will. You see my Mama taught me that I was born into a world where a lot of things were already assumed such as: 2+2=4, President Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon within a decade, Chicanos were treated like second-class citizens, Spaniards were not our people, Eva Longoria was not born yet and Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farmworkers Association. I am not going to bullshit my boys. When they learn about Christopher Columbus and how he discovered America, I’m going to chime in and say, “Mijo, what Columbus really discovered was that he was lost! Columbus was the original hijo perdido!” I will tell my boys that at one point Chicanos were, as “Corky” puts it, “confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes” and “caught up in the whirl of gringo society” but we have evolved and made a lot of progress since the 1960s and as a result the world is very different now. Chicano millennial hipsters aren’t confused just because they dress with rings through their ears, noses, cheeks, lips and other places. They don’t care much about about what they don’t care about, including any talk about a movimiento as much as they do taking a good selfie. Truth be told back in the day we were simply okay being a little confused. Being suspended existentially, caught in a web of contradictions, was a positive state of mind; we just wanted to be in control of that which was out of control, like a boat without a rudder in a storm. Nothing mattered more to us than to fight for our own worth as human beings and we didn’t think about carving out a path for social change; it just happened, Chicano style. I will raise my grandsons as Chicanos, each named “Joaquín.” Interesting to note is that as I am preparing this writing I received a call from my eldest daughter saying she was going to have a baby and she already speculates it will be a boy. I was raised Chicano in a highly politicized family, each relative adding to the Chicano Movement from their perspectives and struggles; we each had our unique way of contributing to El Movimiento Chicano de Aztlan.  Azteca Danzantes Sonny Boy and Joaquín taking a break I will stress to my boys that Chicano activism must start early; we must engrain in our children a paradigm for both identifying and objectifying injustices in everyday life and we must now be efficient and accountable in our actions, no confusion, so I suggest that we think “small scale big change.” Charlando For the greater part of my life whenever a group of Chicanos got together after pistos, tequilazos and ice-cold Coronitas and Dos Equis, we always landed up trying to out-Chicano each other. We used to talk about how poor we were growing up in the barrio and how we devised methods for survival. Applying his own rationale for how to “make it” in a White man’s world, one bato loco always told me that the secret to a successful life was having more than one job. He said he could eat well because he worked as a dishwasher at a good restaurant. And he worked at a gas station in order to keep his car in great working condition, always filled with gas. He told me these things from his prison cell. The bato that told one of the best stories about being poor was Rafael Arreola who became a Superior Court Judge in San Diego. “Rafa” was from Jalisco and he told a story of how when he was young he was so poor he and his brother would dig through cow dung and dig out the beans and go home and make frijoles-borachos. How could you possibly beat that story? One recollection of having to present my Chicano credentials to my camaradas was when I told this bato that we were so pobre that my grandmother made chicken soup every night and the bato said, “Hey man, what’s wrong with that? I love chicken soup!” I replied “Yeah, but she used the same chicken every night!” We laughed so hard we forgot what we were laughing about. Chicken soup or not this bato was my camarada, he was a cool dude—I knew he would take a bullet for me; now that’s a camarada. And he knew I knew that even though I said I would take a bullet for him, I really wouldn’t, but we always acted like I would. You know you have a good friend when you spend Sunday afternoons shooting turds in the American Canal when it’s 112 degrees out. This is the way I want my grandsons to be: comfortable enough in their own brown skin that they can talk shit with each and also have deeper thoughts reaching deeper levels of predication, thinking thoughts we would have trouble comprehending but pretending like we knew what the hell we were talking about. Sometimes you say shit that your camaradas have trouble believing or understanding, you know what I mean, bato? In the near future I can imagine two of my three grandsons (pictured below) talking: Joaquín 1: “I look at my brother and say to him, Joaquín, I am Joaquín, too, and I will never sell you out, my brother Joaquín. I always wish you good health and happiness and may we always find joy and something to celebrate, often. You are my big brother, Joaquín, and I cherish you deeply; you are always in my thoughts, so you will never truly be alone. Muchisimas gracias for being a loyal and caring brother, Joaquín, and for always stimulating my thoughts, deep thoughts. We always have wonderful conversations, and they are often humorous to boot. May God keep you around and in good health, Joaquín, and me, too, for many years to come, hermano.” Joaquín 2: “You are a great big brother, too, Joaquín!”  Joaquín 2 on the left with his older brother Joaquín 1 in the great Salinas Valley grape fields No Really, How Chicano Are You? I will never bullshit my grandsons; I will not sweep the truths about injustices in American society under the rug. I will always put things into perspective within the realm of the times we are living and I will speak from my corazón--they will know my love for them through my Chicano-speak. Many Chicanos were not quite as fortunate as I, born to a first generation Chicana politicized by her own human condition, surrounded by more than a dozen brothers and sisters, all politicized Chicanos who took action against institutions designed to keep us out. Similarly, many Chicanos were born out of what Corky Gonzalez called “GOLDEN MOMENTS OF FREEDOM” (Yo Soy Joaquin) mainly moments when they or their loved ones were wronged. My golden moment of freedom was rather fiery and came when I was five years old protesting alongside my grandmother in Barrio Logan (Chicano Park). Still in my uniform, I was walking home from the nearby baseball field following a Little League baseball game where I played right field. As a cariño we called my grandmother, “Nana buela” (short for abuela) and as I looked over in her direction, a young White San Diego Police officer grabbed her by the hair and pulled her down to the ground while she was picketing on the street where they planned to build the Coronado Bridge and through eminent domain throw her out of her house that was merely a shack my grandfather built with his own two hands, and he was not a carpenter. As I saw the police officer throw her to the ground, all I could think of was, “You fucking pig!” My grandmother was less than five feet tall, she toiled for more than 40 years on the assembly line at the Bumble Bee Tuna Corporation, chopping up tuna with a machete-like knife (very sharp), she went to church every day of her life, she loved her grandchildren dearly, she was a saint, and here this young punk cop was throwing her to the ground. Chinga’o! As I ran toward her I could hear the clicking of my baseball cleats against the concrete sidewalk and it reminded me of how my father forbade me to wear my cleats off the baseball field, but this was an emergency, and just as I got only a few feet from the bastard-pig I took to the ground like sliding into home plate and gave him both my cleats into his thigh just below his gun. At this he immediately let my grandmother go, I had his full attention, I had hurt him good, and now I was lying on the ground face-to-face with my Nana Buela. Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth
and all the love for me,
and I am her
and she is me.
We face life together in sorrow,
anger, joy, faith and wishful. (I Am Joaquín.) I looked into her dark eyes and noticed that she dyed her hair (black); this was a bit of a revelation and I could see clearly into her mouth. I think she had a cavity in each tooth, yet another revelation, and her lipstick was smudged and she smiled like she always did as if to say, “I may be a saint but I am one tough Chica, I’m not hurt, I am sticking up for the right to keep my home, don’t worry I’m okay, you are not in trouble, you did the right thing y te quiero mucho mijo!” She took to her feet standing no less than “ten” feet tall as she had taken one for the “gipper” and so had I; it was our golden moment of freedom, yet another reason to remain true to our Chicanismo. She knew I knew she knew I knew she knew I knew and that was all that counted for the remainder of her life. Even at the very end of her life I recall her last words were “Yo soy Chicana!” She acted like a Saint that drank two to three 102 brand beers on Sundays. As my grandmother made her way up to her feet, I was still on the ground and she reached over to help me to my feet. All I could see was the pig-cop rubbing his thigh, cross-checking to make sure his gun was in his holster (there were no stun guns in those days), unsnapping his small hard leather pouch all at once throwing the handcuffs on me. He looked at me like a fish does when you have him on the hook like, “I got you now, you little shit!” Nana Buela looked at me and I looked at him and he looked at us as if he were truly threatened; he knew we could kick his ass, my grandmother threw five-hundred pound tuna around all day every day for Pete’s sake, she was strong as hell. We used to say, “She can pick up her own house, it’s not much, but it’s paid for.” I felt like a slave wearing baseball cleats to an empowered tyrant-pig who knew nothing about why we were picketing, yet we both knew I ate pig on Sundays in my favorite menudo. “You little shit, you little shit!” he kept repeating as he literally threw me in the back of the police car. My grandmother’s look kept me strong as I knew I had done the right thing in her eyes and I had her support. The cop took me to the San Diego Police Department not more than two miles away and pushed me into a long wooden pew-like seat. He unlocked my handcuffs and cuffed me up once again to the armrest. Not a minute had gone by when the cops behind the window looked out at me sitting there in my baseball uniform when one of them said, “What is he in for, stealing third base?” I sat there in shackles for more than three hours, I had not yet been processed and no one talked to me, I was left with my own thoughts: I am Joaquín.
The odds are great
But my spirit is strong,
My faith unbreakable,
My blood is pure.
I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.
I SHALL ENDURE!
I WILL ENDURE!” (I Am Joaquín.) Here I was, just a kid, a barrio boy, experiencing my first real “golden moment of freedom,” as Corky puts it, how ironic, “I am literally shackled to a large wooden bench and I have never felt so free.” Perhaps I should find that fucking pig that threw my Nana Buela to the ground and thank him. I know she would forgive him; she would say, “We are all God’s children.” I always felt somewhat “locked-up” living in the barrio that became Chicano Park amidst the black-and-whites (police cars), but on this day it was real. As Corky puts it: I toiled on my Earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood for the Spanish master who ruled with tyranny over man and beast and all that he could trample. But….THE GROUND (Chicano Park) WAS MINE. (I Am Joaquín.) To make matters worse within a year from this incident they threw my Nana Buela out of her house and forced her to move to another part of the city and pick up a hefty mortgage payment where she had none before. As the construction of the bridge ensued, they started by driving concrete spikes into the heart of our community.  I own the land (Chicano Park) Events like these were ongoing; they never seemed to stop. We could never really prepare for what was to come next because city planning, politicians and their junk yard dogs, the cops, always had a movida; we just couldn’t second-guess them. In a lot of ways it didn’t matter as their actions reified my Chicanismo, I thought, like Corky: I am Cuauhtémoc, proud and noble, leader of men, king of an empire civilized beyond the dreams of the gachupín Cortés, who also is the blood, the image of myself. I am the Maya prince. I am Nezahualcóyotl, great leader of the Chichimecas. I am the sword and flame of Cortes the despot And I am the eagle and serpent of the Aztec civilization. I owned the land (Chicano Park)….” I must fight and win this struggle for my sons, and they must know from me who I am. (From “My Own People,” an excerpt from I Am Joaquín.) So in the wake of my third grandson, I received word that we are expecting yet another grandchild. Should it be a boy, he, too, will be named “Joaquín” or maybe “Joaquín-Patrice” like my son, named after two great revolutionaries, Joaquín Murietta and Patrice Lumumba. This is what makes me Chicano! How about you, how Chicano are you? You soy Chicano! By the end of our fiery discussions to ascertain “Who was more Chicano!” I knew in my heart that only a few of us were actually born Chicano. I am Joaquín. (You Soy Joaquín) Imaginate, true Chicanos and Chicanas are being born in the year 2016! Hijole! And the message is clear: “We are here, we have been here for a long time, we were here before you came along, and we are here to stay and will form part of a future world we helped to create and share with you, with or without your acquiescence!” Hasta la victoria siempre!  Sonny Boy Arias is a social psychologist by trade and a stone-cold Chicano story teller at heart as this “memoir” manifests, his latest column based on the premise, historias verdaderas mentiras auténticas. His book, Theorizing César Chávez: A Treatise in the Social Psychology of Scientific Thinking in Everyday Life, is due for release this year by Arts and Sciences World Press. |