Man of Fire

Selected Writings

Ernesto Galarza, Rodolfo Torres, Armando Ibarra, Rodolfo Torres, Armando Ibarra

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780252094934
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Activist, labor scholar, and organizer Ernesto Galarza (1905–1984) was a leading advocate for Mexican Americans and one of the most important Mexican American scholars and activists after World War II. This volume gathers Galarza's key writings, reflecting an intellectual rigor, conceptual clarity, and a constructive concern for the working class in the face of America's growing influence over Mexico's economic system. Throughout his life, Galarza confronted and analyzed some of the most momentous social transformations of the twentieth century. Inspired by his youthful experience as a farm laborer in Sacramento, he dedicated his life to the struggle for justice for farm workers and urban working-class Latinos and helped build the first multiracial farm workers union, setting the foundation for the emergence of the United Farm Workers Union. He worked to change existing educational philosophies and curricula in schools, and his civil rights legacy includes the founding of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). In 1979, Galarza was the first U.S. Latino to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, for works such as Strangers in Our Fields, Merchants of Labor, Barrio Boy, and Tragedy at Chualar.

PART 1

COMING OF AGE IN A CLASS SOCIETY

IN A MOUNTAIN VILLAGE

Excerpt from Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy (1971; repr., Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 17–51.

This is the introductory chapter to Barrio Boy and offers Galarza's early childhood memories of growing up in a Mexican mountain village. The lessons he learned in Jalcocotán, Nayarit, about family and community, culture, nature, and standing up for oneself are not so different than those he practiced and taught later in life. Note that the starting point to his story is at the onset of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1921).

Later publications and interviews reveal that Galarza did not solely blame the revolution for his family's forced migration from Mexico. Rather, he pointed to a more complex set of factors that highlighted how foreign capital controlled Mexico's democratic and economic structures.

Notable life events during this era:

• 1971: Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters is conferred on Galarza by Occidental College.

• 1971: Establishes the Studio Laboratory for Bilingual Education, a resource center used by San Jose Unified School District teachers, staff, students, and families. The Studio Laboratory emphasized immersion in one's first language and the teaching of cultural values as vehicles for acquisition of and fluency in English.

Aunt Esther had married Don Catarino López, one of a numerous family of Jalco. Don Catarino, his father, and brothers worked the corn patches and the milpas on the mountain, tilled and harvested bananas deep in the forest and earned a living in other ways from the countryside. Don Catarino had brought his bride, Esther, to the pueblo where they were living with their two boys—Jesús, a year older than myself, and Catarino junior, a year younger. The four of them hardly filled the one big room of the cottage. The extra beds behind the curtain and the tapanco [sleeping loft] could accommodate us all, cramped or cozy, depending on how you looked at it….

Breakfast was before daybreak and regularly announced by our rooster, Coronel. He was always a half hour ahead of the dawn, crowing lustily in our back yard. It was the signal to get up. Up in the tapanco we stirred on our mattress of cornhusks and mats, sitting up hunched in our sarapes, listening. In the corrals of the village the other roosters picked up the reveille, trumpeting as if this was the first dawn of time and a marvelous sight to see. Up and down the mountain the cocks of the ranchos and the other pueblos took up the fanfare, their calls fading with distance.

One by one we came down the notched pole, still snug in our sarapes.

“Buenos días, muchachos.”

“Buenos días, Don Catarino.”

“Buenos días, Tía.”

“Buenos días, Tío.”

“Buenos días, mamá.”

We huddled around the fire in the pretil [fire pit] as close as we could without getting in the way of the business of preparing breakfast. Over our heads the oil lamp sputtered, giving off more smoke than light. My mother stirred the coals she had bedded down the night before under a thick bank of ashes. On top of them she dropped small splinters of pine heavy with resin, the pungent ocote [pine wood]. With a small mat she fanned the splinters into a flame, feeding it with larger pieces of ocote to set the fresh charcoal on fire. From the center pit coals were scooped and transferred to the side burners. On the three fires now going the pots were arranged, their black bottoms sitting on the ruby coals. The tortillas were already warming on the comal [flat griddle], the beans coming to a boil in one pot, the coffee in another….

We ate breakfast in silence. The men, sitting on the edge of the beds, were served first—a plate with beans and red pepper rolled in tortillas, a large bowl of coffee, still boiling, to warm their hands and burn their stomachs on account of the early morning chill. The tacos for their lunch were already rolled in cornhusks and a napkin, tucked into the haversacks of woven hemp. My aunt took down the crossbar from the front door and the men stepped out into the dark, wrapped in sarapes. Their huaraches sandpapered the hard surface of the street, the white stuff of their clothes disappearing like dim blobs into the night. They would be in the fields by daybreak.

My aunt closed the door and served breakfast to the three boys, huddled around the pretil. It was a bowl of coffee, a tortilla with beans and pepper, and a few sucks on a chunk of brown sugar, the panocha [brown sugar] that was kept in a clay pot on a shelf out of our reach. The women always ate last.

“Now, up the tapanco and raise your bed.” I could never understand why Aunt Esther always said “raise your bed.” Al tapanco y alzar la cama was what she called this part of the morning routine. We climbed up the notched pole again, to spread the cornhusks evenly, lining up the woven mats on top, like a bed cover. We did this crawling on all fours, butting one another like goats. By the time we came down it was time to round up Coronel and his hens in the corral for their daily ration of maize. When the chickens were fed we called Nerón, our dog, to the kitchen door for a tortilla dipped in bean juice. In one swallow Nerón finished his breakfast and he chased us to the edge of the woods back of the corral. While Nerón stood by, as if he understood what was going on, we lined up along the wall for a minute or two. Whoever won the race back to the kitchen when my mother called would get the first licks on the panocha.

Doing chores and chasing one another we warmed ourselves during the morning chill, playing as much as possible between the routine jobs we were assigned. Most of these jobs were as agreeable as the games we made up. When it was full daylight, both doors of the cottage were opened. Jesús and I walked Nerón up and down the street so he could explore the fresh garbage in the gutter. He was then left on his own, except when he got into a fight and barked for help. Coronel and his hens were ushered through the kitchen into the street to scratch in the litter….

The protection of Coronel and his hens and the supervision of Nerón were two of the important tasks assigned to us. There was one other—to look after Relámpago, the burro that didn't belong to anyone in particular….

He was a small, brownish-grey donkey. His left ear always drooped and he didn't swish his tail like other burros. Nothing in Jalco moved as slowly and deliberately as Relámpago, for which reason he was called “Lightning.” He didn't belong to anyone and no one knew where he had come from. But his way of gazing at people, of stopping in front of doors to stare, and his willingness to give the children rides, made him at least a cousin to every family in the village. José hoisted me on Relámpago's back now and then, walking us from one end of the street to the other. No reins, no saddle, no stirrups, almost no hands, except that José would be alongside to steady me on top of the burro. Whenever Relámpago cared to do so, he was welcome to walk through our cottage and into the corral to spend the night….

Whether we were playing in a neighbor's corral, or on the street, or down by the pond, we knew the afternoon was about over by the voices. “Juan.” “Neto.” “Chuy.” “Melesio.” They were calling our names, the voices of mothers and aunts poking their heads out of doorways or over the walls of the corrals. The voices were not shouts. They were tunes. And we knew when we heard them—being only five or six years old—that we had to dance to them, at once. “Si, señora.” “Ya vengo” [on my way]. “Voy” [coming]. When we answered we were already on the trot. We obeyed by trotting. We showed respect by answering. Failure to do either could mean that you would have your ear pinched at the doorway or be asked that ominous question that nobody knew how to answer and had better not try to: “¿Qué pasó?”—how come?

Young Ernesto Galarza. Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

The voices always called about the time the shadows began stretching from the forest side of the pueblo over the cottages. After reporting in, Jesús and Catarino and I looked after Coronel and the hens. Usually they were on their way home, dawdling as they scratched. If Nerón wasn't around he had to be caught and turned home by the scruff of his furry neck. We herded all of them—usually Nerón first, the hens next and Coronel last—through the doors and into the corral. From then until supper we hopped to chores and errands—some charcoal for the pretil, bringing in the straw petates [mats] that had hung freshening in the sun on the walls of the corral, stopping a ruckus between Nerón and Coronel, or propping the rickety ladder the hens climbed to roost in the willow tree.

While supper was being prepared, a quietness settled on the family waiting for the men to return from work. On one corner of the pretil there were the freshly baked tortillas, wrapped in a double jacket of napkins and stacked in the cream-colored basket with the musical name, the chiquihuite.

Don Catarino was always the first to walk in out of the dusk, if he and Gustavo and José had been working the same field. Gustavo was second and José last. They unfastened the machetes and hung them in their sheaths on pegs by the back door. They dropped the sarapes, folded, on the beds. Without a word they stepped into the darkening corral to wash from clay bowls. We stood by, a boy to each man, holding the chips of soap and the mended towels.

In the same order as at breakfast, the men were served first. The food was laid out on a side table not much wider than a shelf. As the men ate they tore the fresh, warm corncakes into halves and quarters and eighths, making tiny spoons with which they scooped the food, eating the spoon along with it.

When they finished, the men rose from the table. Don Catarino rumbled “Buen provecho” [bon appetite], which was a Jalcocotán way of wishing the diners a comfortable digestion of the meal.

Jesús, Catarino, and I took the places of the men. The beans came steaming out of the tall pot, red-brown, frijoles de la olla, sprinkled with browned rice and washed down with coffee, but no pepper. With the last tortilla spoon we sopped up the bean juice and nitpicked the last grain of rice on our plates. When my aunt Esther said “Buen provecho,” the meal was over. While the women ate, we loitered, any place where the men were not.

In the corral, by the bright orange light of a long stick of flaming ocote, they sharpened the machetes, or secured a hoe handle that had come loose. We could watch, careful not to get under foot, for we knew the men were irritable at the end of a bone-tiring day in the milpa [corn field]. Don Catarino looked menacing with the shadows the dancing ocote flame made on his dark face. Gustavo hummed as he whetted his machete. José tested the edge of his blade, feeling it gently with his thumb crosswise, licking it before testing—one of the tricks of a good machetero….

At a signal from Doña Esther we turned in, climbing the notched pole to the tapanco. Wrapped in our sarapes we settled quickly into the cornhusk mattress and the mats and stopped squirming the better to hear the low-keyed talk that continued below us. It was easier to hear up there. The words climbed up the wall and in through the space between the thatch and the top of the adobe wall.

What we heard were bits of village gossip, the names of people we didn't know, talk of things that had happened somewhere else a long time past, or things that might happen in a day or a year or two. Even though we understood little we knew we were listening secretly. The grown-ups were in no hurry to talk. They, too, seemed to be listening to the sounds of the night—the rumble of the arroyo [stream], and the stirrings of the forest….

The morning of one memorable day Jesús, Catarino and I climbed down from the tapanco as usual. Bundled in our blankets, we scrunched ourselves against the wall as close as we could to the warmth of the fire without getting in the way….

Breakfast over, the men left, and pink shafts began to show through the gray sky over the corral. Nerón was standing at the back door, observing the food on the pretil and waiting for his tortilla dipped in bean juice. That day it was my turn to run with it to the back wall of the corral, tantalizing Nerón until he managed to grab it from me.

Coronel and the hens were already scratching in the patio. They were used to the daily commotion of Nerón's tortilla, but they always made one of their own, cackling and flapping their wings as they scattered.

Coronel himself was always cool and dignified. He circled around the hens, highstepping carefully between them and me and Nerón, his body stretched tall. Wobbling his comb from side to side like a red pennant he turned his head to watch us now with one yellow, beady eye, now with the other. It was a mean look.

More than the jefe de familia [head of family] among his hens, Coronel was part of the security system of the family. With Nerón he patrolled the corral when he was not on the street, as puffy and important as an officer of the watch. In Jalco any boy or man who was not afraid of anything was known as muy gallo [very rooster]. Coronel was the most rooster of them all.

After Jesús and Catarino and I had done our morning chores that day, I went to the corral to escort Coronel and his household through the cottage and into the street. He was circling one of the hens, making passes at her, his neck feathers ruffled. She ducked and swiveled away from him, but Coronel drew nearer and nearer. Suddenly Coronel was on top of her, his yellow beak clamped on the hen's crest, his talons and spurs on her back.

I ran to the back door, excited and angry. My aunt was tidying up the kitchen. “Tía, tía,” I yelled. “Coronel is squashing the hen. Shall I hit him?” My aunt stepped to the door and looked at the scene. She didn't seem worried. She turned to me and said matter-of-factly: “Leave Coronel alone. He knows what he is doing. The hen will be all right.”

The hen, after her horrifying experience, had straightened up and gone about her pecking and scratching as usual. Coronel renewed his strutting. He did, indeed, seem to know what he was doing, but what was it? It was one of those things that adults were always leaving half explained. I would have to think about it in the tapanco.

My mother called out, “Take the hens out.” I rounded up Coronel and his flock and shooed them through the cottage into the street. Nerón followed us.

Up and down the street the chickens of the pueblo had begun their daily search along the gutter. The pigs and dogs had spotted themselves where the garbage looked most promising. Halfway up the street, a zopilote [turkey vulture] was already pecking at something….

Coronel and his hens were making their way up the street between scratches. The hens kept their beaks down, pecking; and he paced this way and that, flaunting his comb, his feathers glistening in the sunlight.

When they were a few steps from the zopilote, the hens became alert. They stood still, some on both legs, some on one, looking intently at something that lay between the talons of the buzzard, which held his attention completely. He lowered his bald white head and tore at the garbage with his hooked beak. Among the pigs and dogs and chickens there seemed to be an understanding not to bother the zopilotes that came down to scavenge. To all the residents of Jalcocotán, including the domestic animals, the vulture's looks, not to mention his smell, were enough to discourage sociability.

Nerón and I were watching when one of the hens left the flock and went in for a peck at the zopilote's breakfast. She moved head low, neck forward, more greedy than afraid.

The buzzard struck. With a squawk the hen flipped over and scratched the air madly, as if she were pedaling a bicycle.

Coronel sailed in. His wings spread, his beak half open and his legs churning over the hard earth, he struck the zopilote full front, doubled forward so that his beak and his spurs were at the zopilote's breast feathers. The buzzard flapped one great wing over Coronel and bowled him over. The rooster twisted to his feet and began making short passes in cock-fighting style, leaping into the air and snapping his outstretched legs, trying to reach his antagonist with his spurs.

Up and down the street the alarm spread. “Coronel is fighting the zopilote.”

“He is killing Coronel.”

“Get him, Coronel. Éntrale, éntrale.”

A ring of small children, women, pigs and dogs had formed around the fighters. Nerón and I had run to the battleground, Nerón snapping at the big bird while I tried to catch Coronel.

As suddenly as it had started, the fight was over. The zopilote, snatching at the heap of chicken guts that had tempted the hen, wheeled and spread his great wings, lifting himself over the crowd. He headed for a nearby tree, where he perched and finished his spoils.

Coronel, standing erect among the litter, gave his wings a powerful stretch, flapped them and crowed like a winning champ. His foe, five times larger, had fled, and all the pueblo could see that he was inde...