A Mexican Dream and Other Compositions by Barbara González Cigarroa (review)

Barbara González Cigarroa's A Mexican Dream and Other Compositions is a history of four generations of the esteemed Cigarroa family on the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. The images, anecdotes, and memories in this slim book embrace lessons gleaned from one family's commitment to education and community service on both sides of the border.

The prelude evokes the idea of "deep time" to illuminate how the family's values, "strong and deep like a rich sediment layered over time" (xi) have endured within a radically changing U.S.–Mexico borderlands space. Structurally, the vignettes and recollections in A Mexican Dream evolve like a musical composition to evoke the family's long-standing adherence to the formal study of music as a means to inculcate the necessity of daily practice in the pursuit of excellence. The first and second person vignettes embed refrains that bind the book's parts: study hard, build bridges rather than walls, and pursue educational excellence with a vision towards a just future for all.

The living memories clarify how the extraordinary accomplishments of four generations of Cigarroas were not performed in a vacuum; a stable and loving family life was key, but so was a faith in the indispensable fluidity of borders between people, countries, and cultures. Regular musical performances following Sunday comidas, family meals during which formal manners of conduct and respect for one's elders, ancestors, and teachers, are foundational. The family legacy is built upon what the author maintains is the lost art of studied conversation and the dedicated belief in humanitarian values and higher education that culminates in service to future generations.

The first section, "Partita," is a testament to the author's great-grandmother, Mamá Rebecca, and later, her abuelita Josefina González de la Vega, who emigrated from Mexico to the United States following the Mexican Rvolution of 1910—matriarchs who negotiated the domestic space of the home with the goal of cultivating the "Ibero-Mexican heritage of graciousness and goodness" (26) necessary to translating progressive ideas into positive change. Later chapters illuminate the lives of the first Mexican-American to represent Texas in Congress, State Representative Henry B. González, who served in Texas's 20th congressional district from 1961 to 1999; Drs. Joaquín González Cigarroa Sr. and Jr., the latter of whom played a key role in establishing University of Texas Health Science Centers in both Houston and San Antonio; and Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, the first Mexican American in the United States to be named chancellor of one of the largest public university systems of higher education (University of Texas).

A Mexican Dream evokes a rich multicultural heritage sustained by a confluence of cultures; it reads like a love letter to generations of remarkable men and women of vision with the courage of their convictions in political, health, and educational systems to advance progress on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border. But it is also an elegy that moves beyond both memoir and historical account. The book reminds us that mutual respect for all, grace of vision, and love of family and learning must extend to love of neighborhood and community if we hope to actualize real and positive change for the future.

A Mexican Dream is a blueprint, a model of excellence that anyone can emulate. Source materials include family photographs, letters and family interviews, and newspaper articles; a short bibliography lists books, articles, and papers consulted.

An evocative, intimate read, A Mexican Dream will be useful to students and scholars of Mexican American and borderlands studies as well as lay-persons interested in borderlands cultures and the American Southwest, notably South Texas.