Conversations Across Our America: Talking About Immigration and the Latinoization of the United States

Manuel Vélez

Manuel Vélez met me at his office at San Diego Mesa College shortly before his morning Chicano Literature class. He had recently moved from El Paso to take this position, but he’s not a newcomer to California, having grown up in Salinas. Manuel eloquently shared his perspective on life in the geographic, cultural, and political borderlands. manuel: I moved to El Paso from Salinas when I was fifteen. There were a number of reasons. My parents, my dad, had just inherited some land in El Paso, and over in Salinas, me and my brothers were already into gangs and stuff like that. It was a way to disconnect us from it. louis: And how many generations back do you go in the United States? manuel: We are the first. My father was born in Durango. My mom was born in Aguascalientes. They met in Juárez. My dad has been here for a while. He is a musician, so he used to travel all over the southwestern United States with his band. My dad has been in and out of the United States since I would say like ’60, ’62; 1966 is when they both moved to the United States. They got married in Juárez, and they went to Salinas for their honeymoon and liked it so much that they stayed there. My dad was a musician, but you can’t make a lot of money off of that, so he had odd jobs—construction, laborer. I think for a while he was plating bumpers and stuff like that. My mom is campesina all the way. She has always worked in the fields. louis: Did moving to El Paso keep you out of trouble? manuel: Yeah. If we stayed in Salinas, we probably would be dead, in jail, or something like that, so moving actually did work. The gang life in Salinas was prevalent. I used to say if you were Chicano, you were going to be a cholo manuel vélez 268 conversations across our america [defiant working-class youth]. That was it. It was that pervasive. If you were Mexican that was going to be a part of your life. In El Paso, there are so many Mexicans that it’s just a small part of the experience. In El Paso, the overall majority of the population rejects gangs, so it was a completely different thing for me coming from a place where just simply being a Chicano meant you were part of that lifestyle. louis: That is an interesting way to think about it. What school did you attend? manuel: Coronado. Coronado had the reputation of being the uppity school. It was the school where all the rich kids went. That made it twice as hard. When we moved to El Paso, we were still chavalitos [young kids], all cholo’d out. My mom had heard all the stories about Coronado High School, and she said, “Oh, you are going to go to a high school where all the rich kids go. They are going to make fun of you. They are going to laugh at you.” Which gave us all the more reason to stay dressed as cholos. I was already in Honors English from the stuff I had been doing in California, but they didn’t trust me to be in Honors. So instead of putting me in Honors, they just moved me to the next level. No one believed that I was supposed to be there because of the way I dressed and stuff. I remember that was when I realized how different it was going to be between Salinas and El Paso. louis: What did you do after high school? Manuel Vélez in his office at San Diego Mesa College. Photo by Louis Mendoza. 269 living in the borderlands means . . . manuel: Went right to El Paso Community College. I think that was when the whole school thing kicked in for me. I started to focus more on my classes. And then I went to U of I [University of Illinois] in Chicago. louis: Did you come of age along the border? manuel: Definitely. My identity is completely a border identity. louis: What does that mean to you? manuel: That means that in my everyday life there is neither anything that is purely Mexican or purely American; everything is a kind of conglomeration...