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

Lupe and Jesse Vega

Lupe and Jesse Vega are third cousins on my father’s side whom I had not met prior to visiting with them on this trip. They spent part of a Saturday sharing family history and their views on how El Paso has changed since they moved there from Houston in 1946. louis: I’m glad I’ve had a chance to meet you. I haven’t met too many relatives outside of Houston. When I was young, we visited relatives on my mom’s side in Mexico once. We don’t know too much about our family history before coming here. But I always keep in mind that we’re immigrants too, and it wasn’t that long ago. jesse: Those stories account for everybody in this country except the Indians. louis: I think people forget that, and they forget that a lot of this land was once Mexico. The border’s there and it’s enforced, but at the same time culturally and linguistically there’s a connectedness between people. jesse: People like my mom that came to this country, and this applies to people here in El Paso the same way—they crossed to Mexico at will, and they came back at will. They didn’t have to go beyond downtown El Paso. When I was growing up in Magnolia, when I went to school, we didn’t know English. Teachers had to learn Spanish. Some of us were Mexican Americans , some were illegal, and some were Mexican citizens. louis: Did it make a difference to you? jesse: Nah, we were friends. We played together. louis: Were you given a hard time for speaking Spanish? lupe and jesse vega 232 conversations across our america jesse: Here in El Paso . . . yes. louis: Isn’t that strange? jesse: The thing is that you know going back everything was up there in the Second Ward. They had grammar schools, they had parochial schools, they had churches, they had high schools, La Bowie. Everybody talks about La Bowie High School. A lot of success from people in the Segundo Barrio . We came here from Houston when I was fourteen and my brother was fifteen. The next day we went to see my dad where he used to work, and the secretary says, “You guys going to school?” I say, “Yeah, we going to school,” and she said, “You guys are Mexican, you have to go to Bowie . . . all Mexicans go to Bowie.” Bowie was way up in Second Ward. The next day we caught a bus, and we went as far as we could on the bus, and we got off, and we walked like two miles to get to Bowie and went into the registrar. My brother says, “We’d like to enroll for school.” So they gave us a piece a paper, we filled it out, and this lady says, “Oh, you have to go Austin. You people belong in the Austin area.” And Austin was right here, walking distance, but we were uninformed. So the next day we went to Austin. Boy, what a big surprise from Houston, where everybody was mexicano, to a completely different cultural school, puro gringo [all white]. I think in the whole school there was something like three thousand students there, and there was like twenty mexicanos. lupe: We just mixed. We didn’t care if you were Mexican, black, or Puerto Ricans, Orientals. We didn’t care. We got along just fine. Grammar school was hard because I didn’t know English when I went to school, and then if we talked Spanish we were punished. louis: How were you punished? lupe: They’d say, “Get in the corner,” or they’d hit your hand. jesse: Horrible times. lupe: So you get to the point where what do you do? You can’t speak English that well, and you’re not allowed to speak Spanish. So what do you do? louis: Be quiet? [laughter] lupe: Yeah, and that’s what you did! The whites had more doors open to them because they were always taught more. jesse: They were better prepared, their parents. My mom never went to the PTA; my dad didn’t. All they did was send us to school, so we went to 233 living in the borderlands means . . . school. We weren’t prepared. When my kids went to school, my wife and I prepared them...