I remember growing up in the Rio GrandeValley as a Mexican-American. I remember my high school days in particular. I was classmates with Freddie Gonzalez, Lionel Ryan and so many other heroes of the Vietnam War. I, like so many others, was among the tolerated but not accepted. We were pitied and never envied. We grew up in the silence of intolerance and unfairness. We were the bewildered generation, perplexed and befuddled by the times and the changing wind that was blowing across the land. It was the 1960s in the Valley, and the times, they were a-changing.
High school days for the Valley’s Chicano/Hispanic teenagers, like all generations, were our coming of age. Rock ’n’ roll was playing everywhere. Drive-in restaurants were the rage, and Friday night football was the crowning jewel of our existence, as it is today.
The shadows of our past, however, were slowly disappearing. The Chicano culture was finally beginning to emerge from decades of inequity and bigotry experienced by our parents and grandparents. We felt we were the chosen generation. We felt entitled to acknowledgement and respect. The Rio GrandeValley was changing, and the darkness that once prevailed was beginning to slowly lift and drift, leaving only shadows and remnants of resistance for what used to be.
However, the us-versus-them mentality was still at play at school. It was evident in every way and every place. Chicanos were allowed to glimpse into the inner sanctum of the chosen if you were big, strong, good looking or played football if you were a guy, or slim, smart and beautiful if you were a girl. The rest of us were delegated to the fringes of high school society, to enjoy the dregs of everything the “in” group and the teachers chose to throw our way. The times were changing, but attitudes sometimes did not keep pace with the times. There were too many shadows still left behind that masked the true high-school experience of Chicanos in the Valley. For Chicanos, during my high-school days, it was easy to be a shadow, and go unnoticed and ignored.
They were not always happy days. No matter how much we struggled to fit in, it was just not to be. We were always placed in the back of the bus, and not allowed to succeed or exceed beyond what was expected or allowed. It was easy to be a shadow when no one cared.
Yet despite those obstacles, there was a burning determination that our culture and our families instilled in us. An in-born passion to pull ourselves up and move to the front of the bus. We could feel the wind of change, and hear the roar of discontent across the land. And we stood up as the young and restless Chicano generation, and took one step forward and never looked back. Even shadows get tired of living in the dark.
Our parents lived, and many died, in the shadows of their past. We took their courage, their pride, their resilience and their dreams, and we said enough.
As young Chicanos in the Valley back then, we felt alive with the spirit of our past, and with a passion and vision to exceed the dreams of our fathers. We were filled with new dreams and renewed determination of the boundless possibilities that awaited us.
It was easy to be a shadow once, but being out in the light meant being seen for who we were: Chicanos, proud of our roots, and destined to change the Valley once again. This time, not with our hands and our backs, but with our voice and our vision.
Today I look back and I wonder, what happened? What went wrong? Where have the courage, the pride, the resilience and the dreams that defined our culture and our heritage gone? Today’s generation has abandoned the passion of our moment in the sun. Did we fail to pass forward to our children the tradition and the connection with our painful, sometime sorrowful and always arduous past? Did we fail to instill the virtues of our noble heritage in the hearts and minds of those who followed us?
I do see the progress we have made since my high school days in education, business, and society in general. However, I also see the arrogance and greed that have replaced the passion of tradition, culture and identity. That’s what happens with age. We look at the world around us with the blurred vision of our youth. And we see the vestiges of unlived dreams and unfulfilled expectations. But most of all, we see and feel the loss of the passion of our time. Friends lost in war. Family scattered and disconnected. The solitude of unfilled time, and memories that reawake feelings and emotions that stir the heart and energize the mind.
That’s what looking back and remembering does to someone like me. It makes me see the shadows in my life that no longer can intimidate, threaten or coerce. What would life have been like had I confronted my shadows and risen to meet the challenges of my time? I will never know. I leave that to the next generation to ponder, and to eventually wonder what they did wrong, or what they could have done better.
It’s easy to be a shadow. Much harder to live in the moment, and in the light of day.
Al Garcia is a published author in San Juan.
