Spanglish as Creole, or, "pasame los hot cheetos"

Everyone seems to be writing books about the (not) new (emerging) language of Spanglish. I got to thinking about the idea of a "creole" language, one that emerges from a blending of two languages, and then becomes a sort of pigeon and then a new language in itself with traces of the original contributors. After spending a whole lot of time in South and East LA, San Diego and Tijuana, I've heard a lot of Spanglish. And, I'd say, some ideas about border culture, bi-cultural existence and spanish barrio life can only be expressed in Spanglish.

(Photo: arturovasquez.wordpress.com)

Missing Brazil

I've been missing Brazil, the place I spent 4 months learning and struggling and questioning last fall. I decided to post here an essay I submitted to a study abroad essay contest about my experience:

"Options for Failure and Success when living a 4-month break from your life"

Option one: Spend a whole day understanding nothing.

You cover up your pride with a piece of saran-wrap called humility and admit you don’t understand. You admit the words being forced at you don’t correspond to ideas you can relate to. You accept that you can’t show off your personality via jokes or emphasized quirks. You feel bad because it’s necessary to be understood, otherwise, you feel like you're not really being human that day.

Option two: Congratulate yourself for understanding everything.

At dinner, you follow the conversation close enough to be able to offer your own personal vomit story at the appropriate time. And you know this time the laughter is because your joke translated, not because you sound like a baby learning to form wants into words.

Option three: You can pretend you don’t know anything about language or culture.

Ask about traditions, try out your really embarrassingly out-dated slang, dance on the street with laughing, head-thrown-back disarray, and let a local swing you around. Let your face say, everywhere you go: “I’ve-lost-my-culture-can-I-borrow-yours?”

Option four: Be known and be proud.

Claim and own your foreign-ness. Be just self-effacing enough to be accepted, change some stereotypes about your people when possible. Admit you do have a culture and there are some things about it you think are worth emulating. Disclaim that you don’t speak for everyone from home. Laugh when you’re in a town small enough that the question "at which hostel is the American staying?" works better than an address.

Option five: Embrace the paradox.

Walk through the street, buy a cup of sugar cane juice made in front of you by feeding a stalk of sugar cane through a grinding machine. Enter the high-class mall where security men ride around on scooters. Open your laptop and pick up the wifi. Realize you don’t have to keep an eye on your laptop, because the security guard is doing it for you. Go back outside and have someone make a key for you in five minutes and then buy a bunch of bananas, a pair of hand-made rubber shoes and some spices to clear your sinuses from the same vendor.

Option six: Remember without crying too much.

Keep in touch

Yesterday I participated in a class discussion about what missionaries tend to leave behind after short term mission trips: dependency, if you're going to go cynical, garbage, if your going to go the literal route, and probably a lot of false promises. One idea that is particularly disturbing is that groups are typically encouraged not to give out their contact information ("you never know who might show up at your door someday"). Good sense should always be encouraged, but the problem with this well-intentioned advice is that when we travel, we are the guests but often act as the hosts. We go into a community, take pictures, talk to the people, get their story, and live "their life" for a bit.

This summer, I brought church groups to an apartment complex every afternoon to run a high-energy VBS. We came, somewhat invited, and definitely welcomed. However, we were in their space. We were in their literal backyards. We knew in which house each child lived. And yet, to let them have our email or address to keep in touch was out of the question because "who knows what they might do with it". This double-standard is a little paranoid, a bit patronizing and a big barrier to real friendship.

Knights of Prosperity

(Photo: www.filmaffinity.com)

I've been on a mad chase, of sorts, to figure out why it seems every tenth person I see in Skid Row is wearing an orange t-shirt that says "Knights of Prosperity". Seeing that there are a number of religious recovery programs and shelters in skid row, I assumed it was for a bible study or a church plant; maybe they made t-shirts for their summer bbq or their retreat in the pasadena suburbs.

After asking a handful of people where they go their shirt, I finally accepted that there was no real meaning behind it. "They were just giving them out on the corner of 6th and San Pedro."

Apparently, Knights of Prosperity was an ABC comedy show that never really took off. With a surplus of t-shirts and a small fan-base, the contracted advertisement company likely opted for a tax write-off and gave the t-shirts as a gift to one of the numerous agencies in the Skid Row region.

Now I'm not aiming at being critical of donations (although there is a good criticism to be made. The domestic violence shelter that we work with has gotten cow utter lubricant donated as well as thousands of Jerry Springer t-shirts, which they haven't yet found a good use for) because without donations from large corporations and family garages, our non-profits would suffer greatly. There is something to be said, of course, for donating what the organization needs, and not just what is convenient to get off of one's hands and out of one's pantry. And yet, as I read about the ABC Knights of Prosperity show that never really was, how the plot was to follow a group of robin hoods as they attempted to rob well known celebrities (like Mick Jagger), I can't but think it's a perfect irony.

Skid Row residents, who live off of both their own resourcefulness and others' generosity, do often have a robin hood attitude. It is not uncommon for a soup kitchen patron who I sit down with for breakfast to tell me, in less academic terms, how I should just subscribe to marxism and make my passion in life resource redistribution. And, often, I want to agree with them. And, just as often, I want to muse that hard work seems to make us happy, and that the Protestant Work Ethic might have some good retort to cries for redistribution. I wish I didn't conclude everything with "it's both/and rather than either/or!" but, I think it is. I haven't heard a rich man's story yet that didn't involve a dose of luck and a dose of hard work, and I haven't heard a poor man's history, either, which didn't have some personal failures as well as society's flops in the mix.

So, today, when I walk back from the library where I write this to the metro blue line that takes me back to my South LA home, I will undobutedly see a Knights of Prosperity shirt. Orange, likely washed in the machines of LA or Midnight Mission, and I'll think: "if we Robin Hood and J.P. Morgan had a child..."

The Green Monster

Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park













(Photo: www.lamountains.com/parks)

There will always be critics of city government, and they’re right that alliances are made for the wrong reasons about all of the time. But the doomsday criticism from Mike Davis’ article “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” might bee too much. (link to article)

He writes: “Here, as in other American cities, municipal policy has [answered] the middle-class demand for increased spatial and social insulation. Taxes previously targeted for traditional public spaces and recreational facilities have been redirected to support corporate redevelopment projects. A pliant city government…has collaborated in privatizing public space and subsidizing new exclusive enclaves (benignly called "urban villages"). The celebratory language… is only a triumphal gloss laid over the brutalization of its inner-city neighborhoods and the stark divisions of class and race represented in its built environment. Urban form obediently follows repressive function.”

Self-sufficient redevelopment areas aren’t like old city streets; they are designed to keep some in and others out. They are "hermetically sealed fortresses" and random "pieces of suburbia [in Downtown]”. Apparently, they have “killed the street" and "dammed the rivers of life.” More devastatingly, they have slaughtered any dreams of “pedestrian democracy”: an intermingling of races and classes where they can see each other and must learn to deal with one another.
It is absolutely true that the redevelopment zones of LA Live and the Financial District, a few walkable blocks from Skid Row, have brought money and foot-traffic back to a formerly derelict part of the city. It is also true that the more natural process of gentrification, which is happening, for example on the periphery of the fashion district, needs no city funds or state tax breaks to push the homeless, the trash and the working poor into other corners of LA. Sure, there’s some elite misunderstanding of poor plight alongside natural processes here, but authority has always aligned to push the unsavory sights and smells somewhere else.

With regards to open space, though, the City of LA is not entirely the green(stealing)monster. In my area of South LA, the Nature Park (link) is bed to migrant workers, play space to small children and educational facility to bored kids in the summer. It is social space for middle-aged walkers and a safe running spot for the health conscious. Near China Town sits Elysian Park, where people dating each other watch businesses light up the night skyline. Not much further north, Echo Park’s central fountain is surrounded by hipster couples, Latino families and weekly, my group of suburban teenagers debriefing their week of city volunteering. My favorite public space is Pershing Square. There, I can eat my pastry or read my book next to four homeless people, all of different races, who are in different levels of sleep and stages of sobriety. Security guards make sure all are sleeping on the grass and not on the walls or benches and that the peace is kept. I find the area to be benign and the true definition of mixed-use; Pershing is a bathhouse, a library, a bed, a romantic picnic spot and a morning coffee hang out, depending on who you ask. In McArthur Park, migrant workers, homeless families, recovering users from the halfway house and other locals use the city's outdoor exercise equipment and walking paths around the central fountain.



(Photo: takesunset.com/neighborhoods)



(Photo: www.laavenue.com)

Universal calming effect

(Photo: dogs.thefuntimesguide.com)

Today I encouraged 7 high schoolers as they organized donations in the home/office/pantry of a very visionary, very compassionate, fairly goofy missionary from the Philippines, sister Luz. After 3 hours of more or less stinky (more moldy and less sanitary) cleaning, they were ready for a break, some soda and a nap. Instead, they sat down on Sister Luz's front porch as I let the 5 new puppies of her raggedy dogs out of the house. As I saw 15 year boy and 30 year old youth pastor alike stroke the little furry black faces, I realized some things are universal. Puppies and babies, oceans and sunsets, grassy meadows and sand dunes--they'll calm any walk of life, personality, or state of being.

And, to re-create the scene: we stroked our respective puppies as Sister Luz told us her life story of nurse to immigrant to born-again to business woman to shop owner to prophesying, traveling, organizing, do-it-all missionary.

Today I visited a friend in Pomona to attend his church, of which his father is the pastor. I sang hymns in Spanish, ate great Guatemalan style chicken after the service and made Nazarene connections like I can't help but do.

In the past week I've also:
-Explored Culver City (a metropole for Brazilian Immigrants; I'm trying to meet someone to practice Portuguese with) with a friend from San Diego
-Had dinner with a friend from New Jersey and talked about Community Supported Agriculture boxes (link)
-Met a friend for dinner in Pasadena to eat Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles (link)
-Attended LA Pride weekend in West Hollywood (man oh MAN the world is full of interesting people!)

Why do I mention this? I need to just write out my life sometimes to realize how often I drive, how much I live, how much I see, and the luxury of my full, fast-paced and, honestly, me-centered life.

A country western song would be less appropriate to tell my story than an instrumental star wars-type ballad. I need some energy to capture my overwhelming sentiment: I covet my life.

Benzoylmethylecgonine

Crack cocaine.

At the beginning of the week, as soon as we get a new youth group into the city, we take them on a tour of Los Angeles, asking them to pray for various social issues: homelessness, racism, changing demographics of neighborhoods, etc. Skid Row always hits hard with the groups, causing some to remark that the people seem to live in community, watching out for each other (as they do) and others how there is no visible alchohol (although it's there). You can tell their stereotype of "homeless" is being messed with.

At the turn of the 20th century, Skid Row homeless shelters served primarily white men who were dealing with alcohol addiction. Partially because of the introduction of crack cocaine in the 1980s, this demographic began to change to primarily black.

Because I know so little, I dare not explore this topic too deeply, but I would like to bring in a quote from a book that my grandfather encouraged to read, a book my mother worked on with a predominant San Francisco pastor in the 1990s.


As Reverend Cecil Williams began to "smell death on the streets" (drugs) in the 1980s, he and others began to realize that "traditional drug treatment programs didn't work for most African Americans...the Twelve Steps didn't help many blacks...[because] it focused on individual recovery...but African Americans are a communal people..."

The conclusion he came to was that context mattered very much when it came to recovery: "Twelve Step Programs...teach people to get clean and sober and to go back out into main stream society. Well, the only society many of our folks needing recovery know is the drug mix--they've never been in the mainstream. Many of our folks need to get clean and sober and to learn how to empower their lives and make their way in a world that is less than welcoming to many..." (page 8)

All this means what, then? That drugs are worse than alcohol? Nope, too simple. That race is the most important factor in helping someone? Again, no. Maybe it just means that there isn't one set of values that make someone successful in this life, just like there isn't one chain of events that lead to homelessness or a drugged-out life or poverty.

It seems that sorting out the conditions from the problems and the individual responsibility from collective culpability is our main job as humans, Christians, academics, and caring citizens. Goodness gracious, good luck to us in this never-ending battle.

Who do we thank? Who do we praise?

As I was talking with my grandpa on the phone about how he waited 4 hours in the emergency room with his friend, I had this thought...

As I watched a small boy help his father collect cans for money as I left my house this morning, I had this same thought...

And, one more time, as I saw a little girl take her brother by the hand to go home after we played soccer in the park, I thought:

Why does society value people like me, who give up a week or a summer to do a little good for an abstract neighbor but refuse to see the daily sacrifices that people make for their friends, their parents, their neighborhood? Shouldn't we value so much more the "help" that is based in relationships and consistency than that which is a response to wealth gaps?

Entre Nos is a film that reminds me of this theme. See the trailer here.

Vulnerability

Today I had the morning off.
Today I took the metro downtown.
Today I had to verify with strangers that I was getting on the right train.
Today I smiled at people even though it goes against city etiquette.
Today I shared a private joke with a man on the subway as a little kid bounced around between us on every train-lurch.
Today I remembered good things happen when you acknowledge with your ignorance/need/smile that we all do need each other once in a while, or all the time.

Domestic Violence

Today, at a domestic violence shelter, the volunteer coordinator asked us what we would guess were the top 4 professions of abusers. She gave us the clue that it's people who are used to having a lot of power and influence.

Professional athletes
Clergy
Policemen
Military personnel

Her point was that when judges mandate anger management classes for abusers, they're putting a fine solution to the wrong problem. The problem is one of control, not directly of mismanaged anger. When someone grows accustomed to controlling their surroundings: either other people or their success, this can often translate into home and personal life, thus, abuse sometimes ensues.

This was a critical thought for me yesterday because I spent a whole unit of my public policy class in Brasil in the Fall talking about the roots of domestic violence. Many conclusions were that unemployed men, who were under great financial stress would try to control the one thing they thought they could control, the house, while everything else around them seemed out of their control. While, this is likely truthful, and high domestic violence rates in refugee camps might also be an example of how frustration and poverty can lead to partner abuse, I never found it to be a full answer. Why, then, is there so much violence among middle class and wealthy people?

There are of course many other factors that may lead someone to abuse their partner, but perhaps the human desire to control others, when corrupted into an addiction, is the first step to understanding this type of violence.

Skid Row

Everyone who comes to LA seems to be struck by Skid Row, a 5 block by 5 block area of 5,000 or so homeless people, living in Single Room Occupancy hotels, one of the numerous shelters, or on the street. In the 1970s, the city government pursued a policy based on the "containment theory" that if homeless people were consistently dropped off in this area by the police, and social services, mental health services and charities were centralized here, then the homeless population could be out of the way and controlled. Today, Skid Row is a residential community, a transitional place, and home to a whole bundle of complex issues: race, dependency, gentrification, addiction, apathy, injustice.

Since there is so much good literature out there, I'll let others do my work for me.

Skid Row Video

Tonight I was walking through Skid Row with some other young adults in my group. Later, inside a church that has Wednesday night karaoke ministry, I started talking to a man who had seen me earlier on the street. We were joking about how white people usually mean free sandwiches in those parts. At first, I was saddened by the stereotypes put on me because of my light skin. Then, I realized, outside of a church group, a white girl maybe wouldn't come into Skid Row with a smile on her face, and meet everyone's eye and say hello. In fact, if I were walking by myself at dusk to catch a bus, I wouldn't make any eye contact. So maybe they had me pinned pretty good.

Yet, the reconciliation that happens through the conversations and a handed-over sandwich can be very real, even if the circumstances that get both sides of the exchange where they are, to either give or receive, seem so wrong. It was a good reminder that sometimes stereotypes come from the same place as truth and that almost always, cynicism is the wrong response to something that is confusing. Laughing and swallowing one's pride in a large adam's-apple-popping gulp is usually the right response.

This was the demographic of skid row when the midnight mission (one of the sites where I'll be volunteering this summer) started sobering up and feeding up people almost 100 years ago.



I won't get into the theories about the demographic shifts or the policies that brought an end to one era and the beginning of another tonight, but let's just say it gets my head a-churning.

Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World

For 3 months, I'll be living in South LA, working with the organization CSM.

Before arriving, I read one of the books recommended to me:

One aftertaste I'd like to share, although not even directly related to the book's thesis, is the following quotation:

"Cowboys don't ride busses".

That is, as Rieff explains, "the promise of the automobile was not transportation so much as solitude and independence, two ideas that dance in lockstep across the stage of the American imagination."

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about driving. Particularly my driving habits. And how they're out of control. And how some of this out-of-controlness might inhibit me from having the relationships I'm meant to have.

Founded by Spanish governor, Felipe de Neve, in 1781, Los Angles was part of México from 1821 to 1848, when it was purchased an later annexed by the United States.

As I spend three months in this paradoxical city, I aim to wade through issues that are way too big for me. Maybe I'll theorize as to why there exists so much anti-immigrant sentiment, and maybe I'll ignore the issue entirely. Maybe I'll enter into discussion of the complex issues facing inner city kids, and make observations that only someone who knows nothing can make. I tend to think that sometimes an outsider, a neophyte like me can be a useful tool because she has not yet (consciously) subscribed to a theory, and can therefore still risk stating the obvious.

And if my musings yield not a single clear thought, then that means I've been a good traveller, because traveling, and maybe even living, rarely elucidates, but mostly clouds.