AEP 05.05.2013
Mami real talk:
Teaching my kids
the legacy of our
immigration story
by Trina M. Fresco
5:00 am on 04/19/2013
When I was 7 years old, I asked
my father, Chicho Fresco, who the woman was on his two-sided medallion that he always
wore around his neck. He explained that she was La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the
patron saint of his country and province. It was the first conversation I remember about my
father’s Cuba, and I was so intrigued by the idea that he had a special saint. I needed to
know more, especially how he got to our house. My father said he had started his journey
from Guantanamo City to Guantanamo Bay in 1968, was caught by Fidel Castro’s guards
and imprisoned for a full year.
One night in 1969, a prison guard helped my father escape with a fellow prisoner. He went
home, grabbed my Tio Papi and the three fled for three nights and two days to Guantanamo
Bay. His story of trailing through swamps, knowing the lore of the thirteen-foot Cuban
crocodile and swimming through shark-infested brackish waters with my uncle in tow
holding his belt was unreal. It made me cry. They made it to the perimeter of the base and
had to scale the fence. Tio Papi, who is much younger than my then-21-year-old father went
first, then my father and when his fellow prisoner fell, my father went back to help. He
made this last statement to me as he showed me the scars from the barbed wire fence on his
hands. I was only a child, yet I could feel his pain. The Red Cross flew the three to Miami
and my father followed the opportunity of a job all the way to the Belvidere Chrysler plant
where he worked for twenty-six years.
Every culture and every family has an immigration story. It may be a personal story of
leaving your homeland or that of your parents, grandparents and so forth. Inevitably there
are struggles in emigrating from your friends, language and familiarity. Our history is a
legacy, a badge of honor and in so many cases it is unknown through generations. On
occasion a decision is made to change the facts of ones legacy to be more commonly
accepted: an Italian grandmother named Maria becoming Mary in Ellis Island or Latino
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AEP 05.05.2013
parents who refuse to speak Spanish so their kids’ Spanglish will not alienate them. With
the drafting of the Senate immigration bill, I hope immigrants totally come ‘Out of the
Shadows’ and share their stories with their family.
My father died living his legacy on his way to work one frigid, snowy day in January of
1995. It inspires me even further to keep his spirit alive. I will share the story of the Fresco
lineage of immigration with my children very soon. I want them to know that their
grandfather sought freedom; the freedom to make choices, earn a living and cultivate a
future. I want them to know he succeeded. He came to this country with nothing tangible,
yet brought with him courage, honor, passion and faith. I am honored and humbled to
know my family story of immigration and in respect of my family, I will ensure my greatgrandchildren know of the patriarch of our U.S. history.
My story is one of many, even the stories of so many Europeans who immigrated to the US
in the early 1800s. People come to this country to fulfill dreams, escape hardship and build
a family. While I hope we dig into the details of our own legacy, I wish we would learn more
about the history of those around us.
The key: We each have a backstory, and these stories are generational treasures. Knowing
our history will prove that we have more in common with one another than our differences.
Trina M. Fresco, Vice President of Operations for the IT firm smarTECHS.net since 2007
and NBCLatino Contributor, was named one of “50 Powerful Minority Women in Business”
by MEA Magazine. Fresco is the Chair of the Chicago Foundation for Women Investment
Subcommittee and serves on a number of additional boards & committees. Fresco resides
Chicago with her husband, George and their three children Sofia, Giana and Lorenzo. You
can contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter @trinafresco.
Discussion Questions
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Why do people immigrate to other countries?
What is the reason you moved out of your country to move here?
Is immigration from one country to another a problem? In what ways do you see it
as a problem?
Do you know any immigrants?
Do you think that immigrants are treated well in in most countries?
Should any government limit the number of immigrants entering the country? What
would be a good number?
Is local culture threatened by immigration?
How far should immigrants retain their culture?
Should immigrants have the same rights as native citizens?
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AEP 05.05.2013
In Brazil, Streets of Dancing
Cars and Swagger
By SIMON ROMERO
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — José Américo Crippa’s 1974 Chevrolet Monte Carlo boasts just about every feature that a
lowrider should have, including dazzling chrome wheels, a sliding ragtop roof, a candy-apple red paint job and
hydraulic pumps that enable the vehicle to bounce several feet in the air at the press of a button.
“I’m pimping it,” said Mr. Crippa, 41.
With a knowing smile, Mr. Crippa, a businessman who owns a carwash and a hamburger restaurant, jokingly
acknowledged that his pimping extended only to the restoration and customization of vintage automobiles. He
peppers his Portuguese with his own interpretation of the street slang of the Mexican-American subculture rooted in
East Los Angeles.
And he tries to look the part, too, down to barrio-chic details like his footwear, a pair of Nike Cortez track shoes,
and the 8-ball tattoo on his forearm.
The spread of this seemingly distant subculture, with Brazilian followers calling themselves “cholos” and cruising
around in their low-and-slow automobiles, is raising eyebrows here in South America’s largest city. Some who
cannot afford to buy vintage cars and customize them into lowriders simply roam São Paulo’s labyrinthine streets at
the helm of bicycles accessorized with high-rise handlebars and banana seats.
Even when they just strut around in oversize khaki shorts and white muscle shirts, they speak to something larger:
the global fluidity of conceptions of ethnicity, identity and style, propelling a street culture once so closely tied to
the borderlands of the United States and Mexico well beyond its birthplace.
Japanese musicians, for instance, are rapping in astonishingly precise Spanglish. Lowrider Volvos can be glimpsed
on England’s country roads. Rap pioneers like Spanky Loco have cult followings in places like Barcelona, the
Catalan capital in northeast Spain. In New Zealand, Maori youths on lowrider bicycles are recording music videos
featuring a posse of men in flannel shirts and smiling women washing down vintage American cars.
“It’s kind of ironic because if some of these imitators are dropped into parts of L.A., the cops could arrest them or
the gangs could roll up on them,” said Denise Sandoval, a professor of Chicano studies at the Northridge campus of
California State University. “But the digital culture we’re in facilitates this fascination with L.A.’s urban culture,
and it’s gaining momentum.”
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Dr. Sandoval, who studies the spread of the subculture around the world, said she was amazed when a friend,
Estevan Oriol, a photographer who documents California’s street cultures, returned from a trip to São Paulo with
photographs of lowriders in seemingly pristine condition, along with their proud owners.
In some ways, São Paulo might seem to be a good place for a hard-edge lowrider scene to flourish. Parts of the
traffic-choked megacity, with a metropolitan population of about 20 million, make the sprawl of Los Angeles seem
somewhat quaint in comparison. Graffiti murals decorate elevated highways and asphalted river canals.
Still, the adoption of the lifestyle in São Paulo, which already encompasses hundreds of people involved in car
clubs, bicycle shops and homegrown fashion labels, reflects immigration patterns and issues of ethnic identity that
stand in sharp contrast to those in the United States.
The word “cholo” itself has a contentious history. In the Spanish colonial era, it was a derogatory term for some
indigenous people, and by the 19th century it was used in the United States to demean Mexican laborers and some
mixed-raced people, according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States.
By the 20th century, the term “cholo” shifted to refer to people associated with a gang, or to those who simply
copied their aesthetics and style, implying “a refusal to assimilate” into the dominant mainstream culture, the
encyclopedia explains. Today, the term is deplored by some and embraced by others.
In Brazil, however, lowriders and the aesthetics of Mexican-American street culture took a different route, one that
sometimes passed through another country first. “I saw my first lowriders in Japan, and I was immediately
fascinated by their allure,” said Sergio Hideo Yoshinaga, 43, the owner of a garage in São Paulo where motorists
pay hefty amounts, sometimes reaching more than $100,000, to have their cars transformed into curb-crawling
masterpieces.
Mr. Yoshinaga is one of thousands of Brazilians, most of whom are descended from Japanese immigrants, who
moved to Japan in the 1990s in search of relatively well-paying factory jobs. He stayed only about a year. That was
long enough, Mr. Yoshinaga said, to be immersed in a scene big enough to support an array of car clubs and
a Japanese edition of Lowrider Magazine.
“I was a pioneer when I returned to São Paulo,” Mr. Yoshinaga said. “Now there are these third-rate imitators here,
saying they’re cholo-this and cholo-that,” he said. “Some think they can buy into the culture with their money.” He
dismissed such aspirants as mere posers.
The perception of authenticity here does come at a price, explaining, perhaps, why many in the scene come from
solid middle-class backgrounds. A pair of Dickies work pants, an essential part of the wardrobe, costs about $20 in
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the United States but can go for well over $50 in Brazil. Add in the prices of imported shoes, hairnets and flannel
shirts and the expenses go even higher.
Buying a car made in Brazil, even if it is used, is often at least twice as expensive as in the United States, largely
because of taxes. Then there are the additional prohibitive duties on imported cars, like the 1970s Oldsmobile
Cutlasses or Buick Regals that are coveted by lowrider clubs not only in Brazil but also around the world. And
gasoline is considerably more expensive in Brazil than in the United States, averaging more than $5 a gallon, largely
because of heavy taxes.
Even so, São Paulo’s lowrider devotees find a way, relating tales of traveling to the United States on buying
missions to bring back hydraulic-pump systems, tire rims and cans of candy-tone automotive paint in their luggage,
all the while praying that customs agents will not discover their precious cargo.
“I was incredibly impressed by how resourceful they are,” said Phuong-Cac Nguyen, a journalist from Los Angeles
who is making a documentary about the subculture in Brazil. “These guys face obstacles at every turn, but that’s
where their jeitinho comes into play,” she said, employing a beloved word used in Brazil to describe the
circumvention of rules to get things done.
Some in São Paulo’s circles take their dedication to a new level. Antonio Carlos Batista Filho, 47, a blue-eyed
clothing designer whose nickname is Alemão, or German, has been immersed in the subculture since the early
1990s, after watching American movies about California gang life.
Mr. Batista Filho said he had now amassed a collection of posters, paintings, movies and clothing that he hopes will
form the basis of São Paulo’s first museum of what he called “cholo culture.” He is encouraged, he explained, by the
entrance into the scene here of young Spanish-speaking immigrants from neighboring countries.
São Paulo’s newest self-described “cholos” largely come from Bolivia, a poorer neighbor that has become one of
Brazil’s largest sources of immigrants. In a development somewhat reminiscent of the migration of Mexicans to the
United States over the last century, thousands of Bolivians have recently put down stakes in São Paulo in search of
work.
Some of them find in the city’s scene an avenue of self-expression. Tomás Cahuana Huanca, 27, a Bolivian who
works in the city’s garment industry, rides his lowrider bicycle, which he designed himself, around São Paulo’s old
center. He said that some “cholos” here were involved in gangs, but not many.
“That’s more in Mexico and some in the United States,” Mr. Huanca said. “The culture here is really about the
bikes, the cars, the style.”
Jill Langlois contributed reporting from São Paulo, and Liam Stack from New York.
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AEP 05.05.2013
Homework: Finish Expository Writing Piece for
Saturday 11 May 2013- DUE DATE.
Lab Assignment
1. Read “Who belongs to Generation 1.5” page 75-78 from Impression #1
a. Complete EXC. 7
b. Complete EXC. 8
c. Complete EXC. 10
d. Complete EXC. 13
2. American Speech Sounds from “Listen and Chose “
a. 3 Vowels
b. 3 Consonants
c. 3Sentences Exercises
3. Current Events
a. READ current events from various news sources for one hour.
b. Write a summary of the headlines
4. Literature of the Contemporary Period
a.
Review the two lessons
i.
http://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/contemporary-american-
literature-authors-and-major-works.html
ii. http://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/tennessee-williamsbiography-works-and-style.html
b. Please review lessons
c.
Please take the quizzes
i. How did you do on the quizzes
ii. What have you learned
5. Watch the Video by Paul Moller
a. http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_moller_on_the_skycar.html
Do you think this is could be a reality?
c. How would it change life?
b.
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