Thoughts From The Bar Stool: Ignorance Is Bliss
José-Ariel Cuevas
Starting from the beginning, I love my city of San José (California.) It is a big city with a small-town feel. It has weight issues (its slimmer sister, San Francisco, lords herself over her.) Her insecurities leads her to do some things to get attention: sweetheart tax deals for housing developments that will never be more than 40% full, closing mom-n-pop ethnic restaurants to make room for a chain eatery that will close six months later, sending as many homeless people to Modesto as possible.
I was on Facebook earlier, checked my messages, and group postings (some are more active than others.) One of the groups that I joined is called “You Know You’re from San Jose When…”, which is hyper-active, a lot of posts by people that have moved away and are nostalgic for certain things that are no longer there (Woolworth, an orange-domed hot dog restaurants, the last public lynching in this country—which was at St. James Park in downtown San José); while others’ wax nostalgic over where one bought their Z Cavaricci’s, over listening to hi-nrg (freestyle) music. Others still fondly recollect over recent trends and fads that were popular with the Mexican-Americans. A big deal for a lot of my people tends to be gangs (with “chicas”, cruising, cruising for chicas a close second.) The culture in San José is par for the course with Northern California—Norteños vs. Sureños.
Unlike in Southern California where it is mostly about neighborhoods or race, in Northern California, the militarized zone is colored in red or blue. (I’ll spare the historic details of the origins of each; suffice it to say that you can catch it on a Gangland rerun on Spike TV.) Though regional, the sides are usually dibbed-up by origins; Mexican-Americans tend to become Norteños while Mexican-nationals tend to gravitate towards the Sureños—but then again, it all depends on what neighborhood you are raised in.
Back to that group on Facebook, someone posted a message about remembering going into enemy territory and “busting caps” on scrapas (a pejorative term Norteños use to describe Sureños.) The language of the gangster subculture can, to untrained ears, sound like the lingua franca of the white, anti-immigrant bigots. Expressing my first amendment rights (and that it was a message board of an open group), I replied how both Norteños and Sureños were lame. I channeled my inner-community organizer and rhapsodized over how the gang culture is a cancerous agent ruining our society, one person at a time. Of course, my words did not go ignored; in fact, it drew the ire of the gangsters that seemed to have just graduated from Myspace. Some just wanted me to stay quiet, while others said that I had no idea what I was talking about, while others were curt, telling me, “@jose-ariel: who cares?”
That’s it, no one logged on at this hour who are members of that group cared (maybe the ones who do were out—participating in Aztec rain dances, or drinking and having sex with some righteously hot left-wing women.) Maybe people do care, but either they are more focused on living their own lives (seeing that my old neighborhood has gone from ghetto to working class), or are weary of being snitches. The “no snitching” culture is one that is shared by inner city gangsters and first generation Americans who come from countries in constant turmoil (politics, drug cartels.) Ignorance is a blissful state of mind. Stephen-Patrick Morrissey may have been right about how it’s easy to laugh and it’s easy to hate.
That group is a lot like my city, and certain threads are like meth houses, and I am like some accidental tourist, eyes squinting, want to make sure that I am where I am supposed to be. True, none of this may matter—people will kill people: por el barrio, Cain will kill Abel (while Abraham kills Isaac in some penitentiary war.) Ignorance is bliss, blood-stained, or otherwise. To quote the cholo played by Gerardo “Rico Suave (that should be his middle and last name)” Mejia in the movie Colors, “there will always be gangs, man. There will always be fighting.”
©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas
Reader Comments (1)
Have we figured out the Latino love for Morrissey yet? Still trying to rap my brain around that one.