The Life in My Years

May 5, 2025
It ‘s Cinco de Mayo and I suspect that, unlike St. Patrick’s Day, when many people, Irish or not, hoist a mug of green beer and proclaim that “today everyone’s Irish,” there are more than a few white American folk who, after downing a few tequila shots, stop well short of proclaiming “today everyone’s Mexican.”

When it comes to the celebration of Mexico’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla, it’s fun and it’s lively and a good excuse for tequila in excess, but in the end, let’s be real, it’s still, you know, Mexico; cartels, illegals, drug dealers and gangs. They really need to go back to where they came from because like the man said, “they’re not sending their best.”

I suspect that next year at this time if all things tariff haven’t changed, Patron, Mexican beer and guacamole will be painfully expensive. And Donald J. Trump will blame it all on Mexico (or Biden) and say something like, instead of five shots of Patron, maybe they’ll have to make do with just two. Or if you want three just get the well stuff.

Cinco de Mayo 2025, in America, was different this year than in years past. In cities and towns celebrations were muted. In South Philadelphia and Chicago the annual Cinco de Mayo parades were canceled outright. The reason? La Migra, which translated literally means immigration but in slang refers to ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol, has been on a rampage. It was feared that the large gatherings might provide too much of a target rich environment for La Migra.

So while white America celebrated victory at Puebla, brown America found itself threatened, uneasy, and in many cases, hunkered down.

Yesterday, there was a large Cinco de Mayo celebration in nearby Richmond, California which is home to a vibrant Latin community (along with Asian, and Asian-Pacific Islander). I considered going in order to support the community but by the time I was ready to go I figured that parking would be problematic and so I passed. It was gratifying to learn later that the celebration was a success and apparently, and thankfully, La Migra also passed.

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poem where no one is deported

By José Olivarez
now i like to imagine la migra running
into the sock factory where my mom
& her friends worked. it was all women

who worked there. women who braided
each other’s hair during breaks.
women who wore rosaries, & never

had a hair out of place. women who were ready
for cameras or for God, who ended all their sentences
with si dios quiere. as in: the day before

the immigration raid when the rumor
of a raid was passed around like bread
& the women made plans, si dios quiere.

so when the immigration officers arrived
they found boxes of socks & all the women absent.
safe at home. those officers thought

no one was working. they were wrong.
the women would say it was god working.
& it was god, but the god

my mom taught us to fear
was vengeful. he might have wet his thumb
& wiped la migra out of this world like a smudge

on a mirror. this god was the god that woke me up
at 7am every day for school to let me know
there was food in the fridge for me & my brothers.

i never asked my mom where the food came from,
but she told me anyway: gracias a dios.
gracias a dios del chisme, who heard all la migra’s plans

& whispered them into the right ears
to keep our families safe.

The Trump regime’s war on immigrants, DEI, “woke”, and anything not considered lily white American is crushing cultural celebrations. There was a time when America as a melting pot of cultures was considered to be a good thing. The blending of cultures from all over the world served to create a singular dynamic culture that was uniquely American. Yes – American.

And then Donald Trump came along and brought with him racism, jingoism, and an administration of culture warriors. The celebration of a melting pot is being replaced by the alarm of the replacement theory, a paranoid doctrine that implies Democrats are throwing open the borders to allow in hordes of brown people who will breed like rabbits and outnumber so-called “real Americans,” and in the end turn the United States into a land of liberal mutts.

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May 4, 2025
With an hour to kill before the start of the Golden State Warriors playoff game I did some channel surfing and found The Ass Crack of New York City on Hulu. The title conjures up a whole range of possibilities; especially when you’re talking New York. This particular show was about after hours dining in the Big Apple; after the bars and theaters and most restaurants have closed for the night.

The show drew me in, starting with a taco truck run by two Mexican brothers who earned their culinary chops working in some legit restaurants. The show jumped to an after hours badminton club where taxi drivers go “during the slow hours to exercise and hang out,” and enjoy chai tea. Almost to a man, the players were Middle Eastern. Next was a Korean barbecue joint in Koreatown, followed by an after hours South American restaurant in the Hell’s Kitchen district that draws performers from one of the local drag clubs. Drag? Horrors!

By the end of the show, I was smiling over the diversity. By the end of the show, I was also saddened by the realization that everything that I’d just watched; the joy, the diversity, the languages, the accents, and the flavors, all of it, represents everything that the Trump regime wants to snuff out.

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It’s Sunday, late summer 2024, and I’m sitting in my car at a stoplight on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, a major thoroughfare that skirts the shore of San Francisco Bay. To my right is Embarcadero Center and to my left, is Pier 3. Sitting in the passenger seat is the love of my life. No, not my wife, but a sack of char siu (Cantonese barbecue pork) and half a roasted duck. Well, it’s the love of my life at this very moment because the aroma is pure ecstasy.

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Back at the stoplight, a car pulls up on my immediate left and the pumping waltz/polka combination of Mexican Norteño music pulses from the car. I exchange glances with the driver of the car and we nod our heads in greeting.

It’s a long light and as I sit, trying to keep from dipping my hand in the sack of char siu, it dawns on me just how lucky I am to be here. In one morning, as I walked around the City, I’d probably heard a half dozen different languages and maybe as many varying accents. This is everything that Stephen Miller, Trump’s own Josef Goebbels, hates. And of course, everything that Trump hates.

For anyone who would call that a misleading generalization, just think back to Trump’s Hitlerian campaign rhetoric about migrants from Asia, South America, and Africa poisoning the blood of America. Realize that Trump wants to remove temporary protected status from Venezuelans fleeing persecution; from Afghanis who fled their country after having helped Americans in that too long war; and from Ukrainians fleeing the war in Ukraine.

It’s the same Trump who wants to keep Palestinians fleeing the genocide being waged by Trump’s buddy, the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, out of the United States. Even as we sell hell’s hardware of war and destruction to Netanyahu.

It’s also the same Trump who once wondered out loud why America couldn’t attract more Norwegians (hint: maybe it’s because Norway has a truer and more stable democracy and better all around benefits for its citizens). It’s the same Trump who is wooing white Afrikaners from South Africa over a made up fable about the Afrikaners being the victims of discrimination.

It’s the same Trump who, in a fit of pettiness, changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. In my house that body will always be the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s the same Trump who signed an executive order designating English as America’s official language.

When they say, “America first,” they mean white America. When they say, “America for Americans,” they’re saying white Americans.

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The light changes and as I’m driving towards the Bay Bridge I remember back to decades ago when I was trying to convince my wife that we should move to rural America. That was a hard no. Thank you, Cora.

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Last week, the local news did a feature report on the devastation that Trump’s trade war with China is going to bring to Chinatown. One business leader predicts that it will be worse than the economic damage that occurred during COVID. And it isn’t just the cheap t-shirts, Buddha statues, chopsticks, tea sets and other souvenirs sold on touristy Grant Avenue. It’s almost everything. The tariffs will affect the local community’s staples and the household goods they use in their everyday lives, including tea, herbs, medicinals, and various foodstuffs.

Business owner Mei Zhu, who owns Mei’s Grocery on Stockton Street (Stockton is where the residents shop for many of their everyday goods and services) gets 90% of her inventory from China; sauces, dry noodles, candies and cookies. All of it will be heavily taxed and despite Trump’s lies, China will not be “eating it,” as he said recently.

Zhu has absorbed cost increases on some items, raised prices on others, and stopped selling others. “If things continue like this for another month or two, the only option is to end the business and stop operating,” she said.

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This is part of life in Trump’s America. I can’t imagine life in America without Cinco de Mayo, or Juneteenth, or the celebrations of the Lunar New Year, or Black History Month, Pride celebrations, or Carnaval.

But people like Stephen Miller and Laura Loomer can. It’s their wet dream.

La Migra
By Pat Mora

Let’s play La Migra[1]
I’ll be the Border Patrol.
You be the Mexican maid.
I get the badge and sunglasses.
You can hide and run,
but you can’t get away
because I have a jeep.
I can take you wherever
I want, but don’t ask
questions because
I don’t speak Spanish.
I can touch you wherever
I want but don’t complain
too much because I’ve got
boots and kick—if I have to,
and I have handcuffs.
Oh, and a gun.
Get ready, get set, run.

II

Let’s play La Migra
You be the Border Patrol.
I’ll be the Mexican woman.
Your jeep has a flat,
and you have been spotted
by the sun.
All you have is heavy: hat
glasses, badge, shoes, gun.
I know this desert,
where to rest,
where to drink.
Oh, I am not alone.
You hear us singing
and laughing with the wind,
Agua dulce brota aquí
aquí, aquí,[2] but since you
can’t speak Spanish.
you do not understand
Get ready.

[1] Border patrol agents
[2] Sweet water springs here, here, here.

Banner photo: A mural in San Francisco’s Mission District.