Outing to Little Mexico…

Once in a while I seem to long for Mexico especially for Mexico's food. The closest to by going to Little Mexico as it was label by the newspaper. Little Mexico is area in Woodburn a town with a large percentage of Mexican's is located by the train tracks. Little Mexico is rather a concentration of shop and stored. Where one fined authentic Mexican restaurants, clothing, meat, bread and the most popular place the phone booth.

It had a sense of familiarity yet feel so alienated from it in a lot of senses. The places seem as what is in Mexico. The meat store display meat in a counter refrigerator with cut and a butcher as in Mexico where he would cut the meat as you wish. In the Mexican restaurant they serve food that is really Mexican. In the bread store they sell the famous "Pans" hot warm sweat bread. In the store they display the Mexican attires as the hat belts and sporting soccer teams shirts. In the booth there stand a lot what seem to be young Mexican guys who is seems that are try to call home.
The people although look familiar yet so unfamiliar. I seem to me that I no longer know this people this people are not my people this people is not what I know and who I know. The people I know and who is my people now seem look different they are those that whom Mexican seem to have such of despite and dislike towards. They one that tread them like shit. They one that think they are so much than they are. The ones that treat them as servant and less than human. Those people are my people. The gringos. The one that there seem to be so much dislike.

They not just people look stranger to me and seem to be unknown. Yet, I know who this people are. I know who those guys in the booth are. They are the guys that had left home in hope of a dream in hope of something and even in hope of being able to support their mother or in some cases their wife and kids. Those guys in a booth are probably in booth because are day labor that all they have look for them is wherever job is available. They most likely work in the Willamette field planting threes; picking happing or caring for the multitude of berries that are grown in this area. They are most likely living in cabins with 4 or five guys in what is consider being a small kitchen for everybody else. Sharing a bathroom with 40 and up 100 guys. Or if they are lucky they are a one or two bedroom apartment with maybe even 10 guys who may even take turn to sleep in the beds and the living room is are addition sleeping places. Living in an apartment is a step up. Now they could get all settle and get up get married and finds a shaggy places with in an apartment that just pass the living inspection in a shaggy part of town. If they get really fortunate they would find a work at McDonalds. Even greater they could find a job at a plant or fabric or even gardening or such. All jobs with required no ability to communicate.

So, this my people who I know them but yet not know them. I am stranger to say I am them. It seem more of such that I have became a gringo. Yet, a Mexican that know the reality and great difficulty of their life my compatriots goes throw for the dream for the American dream and perhaps to live for their survival and the survival of their family. The American dream in which maybe they one day would be able to go back and bring a shinny beautiful cars, and make a house that they never going to go back to. The American Dream that forever with take from where they lived.