Flag Day in a Mexican school: Day of the abanderamiento
I'm sitting behind a small desk in the English department of a Ciudad Juárez politécnico - a sort of combination senior vocational high school cum junior college - across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.
Right at this moment, I'm recalling a certain Thursday in early October 1995 - and not just ANY Thursday. That Thursday was a memorable one for all of us at our school.
In the basement area where the catedráctica -or department chairperson - shared her headquarters for overseeing the executive bilingual secretary division with her teachers and staff, we had just said "good-bye" to the regular class routine. Now we were preparing ourselves for that most important of all Latin American school functions: an abanderamiento .
The Mexican flag is not to be bandied about. When a new school is finally presented with its very own national emblem by a ranking army officer on active service, it is time for a very serious fiesta. Today would be no exception.
Things had begun more or less on time. Our own area down below was full of excited bustle. I was given the chance to display a rare ability acquired over the years - drinking coffee while aiding a young damsel in distress - in this case one of my students, the vibrant dark-eyed Veronica Guadalupe, age fifteen, who just so happened to be in front of my desk, when she suddenly developed problems handling her compact.
A simple case of nerves, no doubt.
It gave me a strange sense of deja vu, of far away and long ago at the dawn of the 'Sixties. Yours truly, along with my good friends Chacho, Ruben, Jimmy, Gilberto and a bunch more, found ourselves mingling with our female classmates as we prepared for the annual May crowning at our little school - 'way down south in Hidalgo County, Texas, on the south side of the Alamo. We gents were all in our best khaki trousers and 'ironed-by-our mothers' white shirts. The girls too were in their Sunday best.
The one platicando (talking) with me now of how nervous she felt, wore the current Latina rage: each shoulder of her starched white blouse stuck straight up. She was one of Carlota Esparza's two daughters, and both of those morenitas were knockouts, easily the equals of Margarita Pérez, Martha Caballero, Rebecca Balli, or any of the rest.
The warm late spring breeze of sundown was still scented by the haunting fragrance of fading citrus blossoms long since fallen, mixed with the smell of fresh-cut roses and incense, as well as the sound of laughing, musical banter in that hodgepodge of two languages known as Tex-Mex.
All this combined to bring home to me, don't ask me how, that being young and alive has a lot going for it.
While the red cassock and white surplice of that altar boy in my memory, lent a lot of dignity to what the majority of us still believed as the Holy Sacrifice of the Catholic Latin Mass in those far-off days, somehow I knew wearing it would never be a career option for me.
Because whatever else God had planned for me, I was certain He hadn't cut me out to be no priest....thank you, Doña Carlota!
I gallantly rose to the present occasion by balancing Veronica's pale blue compact in my left hand, mirror open, while holding my coffee cup in my right, at the same time chatting with her psyched-up and nevous fellow squad-members.
Arrayed in white berets, with matching blouses and plaid skirts, they had practiced for their role as the school's color guard for several weeks, ever since the last big function: Diez y Seis. September the 16th. Mexican Independence Day.
Unflappable Nohemi was their squad leader. Unflappable Nohemi, whose chestnut curls seemed to swirl down both sides of her freckled face. A veteran of one of California's top-rated high schools in El Monte, Nohemi, just like her classmates, Karla Vianney and Yadira Ivonne, was one of those people with a naturally sunny disposition who are always nice to have around.
Even having only one of them in a class would have made a difference, but a classroom full? Of students of the caliber of this crowd?
" N' ombre, no me digas!" -- "No way, man, don't tell me; you don't say?"
But, yes! My chauvinist friend, I do "tell you!" I speak only the truth. For I was there. And what I write is so.
And the fact that this was all later to self-destruct, within three weeks of the start of the Christmas holidays, with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy changes nothing: these women were the best.
Veronica's squad-mate Teresa Candida was in our office too, and so was Yazmin. Yazmin was seventeen and had attended two semesters of English class at some other school here in Ciudad Juárez, while Teresa Candida at age twenty was already working as a data processor.
It didn't take long for our office cum teacher's lounge to fill up as other young women came in to bring their moral support to the color guard. Erika, sixteen, and Liliana, fifteen, were gently teasing Veronica Guadalupe as she anxiously sought reassurance as to whether or not she really needed to add more mascara. All the while, twenty-year old Irene was smilingly assisting her.
Irene was, perhaps, a little on the short side. Blond Irene with the cool, gray eyes - almost hazel those eyes - which like those of fifth-year law student Karmina upstairs in the registrar's office, hinted more than just a little of North Italian ancestry. Irene was quiet and elegantly poised as always. Saying nothing. But also missing nothing.
There were others who brought containers of food prepared by themselves, or with the help of assorted mothers, aunts, or sisters. But some even more special dishes had been prepared by certain grimly determined and homesick-for-my-mama young teachers, and who knows, possibly a young department head, or two.
Among this last group of teachers and department heads, you may be sure that there were at least some women who had been obliged to stop from time to time, to wipe away the tears that come from that mixture of sudden pain and remembrance of when they had so courageously - and successfully - fought to surpress their fears upon bravely leaving their homes in faraway Mexico City, Encarnación de Diáz, Jalisco, Las Canitas de Felipe Pescador, Monterrey, or wherever.
And when each with her spanking-new diploma in hand, had taken that long, one-way bus journey full of hope to find that all-important first big teaching job in Ciudad Juárez, where such jobs were still plentiful and begging for intrepid young people to fill them.
But now in the wee hours of the morning, maybe quietly tiptoeing around the shared kitchen of some casa de huespedes - or workers' hostel - while adding the final touches to some long cherished family recipe of enchiladas, or rice, or frijoles, perhaps because they were made vulnerable by fatigue, it would suddenly hit them.
To be sure, none of us males would ever be permitted to know it the next day as we ate, joked, and in general exchanged the usual jiving banter with these brightly smiling professional staff members in that easy give and take of co-workers in the Mundo Latino -- the Latin World.
No, these young women would never admit to us that what gave that special touch to this or to that dish on the impomptu buffet line, was the tears of a valiant Latin woman -- una machetona -- who in spite of everything, would never know the meaning of the phrase "I quit," but always with a sort of fearless insouciance would meet the challenges of the Twenty-first Century head on...
Suddenly there came a rush of laughing, keyed-up young men and women clattering down the stairs, folkloric costumes and guitars flung carelessly over their shoulders, obviously in search of some makeshift dressing room.
They were members of the celebrated Ballet Folklórico de la Preparatoria Por Cooperacion Chamizal, which is one of the top-ranked tuition-charging federal public high schools -- called preparatorias in Spanish -- in Ciudad Juárez, a school whose legendary draconian toughness in student discipline is still current.
These energetic youths had received time off during school hours to lend us support on this most important of days.
Surely it wouldn't be long before we got the signal to move outside for the next phase of the operation....
AUTHOR'S FORWARD
"This is a very special message for some very special people, thus it will be in spanish -- mas o menos! -- o.k.? OK! Pues bien! Con sus permiso entonces...Thank you!
Queridas amigas de tales grupos como los 1A, B, D, E y F, esta obra no esta muy enfocado sobre sus companeras del 1C solamente porque ellas estan conocidas como LAS CONSENTIDAS por mera casualidad. La realidad politica es que este grupo esta compuesto por una proporcion muy elevada de campeonas valiosas Chihuahuenses quienes han merecido este reconocimiento.
Sin embargo son tantas las personas que encontramos en sus grupos tambien merecidos de un respeto igual -- y en un rato sale sus cuento (juntamente con algunas "bequitas" para presentar la P.A.A. a la U.T. El Paso, y algunos "ahorritos" para ayudarles cursar la materia del nivel superior aqui en el lado mexicano) -- pero no todos, ni aun la mayoria en qualquier grupo.
No, amigas mias -- tal vez es una lastima, pero la vida es asi. Porque solamente una vez en una vida encontramos un grupo como LAS CONSENTIDAS y aunque fracaso el programa apenas tres semanas antes las vacaciones navidenas, este no cambia la realidad: las damas del 1C alcanzaban un nivel de ingles como segundo idioma (ESL) nunca visto antes, y que nunca vamos a ver despues.
Fue el grupo 1C sencillamente "El mejor de lo nuestro." Y, ahora, por fin -- hablamos directamente con las veteranas del 1C, mejor conocido como LAS CONSENTIDAS. Muy cara y respetadas amigas mias: hay muchas cosas de que se trata este humilde libro, pero su inspiracion viene de ustedes.
En la reunion breve que tuvimos con algunas de ustedes en la tarde del viernes, el 15 de diciembre, 1995, en el Cafe de Europa ustedes pusieron en marcha todo, pero todo. Y nuestra novela que todavia estaba en marcha tuvo que sufrir la sensacion penosa de estar colocado aparte, porque ustedes a partir aquella fecha nos mandaron por otro camino -- y hacia una otra honda -- aun mas sabrosa: se traduce el titulo de este libro al espanol como, "Una cancion de amor Mexicana."
Gracias! Muchissimas gracias a todos ustedes:
Yadira Ivonne, Cristina, Berenice, Erika, Maria Teresa, Edna Manuela, Velia, Marina Ivonne, Karla Vianney, Veronica Guadalupe, Nohemi, Gloria Edith, Juana Elizabeth, Sandra Iveth, Elizabeth "Letty," Mirna Maria, Auralia, Lourdes, Liliana, Alejandra, Irma, Teresa Candida, Monica, Maria Elena, Angelica Maria, Miriam Elizabeth, Yazmin, Irene, Violeta, et. etc."
Un saludo cordial a todos ustedes, de sus entonces "profe" Dionicio, ya radicado (por lo menos por un "rato") aqui en San Antonio, Texas.
Dennis
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