Reader: Christina Martinez

Respondent: Jody Newmann

Recorder: Amy Kaminski

“La Migra” By Pat Mora

Unsettling America, pp.367-368

Biographical information: Pat Mora was born in El Paso, Texas and has lived most of her life there. She considers herself “a daughter of the desert.” Both sets of her grandparents immigrated to Texas from Mexico in the early 20^th century. She grew up speaking Spanish at home, but she considers English to be her dominant language because she feels she can better express herself in English. She earned her bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Texas at El Paso. She has pursued a teaching career and also hosts a public radio show called “Voices: The Mexican-American in Perspective.” She writes poems, novels, and children’s books, and she has won numerous awards over her career.

 Objectives:

2c. “Quick check” on minority status: What is the individual’s or group’s relationship to the law or other national institutions? (Does the law make things better or worse?)

3c. Mexican-American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority” (“Ambivalent” means having mixed feelings or contradictory attitudes. As individuals or families who come to America for economic gain but suffer social dislocation, some Mexican Americans exemplify the immigrant culture. On the other hand, much of Mexico’s historic experience with the USA resembles the experience of the Native Americans: much of the USA, including Texas, was once Mexico. Does a Mexican who moves from Juarez to El Paso truly immigrate?)

5a. To discover the power of poetry and fiction to help “others” hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.

5f. To generalize the “Dominant-Minority” relation to philosophical or syntactic categories of “Subject & Object.” The “subject” is self-determining and active in terms of “voice and choice,” while the “object” is passive, acted upon and spoken for rather that acting and speaking.

7b. To observe shifting names or identities of the dominant culture in relation to different minority cultures.

Interpretation: This poem is short, but sometimes the less you say, the more powerful it can be. The poem echoes children’s role-playing games; “I’ll be the border Patrol. You be the Mexican maid.” This poem is about authority, dominance, and control. The badge is a symbol of authority and the law. Clearly, he has authority while she does not. In the second half of the poem, the Mexican maid is in control because she knows the desert. It is clear that she has the advantage. She says, “Aqua dulce brota aqui, aqui, aqui.” In a previous presentation, Jennifer Carnes said that the poem shows the resentment that many Mexican-Americans have for the U.S. taking their land, much like the Native Americans.

Questions:

1.      Why do you think that Mora chose a “Mexican maid” in the poem, instead of a man?

2.      What did you like about the poem?

Class Discussion:

Geri:  Does she mean by maid single or young woman?
Christina:  Maybe it means she is a double minority. In another poem, she says, “Desert women know about survival.”
Geri:  She’s a young woman, taken advantage of.
Dr. White:  The words “Mexican maid” stood out.
Christina:  More men cross the border than women.
Valerie:  The young woman shows brutality of the border patrol; they will even beat up a woman.
Christina:  It differentiates women; the second stanza was more powerful.
Geri:  She seems to have power.  She has experience and knows what to do.  Maybe she gave the border patrol officer his flat.
Barbara:  The second stanza is role reversal, like role-playing, like cowboys and indians.  It mirrors reality.  She is a woman and she is reality but cowboys and indians wasn’t real.  That’s why it’s a woman; that role was reversed too.
Andrea:  I liked it and identified with it, especially when she speaks Spanish and they don’t understand.  She has an advantage.
Jody:  It sounds like a children’s song, a child’s perspective about adult things.  It’s like cops and robbers but the good and bad guys are reversed.  At the beginning she is persecuted but at the end, Spanish means empowerment.
Dr. White:  The cop has power, the badge and the gun, but that is ironic because at the end those things slow him down when he chases her.   What about the law thing?
Christina:  It makes things worse.
Dr. White:  It shows authority, the limits of the law.
Andrea:  The second part is a dream because the border patrol probably knows Spanish and the land.  She is probably daydreaming.
Dr. White:  It depends on when it was written.  Only English was spoken by the border patrol a long time ago.  Spanish seems to be a weakness but it empowers her.
Valerie:  It reminded me of the movie “Born in East LA” because the man in the movie couldn’t get across the border to America because he spoke English, then he couldn’t get by in America because he didn’t speak Spanish.