Crossing Cultures with the San Patricios An Irish American discovers his people's Mexican connection. By Brian Grady Having only taught in non-white schools, I've made a career out of being the dorky white guy. When my students reach out to give me a high five or some hip handshake, I always miss. My body doesn't do cool – always stiff, caught off guard, never in beat, recoiling in discomfort. Nowhere was this exchange more obvious than when I taught in inner city Oakland, where every moment I stumbled across flowing rivers of black expression. What I had for their entertainment was my name: Grady, a bright, ringing, two-syllable bounce, quick to rhyme and easily inserted into rap freestyle, colorful greetings in the hall or, on rare occasions, shouted through a blue haze of marijuana smoke on a street corner. "Ssup, Gray-dowwg!" "Shady Grady!" One of my favorites sprung from my feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in the classroom; one student always reassured me with his proverbial, "It's all Grady baby!" (replacing the gravy, which in that expression represents the good in life). The fact that my name is Irish never came up; this wasn't Boston or New York. _________________________________ When my students reach out to give me a high five or some hip handshake, I always miss. _________________________________ Encouraged in part by the luxury of choice, I've always put myself in situations of cultural displacement (which I feel no less among the Irish), and like an addiction, seized opportunities to wallow in it. The Oakland ghetto (in particular, its African-American community) provided the most potent fix because culturally, I had more in common with Tibetan goat herders. But the Irish were once ghetto. In How The Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev chronicled the ascendancy of Irish immigrants to white privilege in America. Having been reduced to less than slaves through British domination and ultimate starvation, the Irish, pouring off the boats, were faced with a powerful dilemma regarding the African slaves. Despite an organized effort in the 1840s to unite all Irish in America and Ireland against American slavery, the Irish eventually abandoned their long tradition as fighters for social justice to become a new force in the racially divisive practice of American labor and politics. Ignatiev wrote, "The Irish had faded from green to white, bleached by something in the atmosphere in America." "C'mon Grady! Just say it!" one of my black students pleaded playfully, as the others giggled. "Wassup my nigga?" "White people can't say that!" I said nervously as I squirmed to change the subject. "Nah, Grady don't trip. Don't mean nothin." "Niggers turned inside out" was the status given to the new Irish in America, but assimilation would, in time, secure them a place on the other side of the racial divide. Frederick Douglas lamented the inevitable Americanization of the Irish: "The Irish, who at home readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro." Just as Ireland's mythic warrior, Cuchulainn, killed his only son out of duty to the king, Irish Americans slew their own rebellious history for power and privilege in a new land. _________________________________ Despite an organized effort in the 1840s to unite all Irish in America and Ireland against American slavery, the Irish eventually abandoned their long tradition as fighters for social justice to become a new force in the racially divisive practice of American labor and politics. _________________________________ In Oakland that year, student rallies and walkouts were frequent at the high school. The inequities of their school and community justified upheaval of all sorts. One rally I remember in particular was to protest the district's solution to a 40% truancy rate at the high school: a new 20-foot fence surrounding the campus. "Just add a couple guard towers and we got ourselves a prison!" a Mexican student shouted to the cheering crowd of mostly blacks and Latinos while I stood among them, a tall, shining white beacon in a sea of brown poverty. Then, in an attempt to create a sense of unity, the speaker told the story of the Saint Patrick's Battalion of Mexico: a group of mostly Irish soldiers who deserted the American Army during the Mexican-American War to join Mexican forces in defense of their land. The rogue bunch called themselves the San Patricios and, beneath their own banner of harp and shamrock, fought fiercely in every major battle against the United States. "Yo! And these were white people!" the enthusiastic student shouted. Later that year, in a San Francisco neighborhood known as The Mission (a formerly Irish abode turned Mexican), I attended a screening of a new documentary, The San Patricios, by San Diego filmmaker Mark Day. The story kept surfacing in the humble places I frequented – backroom poetry readings, anarchist bookstores, in small publications stacked on Guinness-sticky floors of poorly lit pubs. At the time, I was taking creative writing classes at SF State which were predominantly filled with and taught by whites. I enrolled in a writing class in the La Raza Department, and because I was ignorant of the department's mission, I expected only splashes of brown, one of those multicultural enrichment courses for whites, with Latino flavor, like the pale Mexican sweetbreads sprinkled with color sold in the panaderias (bakeries). When I walked into class, I found myself not only the solo gringo, but an invader – a conquistador who with his odd thoughts and manner would rape and pillage his way through one of the few places in academia carved out for these would-be writers. I had taken my quest for estrangement too far. The class was taught by one of the great local literary voices, Alejandro Murguia, a writer dedicated to the voice of Latino students and their potential to awaken the power of their culture and experiences that slept in their imaginations. Despite feelings I had early on that I should march my gringo ass back to the white classes, Alejandro encouraged me to stay. He believed La Raza was the "all-inclusive mama" as opposed to the exclusive world I came from, and when the shock waves of my jarring entry settled, I grew into a sense of belonging completely foreign in my other college courses. The Raza writing class was my most rewarding – my best work was a bilingual poem titled Maria, based on an apparition of the Virgin one night upon the roof of a neighborhood church days after the tragic shooting of two teenage lovers in a nearby park. My classmates loved the poem and published it in their annual literary journal. I crossed over and they accepted me with open arms. A Mexican stamp commemorating the San Patricios illustrates a woman (Mexico) draped in national colors carrying a dead Irish soldier, a bicultural pieta, the orphaned Irish resting in the arms of Mexico. Historians attribute much of the San Patricios' crossing over to the Mexican side as a "Catholic connection" – that the Irish, for centuries crushed beneath the boot of Protestant England, identified with the Mexicans now facing invasion from another Protestant imperial power, the United States. The battalion's leader, John Riley, called America's invasion "unjust" and "unholy," but it is also clear from his letters that he had fallen in love with Mexico, "for a more hospitable and friendlier people than the Mexicans, there exists not on the face of the earth ." _________________________________ I crossed over and they accepted me with open arms. _________________________________ I moved to San Diego with my family and landed a middle school teaching job at the southernmost tip of the county, two freeway exits from the border. I looked forward to being immersed into a new student culture; my student demographics shifted, generally speaking, from black to Mexican (Ebonics to Tijuanics). The geography presented its own culture clashes. There was the border, stretched like a scar across the landscape, and the inner border, the one bisecting the lives of the Mexican students. L.A. writer Rueben Martinez described his experience as, "I must be more than two. I must be North and South, in the North and in the South." Hearing students tease each other with the term pollos (illegals) reminded me of something my father (the son of Irish immigrants) used to say: "There are two kinds of Irish – lace curtain and pig shit." The first referred to those who had jobs that paid enough to hang lace curtains in the windows of their Boston neighborhood. The second referred to a more rural and impoverished Irish, those we originated from. My father continued the grand ol' American tradition – the child of the immigrant rejecting the Old World to feel more a part of the New, and he, perhaps unknowingly, moved decisively forward to keep his children from touching the past. My students and I exchange stories; the Mexican and Irish both tend toward the ethereal and the tragic. La Llorona (the Weeping Woman) is a river ghost who wanders in eternal regret, having once drowned her only child, and like the Irish banshee her lamenting cries fill the night air. The kids love the story of Oisin, who traveled beneath the sea to Tir Na Nog (Land of Eternal Youth) to join the princess there, but when he returned to Ireland (having aged 1,000 years) he touched the shore and disintegrated into dust. Many students are the living remnants of death-defying border crossings, and like the starved and fleeing Irish, the immigrant's journey through death births a mythic arrival. Here at the border's edge, I like to imagine a festival, a San Patricio Fest. Ceili1 dance to the circular melodies of the mariachi fiddles or listen to the Ranchero accordion's adornos2 swirling like the jigs and reels of Irish music. Kick your heels to Irish steps or a paso doble3, and feel the crowd losing itself in the frenzy of music as they shout their own gritos4. I see altars of devotion to La Virgin de Guadalupe beside those of Saint Bridget of Kildare, both pagan goddesses who bridged the ancient and Christian mother figures in cultural reconciliation. And for the rebel of heart, a table of United Irish for the indegenios (natives), a sort of James Connoly meets Emiliano Zapata, the greatest land reform revolutionaries of their time (today Irish organizations support the Chiapas movement, finding solidarity again in Mexican struggles). Hung for treason, the San Patricos return to us, martyrs of solidarity and immigrant rights, dangling by their necks above an abyss of assimilation. The answer to the "fading of the green" that Ignatiev spoke of lies somewhere within Erin and Aztlan. Viva Los San Patricios! But if you don't mind, I'll skip the tequila and Tecate5 booth on my way to the Guinness and whiskey - some things just can't be shared. Slainte! 6 1 A traditional Irish dance. 2 Ornaments. 3 Double step. 4 Cries. 5 A Mexican beer. 6 "Cheers" in Gaelic. Brian Grady teaches middle school English in San Diego, where he lives with his wife and two children. His work has appeared in Cipacltli Literary Journal (San Francisco State) and Bright Lights Film Journal. This website: Copyright © 2005 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Urban Mozaik Magazine are not necessarily those of Urban Mozaik Magazine and the publisher cannot be held responsible for them. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.