Latino Sun, Rising: Our Spanish-Speaking U.S. World

Marco Portales

Texas A&M University Press, Aug 28, 2007 - Social Science - 272 pages

Now that Latinos are the most numerous ethnic minority in the United States and a growing part of the middle and professional classes, a Mexican American educator takes stock. Latinos can see that their sun is rising. Marco Portales knows; his life has been lived under that rising sun.

On the beach at Corpus Christi, in class at SUNY-Buffalo, waiting tables in Chicago, traveling to London, teaching at Berkeley, raising a family near NASA headquarters in Houston—Portales gives readers a view of the private world and public significance of Latinos. By vividly recreating his parents’ generation as well as his own, Marco Portales encourages readers to consider Latino progress since the days of his happy youth during the Eisenhower fifties, years that coalesced into the gradual but steady unfurling of his ethnic consciousness.

Working within a traditional Aztec framework of “suns” or days, Portales looks through the window of individual life onto the “morning” (sol naciente) of growing up as a minority member of American society, the “noontime” (sol ardiente) of private adult life and the transmission of identity to a new generation, and the full heat of afternoon (sol radiante), when public business is done and the larger polity is addressed.

In the compelling details of a life truly lived—and a balanced, lively intellect that articulates itself in a society that often asks people such as him to choose between their American and Mexican identities—Portales inscribes himself into his people’s experience. At the same time, he remains fully aware—and helps raise our awareness—that no one person’s story can embody and represent the ancestral histories and the great worth and potential of all U.S. Latinos.

Contents

• Introduction: 3
• youth: 13
• Urban Renewal on the Hometown Block in Edinburg: 15
• South Padre Isla del Padre Ballí: 27
• La Virgen de San Juan del Valle: 33
• The Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi: 43
• Chicago Austin London Buffalo Berkeley: 51
• pARENthooD: 69
• Voices Desires Being Wishful: 71
• First Priority: 83
• The Caribbean or the Gulf?: 85
• Apples after School and the Alamo: 90
• Harvard Visit: 99
• Fishing at the Point in Seabrook 104: 104
• An Aztec Reverie: 110
• Tierra in San Antonio: 116
• Indian Trails and the Texas AMUT Presidential Corridor: 120
• Among Mullets One Galveston Summer: 123
• Disney World Florida Trip: 128
• The RainBlessed Mountains of Costa Rica: 132
• Projecting Consciousness in Maximum Security: 136
• Evoking RimskyKorsakov on the Eve of a Move: 142
• Leaving the NASA Johnson Space Center Neighbors: 147
• Rio Grande Valley Meditation: 150
• Showdown across the Border in Reynosa: 158
• public policy issues: 167
• On Seeing Giant after Avoiding the Film Many Years: 169
• Words for Better Lives: 174
• Reinventing Ourselves: 176
• Race Should Not Matter: 180
• Still the Best Idea: 182
• Diversity Is Natural: 187
• On the Theory of Bilingual Education: 190
• Latin America and the United States and Mexico: 195
• Heat Undocumented Workers and the Border Patrol: 198
• Luis Alfonso Torres the Mexican Rodney King 204: 204
• NAFTA and the Maquiladora Babies: 207
• A Realization and a Memory in Southmost Texas: 215
• Latino Voting and Election Promises: 223
• Batos Locos: 229
• El Día de los Muertos in the United States: 231
• Regarding a Mexican American Holiday: 234
• War in Iraq: 237
• Thanksgiving Idyll: 240
• One Christmas Eve First of the New Century: 242
• A New Language 244: 244
• YearEnd Thoughts: 247
• What Latinos Want: 251

About the author

MARCO PORTALES, a professor of English at Texas A&M, holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of a number of works, including the book Crowding Out Latinos.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Latino Sun, Rising: Our Spanish-Speaking U.S. World
• Author: Marco Portales
• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press, 2007
• ISBN: 1585446378, 9781585446377
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / General