Prop. 187 Divides a Family

I have it all wrong about Proposition 187, a faithful reader of my column insisted the other day.

“Prop. 187 isn’t racist,” she said. “It isn’t anti-Mexican. It’s against people who are in the United States illegally. They are in the wrong. We can’t allow people to take advantage of this country.”

Over the past months, I have argued with this reader over this proposition, but I haven’t won her over to my viewpoint.

So tomorrow, my mother is voting for Proposition 187.

*

Not even the guy who stamps “Wetback Go Home” on his letters has got me as worked up as Mom does with her support for the initiative.

After all, my Mexican mother--born in the United States of illegal-immigrant parents--is the person who corrected me when I misstated facts about Mexican history as a boy. On trips to Chihuahua and Durango, she introduced me to the “illegal alien” responsible for her being born here. I remember being in awe of that woman, grandmother Paula Fraire Vasquez Medina, admiring her for raising seven kids by herself in Depression-era L.A.

Mom’s also the one who got me interested in politics. I still recall her stories of how she voted for a winner--Harry S. Truman--in her first presidential election in 1948. When her man, Democrat Adlai Stevenson, lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower four years later, she cried.

She and I were glued to the radio and TV coverage of the ’56 presidential conventions. I didn’t know who Estes Kefauver and John F. Kennedy were, but she let me know these guys were important to the republic.

But that’s in the past. Now, Mom is into new ideals.

She’s a fan of Rush Limbaugh. She likes him not just because his radio programs kept her grieving mind occupied after my father died. She believes in his anti-Washington, anti-liberal agenda: She equates evil with virtually all Democrats, President Clinton, newspaper columnists and, most recently, illegal immigrants.

When we gathered recently in her kitchen, with brother Daniel acting as referee, her support for 187 was clear.

“It’s unconstitutional,” I argued.

“I know it might not work,” she answered, “but we need to send a message. We are overrun by illegals.”

“Would you think it fair to kick kids out of school because their parents are illegal?” I asked.

“They won’t get kicked out of school right away because they’ll be fighting it out in court (over 187’s constitutionality),” she said.

She tried to bait me to make me see the wrongheadedness of my arguments.

“Did you see all those Mexican flags in the Downtown march?” she asked coyly. “What do you think of them doing that?”

I saw nothing sinister in the display of pride in those marchers’ cultural roots. But she detected misplaced loyalties.

“This is the United States,” she thundered. “Speak English! Show the American flag!”

I reminded her that we were arguing in English because Dan doesn’t speak Spanish.

Eventually, it got personal.

She thinks illegals come here to get on welfare.

“Like Grandma Paula?” I asked, knowing my mother’s mother never sought a dime of welfare.

“She wasn’t a burden,” Mom retorted. “She eventually returned to Mexico voluntarily.”

“So, in order words,” I countered, “you got yours. The illegals of today can go get theirs someplace else?”

I admit I was mean, but I meant what I said.

“Don’t you see the irony of what you’re saying?” I persisted. “If Proposition 187 had passed in your day, you’d be thrown out of school. Grandma would have been reported to the authorities. You’d be singled out because you’re different--you speak Spanish.”

Mom was unmoved. “I’m an American citizen,” she concluded. “I don’t see any irony. The thing is, I’ve never seen it that way. I just feel that right now, illegal aliens are getting to be too much of a problem.”

The air was tense enough without me saying something I’d regret later. I just let her words sink in for a few moments. Then my brother let her have it.

“You’re a hypocrite, Mother,” he said.

*

The argument across California over Proposition 187 won’t die after tomorrow’s election. Likewise the kitchen debates with my Mexican mother. I guess that’s because she gave me a sense of what it’s like to be Chicano: to have pride in two cultures, two languages and two traditions and to be a good American. That’s why I’m voting tomorrow.

At the end of our talk, Mom shook her head when I announced that on 187, she was outvoted by me and my brother, 2-1.

Her reply was typically Mom: “I love you, mijo , but you’re wrong on Proposition 187.”