Finding the Half-Full Glass in the Half-Empty One

Some people say I’m always looking for the dark side of America.

They call me a malcontent, a race-baiter, an ungrateful immigrant.

“It just seems to me that you like to get people stirred up,” said one caller. “You like to ruffle people’s feathers, get people angry. Then they respond, sometimes angrily, sometimes hatefully. Then you like to write about it the next day, saying how many people hate Mexicans.”

It’s all true, except for the intention. I don’t like to get people angry; I’d rather get them outraged. In Southern California, hating Mexicans is a popular sport in search of an arena, and my column provides it from time to time.

Yet, the caller made me wonder. Maybe I accentuate the negative.

Looking back over a year’s worth of columns, I can see how people might think I’m overly critical.

I mocked a nightclub for making men tuck in their guayaberas, traditional shirts made to be worn outside the pants. I skewered the INS for fumbling my citizenship application. I complained that we need more prominent displays of historic statues, more open displays of public romance, more elaborate displays of gratitude on Mother’s Day.

I grumbled that Hollywood still stereotypes Latinos and society still isolates the elderly. And I groaned about Mexican superstars promoting presidential candidates who lost the popular vote on both sides of the border--Juan Gabriel warbled shamelessly for the PRI, while Vicente Fernandez crooned for the GOP.

So am I the guy always holding the proverbial half-empty glass? Perhaps, but wasn’t 2000 a half-empty, half-full sort of year, depending on who’s measuring?

Tito Puente died; Pinochet survived.

Elian Gonzalez was sent home and so was Al Gore.

Sancho, the Chicano deejay and youth motivator, was taken off the air; Howard Stern, purveyor of public depravity, was not.

Cesar Chavez got his own state holiday; John Lennon got a statue in Havana, unveiled by Fidel Castro himself to mark the 20th anniversary of the singer’s death.

Everybody had a hard year. Everybody had a good time.

Lennon sang that ambiguous line just before the Beatles broke up, which was about the last time I felt fully part of a common culture in the United States. But there I go again, being a bummer. Before the millennium is over, this time for real, I want to leave you with something positive.

Remember the case of the Mexican immigrant who asked a retired Texas couple for a drink of water and was shot to death instead? Remember the vicious hate mail I received from readers who thought the Mexican got what he deserved? Well, that hatred finally sparked the outrage I like to encourage. Among hundreds of messages from folks who called themselves Anglos, Italians, Irish and just plain Americans, this nation’s best qualities shone through.

COMPASSION: “I just want to apologize for those [readers] who are so ready to share their cruel and bloodthirsty ideas with you. . . . I have known many wonderful people who arrived in this country under very difficult circumstances and I am aware of the hardships they continue to face. My heart aches for the young man who bled to death, and for his family in Mexico.”

GENEROSITY: “It seems so sad to read that kind of hate in this supposed season of Christmas. It’s hard to go into a supermarket or a Costco these days and think we don’t have ‘enough’ to share with others, whoever they might be.”

HONESTY: “The real danger to this country is not from immigrants, legal or illegal. It is from the irrational viciousness that lurks in too many hearts, and the violence that springs from it. . . . Unless the country comes to grips with this cancer, it will destroy the very thing we try to protect with our borders.”

STRENGTH: “If we spent as much time and effort to make Mexico a thriving, viable economy as we have to dominate it, the border could be crossed as easily as Canada’s.”

HONOR: “In combat, we used to help enemy wounded and half-frozen Communists, as they did for us. Humans are humans. Why create more enemies?”

INCLUSIVENESS: “I am glad to have [Latinos] here, singing and dancing, teaching our children, fixing my roof and my dinner, helping us make new laws and a better place for us all. . . . I am glad to have people who bring us so many good things and so much of themselves. Like the Germans and the Chinese and the Cubans and all the rest, they bring great joy to us all.”

Happy New Year. And thanks for reminding me to look for the bright side of America.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com