Across a border and generations, it’s about family

High in the hills above this border town, Lourdes Hernandez de Villalaz swings her parents’ silver Jeep Cherokee through an arched entrance marked “El Rancho.” Her mom and dad, Alicia and Amador Hernandez, crane their necks as they bump over the dirt road, passing modest vacation homes, trailers and stables. “That’s it,” Amador says two minutes later.

Lourdes pulls up beside a large white mobile home. Women and children pour out of its doorway. A crew-cut boy runs to his grandfather, Amador, and kisses him on both cheeks, then his grandmother, then Lourdes.

“The birthday boy!” says Amador, swinging him around. “Carlos Alfonso. Eight years old!”

About 40 relatives and friends have made the trip from both sides of the U.S. border on this recent Sunday for Carlos Alfonso Mondaca’s cumpleanos, but such extended family gatherings happen at least once a month anyway. “Usually, we get together at our house on the San Diego side in Chula Vista,” Amador says. “But some of the family can’t cross over because they don’t have papers.”

The Hernandezes are typical of many families split by the border who gather regularly despite bureaucratic hassles and the pressures of U.S. life that threaten the role of the extended family. “This is very, very common,” says Raymond Uzeta, president of the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, a service organization. “The border doesn’t terminate family relationships.”

Such bonds, however, do need nurturing, and it’s clear that Amador and Alicia are the glue that cements the Hernandez clan. Amador stoops into the Jeep’s tailgate and hauls out bowls of macaroni and cactus salad that Alicia has prepared. He carries them to the vacation trailer, which belongs to second daughter Dolores and her husband, Heriberto Mondaca. They live 45 miles away in Tijuana.

At 47, Lourdes may be the eldest of Amador and Alicia’s six sons and daughters, but here in the small kitchen, Dolores rules. “The kids are having hamburgers and hot dogs,” she says. “We’ll have carne asada and barbecue chicken and frijoles after they eat.”

“And tequila,” says Amador with a wink. “Why not? I’m not driving anymore.”

The party settles into its pattern: The women prepare the food, the men gather to talk under the shelter of the carport, and the kids and teens run around the garden with nary a shriek. Here, you realize, there’s no disconnect between the generations. Mothers don’t micromanage. Some of the older children head for the corral next door to play with the ponies and sheep. The younger ones take turns walking two black Labrador pups around on their front legs, like wheelbarrows.

“I think this family is exceptional,” says Miguel Dessavre, a Tijuana neighbor whom Dolores invited. “They’re so strongly rooted, enthusiastic about being together.” But not untypical: Most Mexican families, he says, get together often.

Partly, it’s because the rest of life can be, well, tough. “It’s not easy to live in Mexico,” says Dessavre, “even in Tijuana. You know the rhythm of the city: People throw you to the wolves and tell you to survive. So this kind of reunion gives you strength. People need their family, just to help them face the world.”

Family is also vital to the Mexican immigrant experience, says USC sociology professor Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. “The largest proportion of Mexican immigrants comes from rural Mexico, where family structure is very important, not only for social reasons, but for survival,” Rivera says. Trying to get through life in a new country reinforces it. “Where do you go when you get to the United States? To family.”

But can family survive, once immigrants have settled down, say in Los Angeles? Absolutely, says Myrtelina Banegas-Haro. She’s a Texas-born homemaker and part-time nurse’s aide who lives in Monrovia with her husband, Ruben Haro, and 10-year-old daughter, Stephanie. “Speaking Spanish and keeping our Mexican culture alive was always important to our family,” says Myrtelina, whose mother emigrated from Guadalajara four decades ago.

Most important for Myrtelina is keeping the larger sense of family alive. “Just about every Sunday, we get together.”

Myrtelina has an Anglo brother-in-law whose family has get-togethers too, but she says they’re not quite the same. “Ours have more to do with the family, and theirs are to celebrate something. Christmas, Easter, an anniversary. Ours don’t have to be for a reason.”

Her friends don’t always understand. “They ask me what I’m doing Sunday. I say, ‘Getting together with my family.’ They’re shocked. ‘Every Sunday? Don’t you get tired of seeing the same people?’ We don’t. We have a great time. Sometimes we play loteria, bingo in Spanish. Or Uno or Monopoly. Something to get us laughing.”

Of course, the family doesn’t always get on perfectly. And privacy can be a casualty. “You cannot keep a secret in a Latino family. Tell one person, and by the end of the next Sunday, everybody knows your business,” she says.

Perhaps the biggest threat to family cohesion is what was once regarded as the yardstick of “success”: the assimilation of American values. “This is especially true for the sons and daughters of immigrants growing up in a culture that values the individual more,” says Rivera, the sociologist. “When they turn 18, the dominant culture says they have to be ‘free.’ They have to ‘fly away.’ It’s what’s expected. And if that doesn’t happen, people are like, ‘Well, gee, what’s wrong with you?’ ”

But up above Tecate, no such worries preoccupy Amador.

“I am from Acatzingo, in Puebla state,” he says. “I started working in the U.S. in 1954.” Amador was part of the bracero program, which provided agricultural guest workers from Mexico to the U.S. He started picking lettuce in Salinas, but he ended up living in Tijuana and working for 34 years at San Diego’s National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. It was hard. “Every day, I’d get up at 2 in the morning so I could cross the border and be at work on time,” he says.

Finally, in 1986, he had saved enough for a down payment on the Chula Vista house. “Our American neighbors didn’t welcome us. They feared their property values would drop. And we did live differently. With them, you can never tell if anyone’s home! Whereas we always had an open house, lots of cars in the driveway. Relatives visiting. The neighbors thought maybe we were sheltering illegals. Or drugs. They called the police. When they came, we invited them in to see, and they ended up eating carne asada with us. End of problem.

“But the neighbors still don’t say more than ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye.’ Alicia badly misses our neighborhood in Tijuana. There, everybody knew everybody. Without these family reunions, she would be really lonely. Me too.”

It’s around 2. Lunchtime. Outside, a chilling breeze keeps people on the move. “Come and have a tequila,” says Amador. “It will warm you up.” He opens a bottle of Hornitas. Nearby, at a charcoal grill, his sons Antonio, a San Diego roofing contractor, and Alfonso, a videographer in Tijuana, have started cooking burgers and hot dogs.

4 p.m.: Time for birthday ceremonies. Antonio gets a bright yellow rope and hauls up the first of two 4-foot Scooby-Doo pinatas for Carlos Alfonso to whack. It’s pandemonium, of course. Half an hour later, guests crowd around the birthday cake and sing “Las Mananitas” -- the traditional birthday song -- until Alfonso points at his nephew and chants, “Mor-di-da! Mor-di-da!” “Take a bite, take a bite!” Everyone joins in. Carlos Alfonso has to eat the cake without letting anyone push his face into it.

Amador glances over from his seat of honor. “Here is my wealth,” he says. “Am I not a lucky man?”