Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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But They Just Keep Coming

We lived at Brown's Addition, in Harlingen. The bus route circled past our home, turned around at the loop, and headed back toward Fair Park and town. The homes were occupied mainly by railroad workers. Behind our house a few scattered homes stretched to the nearby fields to the end of the street. There the road turned towards town and was populated only on the left-hand side. On the right side was vacant land thick with huisache, from which emanated mysterious noises, probably made by grazing cattle.

To me, this wild brush epitomized the deep dark forests, replete with monsters, described in fairy tales. Years later, when cleared, this land was transformed into circus grounds and eventually a ballpark.

In summer we children sneaked under vicious barbed-wire fences defining the nearby fields and filled our tin buckets with juicy ripe tomatoes. We'd sit on the steps of my house, hands stained green, scented with pungent sap, juice dripping, stinging our scratched chins, as we peeled tomatoes sprinkled liberally with salt and glutted ourselves.

Mother restricted my friendships with the neighbour children, but she approved of Lela, an older girl. Lela protected me from bullies and insulated me from the younger, more worldly children. Sometimes she got Mother's permission to let me accompany her on errands across the railroad tracks to La Colonia Guadalupe.

Lela was always hungry. Many a time we took a detour on one of her errands when she detected unprotected food. This involved stealing turkey or duck eggs from nests in backyards and makeshift shelters we'd passed along the way. These eggs she cooked and ate, with my mother's permission, in our kitchen.

One summer night, some teenaged boys woke us up with their ruckus, chasing a neighbour's duck which tried to escape under our house. They managed to catch it. The neighbours said it was poetic justice that they all suffered diarrhoea and took turns running to the outhouse the next day!

Another time the same men and boys returned home from the arroyo with a big load of garfish. Mother, always finicky about food, said that this wasn't edible fish, but the neighbours had a huge fish fry to which everyone on the street was invited.

Neighbours went across the border periodically to buy food not available, due to wartime shortages, in the States. Mexican candies were distributed among the children. These lumpy, coloured-sugar balls contained an anise seed in the centre, and traditionally filled birthday pinatas. Piloncillo and cajeta were also a rare treat. Some adults dissolved chunks of piloncillo (a cone of spiced brown sugar) into their coffee. Sugar was a scarce product in 1945.

Meat was also unavailable. I overheard Mother discussing the meat being smuggled back into Texas by local women for their families. Some was offered to her, but she wouldn't touch it. The joke was that it galloped across your plate. The rumour was that this was horsemeat!

When a railroad car was "accidentally" derailed nearby, the local railway workers spread the word. Women and children in all the neighbouring area gathered with buckets and woven bushels at the open car, taking their fill of black-eyed peas.

Mother became pregnant. As soon as it was generally known, the neighbours told us where I could take our enameled pail to fetch fresh cow's milk for her and her unborn child.

Walking to Alamo School, we children passed near the H. E. Butt canning company. The older children called out to the men unloading the trucks, asking them to throw cabbages, carrots, or pineapple over to us. More often than not, the older boys got the lot. The air in our part of town was seasonally permeated by the smell of sauerkraut and other processed food.

My earlier childhood memories can even summon the taste and scent of the tangerines and pecans we gathered beneath the trees at the Sweeneys', when Mother was kitchen maid for the owners of the Coca-Cola bottling company franchise in Brownsville.

Perhaps eating IS all we children thought about.

We moved to another area, called the New Addition. This consisted of a few houses surrounded by vacant lots thick with huisache, sunflowers, and serpentine dirt paths. When I was around ten years old, a Mexican woman appeared at our front door. She was barefoot and carried a naked child who had a bloated belly. Mother never answered the door and sent me to see to it. I asked what she wanted. She pleaded for milk for her child. When I told Mother this, she said "No." The woman walked away, and I watched through parted curtains as she knocked on various doors down the street.

Why is the baby so fat? I asked my mother. "It is starving to death."

Why didn't you give it some milk? "But they never stop coming!" she explained.

She was referring to the fact that racism and corruption in governments make people homeless. That's the history of my indigenous Mexican great-grandmother's people. Historical actions create our present and future. And hunger will always drive poor people toward filling the empty bellies of their children.

Mother was usually compassionate. I was so young. I felt a terrible sadness and sense of loss that day.

Recently I relived the resonance of that experience again as I watched an interview of a Native American woman living in another state situated across the Mexican border describing the difficulties created by the flood of illegal Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande, making their way into the U.S.A.

She calmly explained that traditionally hers were a very hospitable people. They offered food, shelter, and help to anyone travelling through their country, but they no longer wanted to do this.

Now she was urging Immigration and other authorities to use stronger methods in their efforts to stop the flood of these illegal Mexican immigrants. Why?

"They just keep coming!"

Alma Iris Ramirez
Adelaide, South Australia
Published: November 14, 2005