Memories of West Texas By the late Dr. Leticia Galindo

It's hard to believe sometimes that your friends have gone, departed from this Earth, taken away much too soon, with so much talent, and much too young.  I met Leticia Galindo in 1981 when she and I were both graduate students at UT.  She was pursuing a doctorate and I, a masters degree in sociolinguistics.

After getting introduced by a mutual friend, our bond was instant and we shared many wonderful moments together.  She was the first Chicana from West Texas that I knew who was pursuing a doctoral degree and that totally amazed me at the time.  There have never been many of us Chicana PhDs—and even fewer from West Texas—so it was deeply gratifying for me, a struggling masters student, to meet someone like her.

We both happened to be from West Texas—she, from Sonora and me from San Angelo.  She grew up closer to the border, myself a little farther north, but both from West Texas, a complicated space particularly for Mexicans that she captures well in this poem, "Memories of West Texas."   

Her poetry captures well the Spanish that I grew up with that linguists term "code-switching."  It must surely grate to the ears of linguistic purists.  Shame on them.  Do they not know that there are no pure languages? Short of the ravages of war, conquest, and colonization to people, and by extension, to speech communities, it's the "pure ones" like Latin that ultimately die out.  

To me, Leticia's Spanglish is beautiful, if not wondrous.  To be able to blend in a patterned way two distinct languages (as opposed to dialects) requires mastery of both.  Plus, it sounds and feels like home. 

Such memories about which Dr. Galindo wrote must not only be kept alive, but we must connect them to the present in order to ascertain more fully the distance we have traveled socially, culturally, and economically as communities whose knowledge, stories, histories and languages have been largely subjugated.

  

Thanks to San Diego State University Director of the Office of Education and Ethnic Affairs, Augustine "Gus" Chavez for sharing.

Enjoy!

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

The land and scenery of Sonora, Texas

 

 

 

 

 

Memories of West Texas

By the late Dr. Leticia Galindo 

El arroyo

Unpaved streets

Sinaloa

La Elliott School

We didn’t mingle con los gringos

They lived on ranches or on the other side of town

Pero no le hace.

I don’t remember not being able to drink from water

fountains or having to sit on the balcony of the movie

Theater porque era ‘meskin’ asi como mis padres y abuelos.

Si me acuerdo de…/I do remember…

                        Spankings

                                    For speaking Spanish

                                    In kindergarten

                                    Pa’ cabala de chingar.

                        Distortions

                                    De mi nombre- Ledsa, Letisa, Lettuce-ah

                                    Por maestras gringas

                                    Ay, ama y apa, why couldn’t you give me a

gringo-like nombre like ‘Jane’ or ‘Mary’?

it was hell having a mexicano name back then.

                        Being scared

                                    of Doña Cuca, la loca, who chased us after school

                                    as we ran through the arroyo on our way home.

                        Eating lunch

                                    en la Elliott

                                    sandwiches de balony on white bread, con Fritos y una

                                    soda

                                    The ultimate lunch

Otherwise, comias tortillas con frijoles o papas con

huevo como los kids de los ranchos.

                        Death

                                    De mi amiga Yolanda, my classmate de Ist grade

                                    A bunch of drunk gringos coming from Mexico

                                    crashed into her family’s car

                                    I had never known anyone to die until her

                                    She was only seven

                        1964

                                    intergration con los gringos for the first time in my life

                                    After all, I was in junior high

                                    It was scary pero alli estaban mis amigos y amigas de la

                                    Elliott conmigo.

                                    LEAVE THE CLASSROOM! GET OUT, GO IN THE HALLWAY-

                                    YOU ARE SPEAKING SPANISH. YOU ARE DISRUPTING MY

CLASS FOR SPEAKING UP FOR LA RAZA!!

‘Trouble-maker’ ‘radical’ National Honor Society member

3^rd highest graduate of Class 1970

These are some of my high school memories and labels

What contradictions.

La vida en West Texas

            Filled with conservatism

                        And small-town mentalities

                                    Where football is king

                                                And gringos are Baptists and Bigots.

Among la Raza habia

                        cultura

                        nuestra lengua

                        amor

                        respeto

                        amistades.

My roots are there

            Mi papa Pedro

                        Mi abuelo Pedro Sr.

                        Mi abuela Juanita are all buried there.

I can’t ever leave

            No matter how hard I try.