Summary Of Se Habla Espanol By Tanya Barrientos

Living near the United States and Mexico border has given me a unique perspective to the region’s mixture of peace and chaos. The U.S-Mexico border is a place where violence, drugs and poverty meet a prosperous military state. The region around the U.S-Mexico border is home to a unique vibrant culture that is masked by negative stereotypes painted by biased news coverage. Tanya Barrientos’ “Se Habla Espanol” and Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Border Patrol State” highlight the everyday difficulties of combating American prejudice and bigotry as a Latin American living in the Southwestern United States.

Tanya Barrientos’ short story “Se Habla Espanol” is about Shannon, a Guatemalan-born immigrant who hopes to strengthen her sense of cultural identity

through learning how to fluently speak Spanish. Barrientos wrote the sentence “I came to the United States in 1963 at age 3 with my family and immediately stopped speaking Spanish” (63) with the intention of conveying the story’s main theme of cultural assimilation to the reader. The cultural assimilation in the story is fueled by the immigrant interpretation of the “American Dream”. The story’s main theme can be spotted in the lines “People who called themselves Mexican-Americans or Afro-Americans were considered dangerous radicals…. expected to drop their cultural baggage at the border and erase any lingering ethnic traits” (63). Barrientos uses these lines to point out America’s disapproval for outside cultures. In addition to America’s harsh treatment of immigrants, immigrants feel pressured to conform to American culture because they believe it will be beneficial for their future. Immigrants come to America in search of the American dream. For this reason immigrants knowingly and unknowingly assimilate into American culture and lose a great deal of their own culture’s identity.
The most notable and disheartening consequence of American conformity can be seen in the lines “To me, speaking Spanish translated into being poor.

It meant waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms. It meant being left off the cheerleading squad….. They told me I didn’t seem “Mexican” to them and I took it as a compliment”(63). Barrientos demonstrates to her audience that assimilation can lead to self hate. Shannon hates everything about herself and she isn’t even aware of it. Shannon tries to distances herself from any racial stereotypes and tries to conform to vaguely defined culture of a American. Barrientos provokes the reader to take a step back and ask the question “what even is American culture?” and this causes the reader to realize that American culture is a immigrant culture. America was pioneered, fought for, founded and built by immigrants. This realization is Barrientos’ true purpose for writing this short story. So many children are growing up detached from their true culture and too distracted by Saturday cartoons and iPhones to care. These children are also forced to adhere to a cheap fabricated white faced culture that will never accept them. “Se Habla Espanol” is a story with a deep, humbling message that encourages its audience to love their roots and fall in love with the color of

culture.
Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Border Patrol State” is a short detailed story about the author’s frustration with America’s law enforcement.

The story opens up with her and her friend, Gus, driving on the highway in New Mexico when they get pulled over. The Border Patrol agents are demanding and force her to get out of their car. The author goes on for the next couple of paragraphs discussing how the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Border Patrol agencies are expanding and increasing hostility towards minorities. “They are willing to detain anyone, for no apparent reason…….. officers need a shred of probable cause in order to detain someone” (420). This sentence conveys Silko’s helpless position to the reader. “Border Patrol to shoot us and leave our bodies beside the highway like so many bodies found in these parts” (420). Not only does this sentence further emphasize Silko’s position of helplessness but also shows how the border patrol abused their power. For the next couple paragraphs in the texts Silko cites other incidents where people of color were wrongly treated by authorities. “"Immigration," like "street crime" and "welfare fraud," is a political euphemism that refers to people of color. Politicians and media people talk about "illegal aliens" to dehumanize and demonize undocumented immigrants, who are for the most part people of color.” (421). In these lines Silko bluntly states that the border enforcing agencies are corrupt with racism and the government

and media are prejudice. Silko’s use of simple vocabulary and her direct delivery of the message should stand out to readers. In the next couple of lines Silko informs the reader on the economics behind our immigration system and how the immigration system is driven by profit incentives. “It is of no use; borders haven’t worked and they won’t work…. A mass immigration is under way; its roots are not simply economic…. The great human migration within the Americas can not be stopped” (422). These are the boldest, most thought provoking lines in the story. There is a lot of meaning behind Silko’s use of Aztec historical and spiritual references as her supports for her argument. Silko argues that her people were there first and they deserve to have the right to roam the land of their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Silko ends the story with the lines “one, day they will return” (422). After reading the final sentence of the story the reader realizes that this “story” is more so a powerful persuasive essay. Silko strategically constructed this story so well, that any person would be pro-immigration by the time they are done reading it.
I was five years old when I moved to Yuma, Arizona. The city of Yuma is less than twenty five miles from the U.S-Mexico border, and living that close to the border I have always resided in predominantly Latino communities. As a kid I couldn’t care less what race my classmates were or how they pronounced words with R’s in them. I grew up along side Latin culture, going to family owned restaurants, barber shops, parks in Latino neighborhoods, and to Farmer's’ Markets filled with Mexican vendors and produce. In hindsight I appreciate how immersive and pure of an experience the younger version of me was exposed to. The innocence of childhood made my experiences in Latin communities amusing and lively. My young mind saw things from one perspective, my own. I never watched the news segments that generalized every Mexican as illegal or read the newspaper articles that exploited unrelated petty crimes into an attack on the American way of life. I was ignorant to all of America’s prejudice and I liked it better that way.