This is an excerpt from my book: https://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Always-Here-Americans/dp/1558859136
One day in 1870, a teenaged orphan saddled a mare and
left San Francisco Javier de Satevó in southern Chihuahua.
He traveled northeast across 225 miles of desert to Fort
Davis, Texas. Jesús Chavira, my great grandfather, unimpeded by American officials or anyone else, crossed the border in search of economic survival.
He found work as a stable boy at the Fort Davis US cavalry post. In time, Jesús would marry Estefana Molina, and
they would have eight children, all just outside of Shafter,
Texas. José, born in 1896, was the oldest and my paternal
grandfather. Jesús and his family put down roots that would
spread across Texas and California as his and Estefana’s offspring had children and grandchildren of their own.
This book tells their story and mine as a third-generation American. I have contended with the same inequality, poverty and withering racism my ancestors did. Mexicans
of my generation typically took the path of acculturation,
adapting to the ways of mainstream America. In the process,
some of them distanced themselves from Mexican culture,
failed to learn Spanish and came to view Mexico as a foreign
land rather than as their ancestral homeland.
In Mexico, they were derisively called pochos, because
many of them spoke little or no Spanish and had been cut off
in their education from Mexican culture. They were proud
Americans, yet they were conscious of the fact that they were
of Mexican origin.
I was a considered a pocho during much of my childhood.
In the following pages, I recount how my career as a journalist helped me understand who I am and where I came from.
In fact, it was my cultural hybridity that allowed me to flourish as a journalist, as I told the stories of the United States
and Latin America from a profound and rare perspective.
My story is a tale of reconnection with Mexican culture
and the retention of my American identity. I became fully bicultural and bilingual, but over time I became more at home
in Mexico than in my native country.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 