I’ll be frank. I’m sharing part of my book’s introduction to draw attention to the autobiography. However, in these times when ethnic identity and Mexicans are being scrutinized, I sought to shed some light on what has become a disturbing tendency in much of mainstream America. Here is the excerpt:
One day in 1870, a teenage 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 have eight children, all just outside of Shafter, Texas. José, my paternal grandfather, was the eldest. He was born in 1896. Jesús and his family put down roots that would spread across Texas and California as he and Estefana’s off- spring had children and grandchildren of their own.
This book tells their story and my own 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 mainstream America’s ways. Some distanced themselves from Mexican culture, failed to learn Spanish, and viewed Mexico as a foreign land rather than 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 considered a pocho during much of my childhood. In the following pages, I recount how my journalism career has helped me understand who I am and where I came from. In fact, my cultural hybridity 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 retaining my American identity. I became fully bi-cultural and bilingual, but over time, I became more at home in Mexico than in my native country.
I identify as American in the broadest and most authentic sense: America is a hemisphere, not just the United States. My odyssey led me to all parts of my native land, nearly all of Latin America, and other regions. This book took me many years to write because I was reticent to talk about myself. It struck me as presumptuous to assume that anyone would find my life interesting. My wife Yoleinis, son Ricardo Jr., and daughter Marlena Medford Chavira ultimately convinced me I had a story worth sharing. So, here it is.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 