Literature Circle Blog 1. Drawings

This scene that I have selected is when Juan and his family are on their way to go north and they stop by Cara de Nopal’s hacienda to steel some corn (Pages 103 to 106). This particular scene shows the strong unity that the family has, although they’ve been through so much together, loss of family members, and their loss of the land for the Revolucionarios. They still stick together as a family. I would also like to point out the connection that Victor Villasenor explains on the bottom of page 106 how the coyotes were calling and teaching their young ones how to hunt together like a family. I think this connection is really strong in contrast to what the family had done which is working together as a family so everything would be fine. I can relate to this scene as my family and I went through the same thing when we were on our way here from Mexico back in 1994. We were hiding in some bushes just as immigration patrol was passing through the road when suddenly they spotted my brother and my mom hiding behind the bush and caught him. My dad was hiding on the other side of the dirt road along with my other brother and myself. When he saw that Immigration was walking towards my brother and my mom he grabbed us by the hand and came out of the bushes. This Shows how unite we are, and shows a similarity on what Juan’s family went through when they were on their way north.
I did not know that Porfirio Diaz would not allow any “dirty Indians” into the Mexico City while his 80th birthday celebration was in progress. So that is definitely some part of history that I can take with me from this part of the story.

The next scene that I have selected occurs on page 132 and 133. When Epitacio is explaining Luisa of all the beauties the United States is to offer, beautiful houses a green vegetation, flushing toilets inside the house and enough jobs that they would not be suffering to find one. The way he describes it to Lisa is as if it was paradise on the other side of the border. Even Lisa herself could not believe what she was hearing coming out of Epitacio’s lips. This scene in particular I think is really important because it defines the moment of truth for what was ahead for the family. At this point in the story the family is thinking of turning back and going back to their land in Los Altos de Jalisco. But hearing all the great things that Epitacio talked about this great country that he had been before in, the family decided to just keep on going and find what was there ahead of them. From this scene I learned from the characters that they have a lot of hope and they don’t give up really easily despite of all the things they have gone through. My relationship to this scene kind of relates to about the same type of events from scene one. It was September 2000, when my family decided to come back to the United States for the third time. We had sold everything we had in order to come up with money, to get back into the U.S. -After all we didn’t have plans to get back to Mexico City any time soon, all we had left there was our house which my grandma and some of my aunts are looking after-. So when were waiting at the border of Mexicali with Calexico, we were told that I guy in her mid thirties was going to pick us up from the hotel we were staying sometime during the weekend so he could get us across the border. A whole week had passed by and he hadn’t heard from the guy yet, so my parents were getting frustrated and for a moment they thought of going back to Mexico City because they were losing all hopes, but after thinking over and over of all the things that we have seen when we first came to the United States and all of the opportunities that this country had to offer they decided to stick around for a couple more days and see if we would hear about the guy. Luckily the guy whose name was Juan (What a coincidence) picked us up the next day. This Scene might have some sort of political impact as far as how “illegal” immigration has being around this country for a really long time. This story takes place during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and more than one hundred years later it still persists.