Suburban Dreams (2)

Maggie De La Pesa, a high school junior and Colosia fellow, discusses the experiences of her Mexican-American family's socioeconomic development in the suburbs. Her great-grandma ran away from an abusive husband to the United States. The American Dream is seen as achieving prosperity and respectability through hard work, but there are still limitations and prejudices. The suburbs are associated with a culture of self-focus and lack of concern for the larger community. Maggie's dad grew up in the suburbs and had a different perspective on money compared to his father. The focus on money enabled him to worry less about it. There is a generational disconnect from Mexican heritage and pressure to assimilate. The financial incentive to assimilate is real, especially for families seeking security. Maggie hopes for immigrant families to retain their cultural identity without sacrificing it. My name is Maggie De La Pesa. I'm a high school junior and Colosia fellow from the San Gabriel Valley. This episode centers the experience of socioeconomic development that led my Mexican-American family to the suburbs, our generational differences, and the connection they've experienced between financial aspiration and cultural assimilation. I've invited Marco De La Pesa, my dad, and Efrain De La Pesa, my tío, to discuss their formative experiences. My great-uncle Efrain is one of seven siblings born to Ramona Tavera, the matriarch of my family. These seven Mexican-born Americans have lived lives of rich socioeconomically diverse settings, experiences that are representative of the generational dynamics of many families in the U.S. We were all born in Mexico City, so my mom came, decided to move to the United States back in the mid-'50s. They got settled here in Los Angeles, over in the MacArthur Park area, if you're familiar with it. It's close to downtown L.A., around Third and Alvarado. My great-grandma Ramona's story ran somewhat counter to the common tale of American Dream immigration that is most commonly heard. My perspective is that she wasn't so much moving towards opportunity in the United States, as so many other stories are told. She was running away from something. She was running away from an abusive husband and the possibility that he would continue to come around. I've gone back to Mexico to talk with my aunts and my uncles to understand what my mom's journey was. In America, suburban middle-class existence is synonymous with prosperity and respectability. It is a golden standard most people desire for its comfort and for the great value that the United States assigns to it. It is the American Dream. The whole belief in the American Dream is different for so many people. The American Dream originally was intended to project to people that, hey, this is a country that allows you the freedom to just work hard on your own. You're not going to be stuck in a particular social class. Here you have social mobility. So that was encouraging. You could come here and all you have to do is work hard. But the reality is things have changed. That was in the turn of the century, 1900s, and there's definitely a class system here. And there's a lot of privilege based on your name, the color of your skin. There's certain entitlements that other people don't get, but there's still limitations, still some prejudices and things that exist that keep people from achieving their dreams. It's about working, applying yourself, and equated with having a home and starting a business like your dad. Those are the most common things that people associate with the American Dream, to be able to buy your own home and to be able to have your own business. That's a significant level of success. In Glendora, my dad's hometown and our current suburban residence, the median household income is $106,718, and the median value of a house is $749,400. When a person is able to overcome the steepness of these suburban housing costs and that threshold of success has been reached, there can be a very understandable impulse to now become one with the suburb, to bask in the American Dream of socioeconomic comfort. However, there can also be an accompanying impulse to buy into the me culture that consumes middle-class American communities, according to my uncle. You purchase your home. You're happy in this community. You don't want to make any waves. You're just happy there, and you don't want to hear any of the bad news either. You don't want to get involved and be part of the change, any change that is needed, you know, because nurtured in this country is more of you take care of yourself. You look out for yourself, and if you're happy, you know, maybe with your neighbor and, you know, just your, like, immediate surroundings, there's not as much concern for the larger community. The suburbs are often characterized by a noticeable attitude and culture, a way of life. For many families who move to the suburbs after accumulating enough money, this is picked up on. My dad grew up in Glendora, a tight-knit suburb of San Gabriel Valley. The grandchild of Ramona, he's a second-generation Mexican-American immigrant. My dad has only known suburbia. It was just fun. There was no pressure, you know. I didn't have to make money. I could just do whatever I wanted, play, go to school. There was no pressure. Cash was never a topic as far as I can remember. It wasn't something we were worried about or talking about. My dad's worldview has been drastically different than his father's, formed for a much less stressful everyday life. With one immigration, a chasm formed between the experiences of the two generations. My dad, for example, struggled to understand the focus on money that occupied his dad and aunts and uncles, how much space in their psyche it demanded. A lot of the fights between the siblings are about money. Always seems to be about money. I've only heard about the money part of it. It's always about money. Never been about anything else. Every single time. The irony is that this focus on money is likely what enabled my dad to worry so little about it as he grew up. As this generational difference between first- and second-generation immigrants established itself throughout the De La Paz's lives, my dad continues to feel disconnected from his Mexican heritage. He speaks of never learning Spanish from his father. At least have some sort of relationship with your history. But not none. We get none. But you come in here and been part of, you know, this place. My uncle, however, explains the frustrating message society communicates about the profit of turning away from certain aspects of the family's Mexican culture. There's this societal pressure to assimilate and in order for you to be more successful, to advance more, you need to speak English exclusively. The better you speak as less of an accent, less influences from wherever you are from, then that's going to be to your advantage. Or that's the message that society sends. That's the message that I feel that I receive. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, white people have an employment advantage at every level of educational attainment. Considering this, the financial incentive is very real. This is especially true for a family like mine who underwent stressful economic upheaval upon immigration and sought security. Now I, as a great-grandchild of Ramona, see all this laid out behind me. The disconnection to our culture has only worsened for my sister and I. The ties to Mexico are thinned out at best. Of course, my dad is not necessarily to blame. How can a person be expected to pass on cultural heritage to their children when they're culturally adrift themselves? There's also the component of my family being both a victim of this system iniquity and complicit in its reproduction through subsequent generations. I find the same push and pull within my own mind of victimhood and a touch of complicity when I think of my own relationship to Mexican culture and my dad's communication of it to me. Really, I just lament. From where I'm sitting, the view is of a family whose identity was tampered with by a misguided America. They sought security and found a disdain for their people standing in the way. They became Americana and forfeited a part of themselves to do it. That, to me, has been cause for mourning. So my hope is for reconciliation and correction that immigrant families, as their American lives unfold and progenate, they find it easier to retain their whole selves that the end of arbitrary cultural sacrifice comes quick for this country.