Tales Of An American Spic: "Life Exists In Between The Pain."
I remember this day in 1967. It was my first grade class
photo shoot. I was six years old and was too shy to ask for permission to use
the bathroom, and on this day I remember nervously trying to cover up the fact
that I peed myself during the photo shoot. You see humiliation by then was
nothing new for me. Humiliation was something I lived with everyday. And on
that day, life was working overtime to humiliate me, because when the three
o'clock bell rang, I knew what to expect. I knew that
it was time to get beat up. Three American white boys would wait for me
in the school yard. Waiting to humiliate me and beat me up, and there was no
way that I would let them see me with my wet pants. So I snuck out of school
early that day to avoid seeing them. To avoid a bloody nose, the name calling
and the humiliation.
You see, what I left out so far is the reason that I was
getting beat up and humiliated throughout my childhood. For some reason of
which, I did not understand, my family and I were different. We even spoke a
different language and I didn't even know why. Even our last name was different
from all the other kids. Why didn't my parents speak English? That was so
embarrassing, but what was more embarrassing was how our white neighbors used
to throw bottles at us from their windows as we walked by. They used to spit on
us and flip us the middle finger, and when we walked into a store they used to
watch us from the corner of their eyes and whisper: "Make sure they don't
steal anything." So yeah, I would say that we were different.
Later that afternoon, my teacher came to our apartment and
knocked on the door. My mom barely understood English, but my ten year old
sister translated for her. My teacher told her that, I had left school early
that day without her permission. As far as I was concerned the world was
basically over for me. When my father got home I knew what the punishment would
be. My father was famous for handing out our punishments by taking off his
leather belt and whipping us across our behinds until we cried and apologized.
Sure enough, when he got home that day, he asked me why I cut school. And so I
told him. I told him the truth. Maybe he'll have pity on me. I could see by the
expression on his face that he was bothered. As he proceeded to hit me, I
noticed something was wrong. It was like the wind was knocked out of him for a
second or so, and yes something was definitely wrong. My father wasn't his
usual self. Why was he crying? I'm the only one that should be crying. I'm the
one that cut school. And above the sound of my crying I heard him yell
out:
"Would you rather those boys hit you, or I hit you? I
want you to fight back from now on! Don't ever let anyone call you a spic ever
again!"
As his tears ran down his face, I knew that I had to fight
back for my father’s sake. So that he wouldn’t feel
so bad. From that day on, no one, no matter how big they were, would
ever call me spic without tasting my knuckles.
Three years earlier in 1964, my
family and I immigrated to New York from Ecuador. The year of the New York
Worlds Fair. The year the Beatles invaded America. The year color television
made its day view, and the model for the future World Trade Centers was
unrolled. The year the civil rights movement gained momentum, and the Harlem
race riots broke out. The year three civil rights workers were murdered by the
Ku Klux Klan. The year Malcolm X proclaimed that time has run out, “It's either
the ballet or the bullet.” The year Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. It was the year Cesar Chavez gave voice to the National Farm
Workers Association. The year racial discrimination was supposed to be outlawed
in the Civil Rights Act. This was the year war was declared against North
Vietnam, but the war was not in Vietnam, the war was here, in Jackson Heights,
Elmhurst, and Ridgewood Queens. Weapons of mass discrimination were used
against me, eating away my mind like Napalm burning through skin. At three
years old I was deep in the trenches of an identity war. A war that would last
all my life, and would leave its battle scars, flashbacks and post traumatic
stress disorder, forever engrained upon my mind. I was a three year old spick,
living the American Dream, and what a nightmare it was. Who was I? What was I?
In 1964 Gentrification worked in
the opposite way. The well to do didn't force us out of the ghettos to
redevelop it for themselves, they moved out of their own nice neighborhoods, of
their own accord. They moved out because they hated us, and they were afraid of
us, but most of all, because they didn't want their daughters falling in love
with us. We were only the first wave of many waves that would inherit these
white neighborhoods that they abandoned and left for lost. We were spics, dark
skin, light skin, it didn't matter. It didn’t matter that my mother was a
beautiful Caucasian woman, because when they heard us speak, they knew, they
always knew, they knew that we were Spics. It was a time when Latinos and
Hispanics did not exist. Latino identity is a fairly recent phenomenon. I was a
spic long before anyone ever realized that they were Latino. There were no
Ecuadorian, or Cuban Americans, no Dominicans or Colombians. In the white mans
eyes we where either, Spanish, Mexicans, or Porto Ricans.
Goodbye self esteem, hello extreme shyness, forget about
ever feeling good about myself. Forget about self confidence, I had no
identity, who was I? What was I? Forget about me ever being able to ask out a
white girl after them giving me the finger and calling me spic every time we
moved into their neighborhoods. I can still remember her face, but I don't
remember her name, beautiful, blond and she lived across the street. I was
seven years old, and I remember her mom yelling at our landlord in front of the
whole neighborhood, for renting an apartment to the spics; that was us. I
remember him yelling back at her with his heavy Italian accent, giving her the
middle finger and calling her unrepeatable sexual insults, which to this day I
remember word for word. And when her daughter, who was in my second grade class
started giving me the middle finger, I gave it right back at her. But unlike
her Mom, I knew that she liked me, and I liked her, but we couldn't show it. It
was understood, and we made it a game. She never called me a spic though. Every
time we saw one another we would flip each other off and laugh. We managed to
exist in between the name calling, the insults and the pain. A few months later
her Mom moved out of the neighborhood and took her with her. I wish I
remembered her name.
You see, by the age of nine, I was already numb, numb to the
pain. Immune to any pain that life could throw my way. For me, life existed in
between the pain, in between the loneliness and confusion, in between the
bloody noses and the name calling, in between the sexual abuse and the shame.
At nine years old, all I could do was just, get back on that horse and shake it
off, because I was not a quitter. There was a war going on in my head, for
control of my identity, and my sanity, and it was a war that I could not afford
to lose. It was a war I've been fighting from the day of my very first memory.
The day I always believed I was born. The day I had became aware. My very first
memory in life. At three years old, and on my birthday, life would begin, and
take on meaning for me. It was the day I was called a "Fucking Spic"
for the very first time. I was born on my third birthday, on July 9th 1964.
I am a byproduct of racism and discrimination. I am living
proof of the harm that it does to people and especially children. I was a three
year old spic and have remained so emotionally and mentally all my life. It is
only now that I try to make sense of it all, express it, and get it all out, in
order to get beyond it. To be able to live life, in-between the pain.
David Yanez
4-15-14
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