Chapter Fourteen - the Crossroads

University

She was sorta glad to leave the tiresome academic world of UC behind.  It was a thrill for the academic challenge; by there was a bad tendency for people to achieve success by climbing up each other's back, not by making actual accomplishments.

She heard the word "Hispanic" more than she cared to.  It seemed to be a word that turned certain people's minds into mush.  Mom was out of an ancient (and a little bit arrogant) line that traced back to Seville.  They learned Spanish and Ladino at home, the Spanish being the refined patois of the cultured in the Western Hemisphere - Mexico City, Buenos Aires, the cultural centers - and Ladino, the little local American dialect still living in the Rockies, which was unbearably quaint to the ear of the cultured, the Colonial Williamsburg of the New World, a relic of the days of settlement in the 1500's.

"Growing up Hispanic" meant Mom and Dad making them read Cervantes, Tomás de Iriarte and the poetry of José de Espronceda; and then bulling into Cantar de Mio Cid; and of course, Maimonides, Saint Isidore and Averroes. There was a faint whiff of pitying contempt for the Anglo/Vikings, who lived in mud huts with their pigs, took forever to grow a culture and literature and a questionable sense of values.  They never quite even standardized their language until a few hundred years ago. The intellectuals survived through Latin, which, (ahem) grew in exile on the Iberian peninsula, to bring forth a rich culture and aesthetic, rooted in its Latin heritage, growing forth from the taproots of Roman values and ethics and poetry in an unbroken line, unto the adventurers who came to the uttermost West. Mom and the family always referred to Cervantes as "Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra;" they had Saavedras in the family lineage, although likely unrelated. That was the world that Judy and June grew up in - along with high country travel and hunting.

But in Chicago, she was lumped into a cluster of unconnected and unrelated folks, held together by their (or their ancestors') ability to speak Spanish.  They were Hispano Students.  June, at first, had hopes that they would form an intellectual literature group, a study group; she would love to work people through El Cid.

 It was equally baffling - to see how the Hispanic Students Group behaved on its own, or how it was dragged about like puppets for a cultural diversity show by the Administration.

Many students were Hispanic without the slightest clue as to what their identity meant.  Some of them didn't even speak Spanish, and they refused to learn it saying it was a "slave language."  She nearly slapped the girl who told her that in a superior, condescending tone.  Some of the classes on "Hispanic culture" were no different - just a mix of resentment, nonsense and bad history.

Her sense from birth was that Spain was the last healthy and vital branch of the Roman culture, leavened with Aristotelian thought through the Moors and Maimonides; and when the Enlightenment dimmed by the vicious Reconquista, that sapling branch of survivors fled to the New World to weave a rich tapestry of identity, culture and justice.  They had not arrived at the promised land, no, no more than had the suicidal European cultures.  But if the world was to grow up, and have a culture of reason, sophistication and beauty, it could not stray far from its vital lineage that left Andalusia for the West.

They would use the word "Reconquista" and bite their lips like Ché and mouth all sorts of nonsense; which is good, in a way.  Part of college, it seems, is to be exposed to new ideas, and fervently adopt the silliest of them while growing up and learning. 

The Administration was loathesomely cynical and self-centered in its use of the Hispano groups as a puppet show.  There were, of course, endless outreach efforts - universities can make themselves feel less elitist when they reach out.  And on one of the endless bus rides to the Brown Down Town to make a cheery speech about how we are all together, June felt desperately lonely and sad, even dripping a tear or two, which brought the bogus empathy of António, a phonio bullshit artist from Puerto Rico, with a few intervening generations on Yale and the Hamptons and Harvard and Wall Street.  António had more personalities than his parents had houses; but none of them was really a home.

António was hooked in with the B-school at UC.  His big act of rebellion would be whether he got his MBA in Chicago, or back East.  He already had an AMG Mercedes with ¡Viva la Raza! frames on his custom plates.

If there was any time for Captain Trips to start ringing doorbells, June figured it was as good as any.

[continued]