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My mother Pepa and I were shopping in the South Texas town of Del Río, where I was born and raised, preparing for our regular family Fourth of July picnic, when a Little League teammate of mine, Bubba, bumped into us.
“Howdy!” roared Bubba, a real big kid for his age. ”What y’all doin’ here today?”
When I told him we were preparing for a picnic on the Fourth, he broke into laughter and squeezed the air out of my thin frame with his oversized arm.
“No, no, buddy,” he corrected me. “You guys celebrate Cinco de Mayo, The Fourth of July is for Americans only!”
Gasping as I wrenched from his grasp, I tucked Bubba’s civics lesson away in a corner of my memory.
It wasn’t until the advent of the ’60s and their many reawakening epochs that I came up with a suitable rejoinder. Deep in my post-graduate studies, my re-education by then had shaped me into a Chicano who could take pride in possessing two cultures. Vale más quien tiene dos. Two are twice as good as one.
I still utilize the incident when I deliver my addresses on Hidden Hispanic History. It makes an incisive entry into open minds.
After I relate that early episode of my life, I tell my bewildered audience that I wish Bubba were in the room so he could hear my reasons for celebrating my Americanism.
“I’m more American than the flag Betsy Ross never made!” I shout out.
I don’t explain the statement (Google-up Francis Hopkinson) until deep into the lecture.
In the meantime, I hurl Hispanic historical data at them like fireworks at that Porras family picnic my mom and I were plotting when Bubba appeared. I tell my captive audience stories they never read in school
I share the one about the Spanish intervention during the Revolution and how it saved George Washington’s quest for independence from England.
Simply, I question whether there would ever have been a Fourth to celebrate if it hadn’t been for the
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