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Border TalesColumns

Workers Needed at DiGiorgio Farms

NOTE: This is part of the Border Tales series fiction stories. It was written in jest in May 2006, the year of the last real attempt by Congress to reform the nation's immigration laws. Just trying to make a point and have fun at the same time. It was never published before. Image of Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego.   The President hated the idea of meeting with Frank DiGiorgio at the Hotel Del, but…
Pedro Chavez
November 20, 2015
ColumnsStories

The Trek North: Part One

IMAGE: Local passport photo of our mother and the first five of us. Left to right: Amanda, Rosa Carmina, our mother Lydia, Julio César (in her arms), Armando, and me (Pedro).   There was no triple wall then, in 1962, the year we crossed the border between Mexicali and Calexico in our way to a place that promised us a better future. Triple walls are abundant now in myriad spots along the geopolitical line that…
Pedro Chavez
November 19, 2015
ColumnsStories

English Language Lessons at the Workplace

PHOTO: Train crossing near United Sheet Metal Company in Stockton, California, off Charter Way. Getty Images.   Once I got the basics at school, the best place for me to learn English was at the workplace. I had plenty language immersion there. I did it while picking almonds in Lodi, in northern California, and later at H.H. Robertson Company, in the Port of Stockton, in late summer of 1963. But I learned the most at…
Pedro Chavez
November 18, 2015
ColumnsPolitics

Letter to President Barack Obama

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama addresses supporters in Golden, Colorado, on September 16, 2008. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) Dear Mr. President: I am sure you still have a lot on your plate as you approach the final year of your presidency. Some of it, I hope, has to do with the stuff you promised when we the people elected you to run our country in 2008. There’s other stuff, for sure, and more of…
Pedro Chavez
November 8, 2015
ColumnsStories

Joyful Distractions While Learning English

IMAGE: Scene from the opera “The Marriage of Figaro.” Cherubino (partially hiding), Sussana and Count Almaviva. Author of watercolor unknown.   It’s tough to learn a second language when you’re older. That happened to me when I came from Mexicali and to America. I was only sixteen then, still young, but when it came to picking up a foreign tongue with ease, I was already too old. Except for our sister Amanda, who was seventeen, the younger boys…
Pedro Chavez
November 3, 2015
ColumnsPolitics

2007 Message for Hillary, Barack

BAGHDAD, IRAQ: A group of US Army First Armoured Division soldiers survey the scene where a car bomb exploded in front of a hotel killing at least four people on January 28, 2004. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) NOTE: I wrote the following column sometime in July or August of 2007, and emailed it to Keven Ann Willey, who headed the editorial board at the Dallas Morning News. I was trying to land a gig…
Pedro Chavez
October 29, 2015
ColumnsPolitics

About Hypocrites and Loose Talk

It’s getting crazy out there in the presidential campaign trail. Then again, it always gets crazy. It happens every four years. You hear a lot of gobbledygook. Candidates talk about this and that and about how they’re different from the others bidding for the keys to the White House. Some call themselves outsiders, non-politicians. Yeah, right. And another thing, they also flaunt their empty promises and vow to change government for the better. “Yeah, that’s…
Pedro Chavez
October 16, 2015
ColumnsPolitics

We Are Still a Pretty Good Team

  We both go way back. Mexicans and Americans. My ancestors had been on this continent much before Americans arrived. Mine were centuries-old civilizations that were eventually conquered by the Spaniards. The pilgrims, the most notable forebears of today’s America, were fed up people, most of them seeking religious freedom and a home on pristine land. Those pioneers settled in North America some four hundred years ago. While the pilgrims were busy running their colonies,…
Pedro Chavez
October 14, 2015
ColumnsStories

Old Fighter Pilots Just Fade Away

It’s tough when you lose a friend. Especially an Air Force buddy and a fighter pilot like Ed Rasimus. We called him Ras. He died on January 30, 2013, but I was reminded of his passing about ten days ago, on September 29. He would have been seventy-three years old on that day. Several other buddies posted tributes to Ras on his Facebook page. I did too. It’s weird, he’s gone, but his social media…
Pedro Chavez
October 8, 2015
ColumnsPolitics

America, my Kind of Lady

I’m one of the immigrants in America. I’m not alone. Most people in this country are either newcomers or the descendants of those that arrived here some years back. I came along with my family more than half a century ago. Thousands and thousands and more thousands of Mexicans have moved north since then. Migration from one country to another happens a lot, by the way, in much of the world. People leave their nation…
Pedro Chavez
October 2, 2015