My mother had a lifelong, deep obsession with everything Mexican.  I mean, obsessed.  Is there a word for it?   I looked it up just now and it’s Mexicophile.

We never knew where my mother’s fixation stemmed from.  Perhaps, her Texas roots.   She was raised on a small farm in Sweetwater.    Or, could it have been the Spanish house she was so proud to own?   My mother would wax poetic about every detail of my childhood home.  The beamed ceilings.  She could stare for hours at their beauty.  The stained glass window.  The tiles in the foyer.  The black wrought-iron railing leading up the tiled staircase.  The big bay window.   Her pepper tree.  Even the French doors were, to her, so very Mexican.  Trust me, this woman was so proud of her two story, 3,500-square foot Spanish house you might have assumed she was the architect.

She was WAY ahead of her time in this Mexican love because these were the 1950’s and 60’s.  Mexican Americans were not as ubiquitous as today, where every other Californian seems to have a Latin background.  I just heard on NPR that in the 1700’s the first settlers in Los Angeles were Mexicans.   My mom would have been in Mexican heaven, had she stayed in L.A.  And, of course, had she not died so young.  Today, she’d be all over the immigration law changes. (more…)