American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [105]
I told nobody then or thereafter, curbing my tongue when Juan Díaz was referred to again and again for the rest of my childhood as the quintessence of old-fashioned loyalty: his bicycle ride of love. I did not want to reveal my complicity—the fact that I had showed myself to Antonio, the risk that Juan Díaz could expose me, the possibility that Antonio may have betrayed me—all those bits of a darker truth.
I put those complications behind me, did what any good warrior would do. I ran out to our vacant lot and marched into the battlefield again.
JUST AS LATIN America swung into an anti-capitalist, anti-yanqui era, George and I entered a new phase of our own: We insisted on playing American games only. We had no idea that the political climate in Peru was as inhospitable to the United States as it was. We didn’t realize that Peru had had it with the colossus up north. Three years before, the Central Intelligence Agency had brought down a leftist government in Guatemala, and Peruvian intellectuals were seething about that. Two years before, Fidel Castro had led a band of revolutionaries into southeastern Cuba to gather popular support for an overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. America was getting too cocky for its Latin neighbors. Insurrection was in the air. In Mexico City, Che Guevara was whipping up a fervor, planning a guerrilla-led revolution against the capitalists, which he hoped would spread like wildfire from Central America down through the Andes to Argentina.
We knew nothing of this. It was odd, then, that we chose this moment to flex our American muscle, leave the Conquista behind, play cowboy. We had exercised, in our own fashion, considerable calculation in this change: We did it to throw our weight around, show our superiority. We were quite successful in this. We were more American than the Americans: more swaggering, more obstreperous, more cowboy than anyone who dared venture onto our little patch of Avenida Angamos. There is one more thing, so clear in retrospect, so unregistered then: I was playing two worlds off the middle. At the Roosevelt School, I was muy Peruana, careful not to speak English well, hooting at the lumbering Anglos. But once we hit the street, I was a yee-hawin’ rodeo, playing Anglo for all I could get.
“I’ve chawed Big Red,” I’d boast to Albertito Giesecke, the angel-faced boy who dreamed of becoming a priest. “I’ve chawed it and spit it. Real far. Betcha I could hit cow caca if it were a block away. I gotta cousin who larned me how!”
“Our grandpa’s a cowboy,” we’d crow at anyone who would listen. A cowboy abuelo! A living Doc Holliday! He owns a piece of Norteamerica that stretches out as far as the eye can see. He has cattle. He has horses. Drives a big shiny car. Wears a big broad hat. We’re better than you.
Our arrogance flourished even as everything else seemed to fizzle: As my parents’ feuds became more public, as Mother scolded Papi openly at parties, as he defied her by sloshing around another drink, as my abuelita grew weary of the gringa porfiada, as yanquis in general became pariahs, as Fidelismo began to rise, as the economy plummeted, as graffiti screamed from the wall of our empty lot—The United States is a vampire nation! A gun-slinging pishtaco, peddler of rock-and-cola, sucking its victims dry.
My mother, on the other hand, was getting more and more patriotic. On the morning of May 8, 1958, she woke us with a directive. “Children, get dressed. We’re going to the airport. The Vice President of the United States is arriving today.” I climbed into a dress with crinoline petticoats, as frilled and feminine as a tutu. Then George and I headed outside. Tang was there to take us.
“How do you know the vice president?” we asked Mother as we drove north along the coast.
“I don’t,” she said. “I just want you to see him. He’s a person like you and me. I want you to be proud you are Americans.”
The road was lined with Lima’s poor. They had come out of their dusty chacras to see