I was born on Mexican Independence Day, Mexico’s Fourth of July, but for over half a century now, other than an annual “Happy Mexican Independence Day!” from my good friends, Hung, Corinne, and Kate, I have never combined the two celebrations—until yesterday when Jody and I drove to Downtown Los Angeles to spend the afternoon on Olvera Street.
Olvera Street is special. To share straight from its website, “Olvera Street, known as ‘the birthplace of Los Angeles,’ is a Mexican Marketplace that recreates a romantic ‘Old Los Angeles’ with a block-long narrow, tree-shaded, brick-lined market with old structures, painted stalls, street vendors, cafes, restaurants, and gift shops.” If that sounds lovely, the reality is even better, and it struck me as a terrific place to celebrate my birthday and Mexican Independence Day.
On the sixteenth day of September in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo spoke to his little parish church in central Mexico and urged them to fight for independence from Spain, which led to his execution a year later and over a decade of fighting, but ultimately, an independent Mexico. And yesterday, 213 years after his initial “Cry of Dolores,” beautiful families gathered together, children danced in festive costumes, and Mexican flags flew proudly in the City of Angels.
It was not our first time to visit Olvera Street, but it was our first since returning for Part Two of our California adventure, and during yesterday’s visit I recalled that familiar and wonderfully unsettling sensation of feeling like a tourist in your own homeland. I have come to relish that feeling.
Now, given my personal appearance, I rarely look around any place and get the feeling that I fit in exactly. On certain dramatic occasions, like wandering through an Indian bazaar high in the Himalayas or briskly walking down a side street in Nairobi, the gawks and smiles of locals showed how apparent this was to everyone, but I feel out of place in all sorts of locations, like the cosmetics aisle of any department store, or to be honest, Bass Pro Shops.
But as I said, in a certain way, I now find that feeling almost intoxicating.
Independence absolutely has a dark side, including the colonizing mindset that views your independent self as God’s gift to unfortunate people not like you, but I felt independent in a good way walking through Olvera Street on Saturday—independent in the sense that I am not contained by familiarity, at least not anymore.
I’m not sure that I’m making sense, so let me try it this way: I felt both humbled and alive on Olvera Street yesterday, humbled and alive with the fascination of this beautifully diverse planet on which we live, and the realization that the differences all around me are better embraced than critiqued, and that in that sense—the sense of the heart—“my” people can be “all” people.
I hope that you enjoyed your Mexican Independence Day, too!
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