‘Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds,’ by Gregory Rodriguez - (a review)

Gregory Rodriguez’s brilliant book on Mexican and Mexican American identity, “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America,” threatens my secret dream that I am a direct descendant of some feather-clad Aztec warrior princess who ruled over a Mexica queendom circa 1500. Perhaps because I am named after a fabled Aztec royal, Lady Ixtacihuattl, I have forever suspected that my DNA positively sparkles with glorious Xicana genes that were born in ancient Aztlan: the land of Mexican milk and honey, where lived the bards, mathematicians, philosophers, acrobats, architects and knights who were put to the sword and burned by the alien germs of the infamous conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Rodriguez, with whom I have crossed paths on occasion, has written a history which tells a far different tale of Mexican and Mexican American heritage. In “Mongrels,” Mexican identity is no natural-born monolith, but rather a kaleidoscope crafted through creative strategies Mexicans used to resist and adapt to the rigors of white supremacy. Starting from the 1519 Spanish conquest of Mexico, his energetic saga recounts the ways in which Mexicans ingeniously absorbed the conventions of our conquerors by marrying with whites, sampling Anglo culture and even purchasing our way out of racial segregation up until the modern era. In these practices, Rodriguez, an opinion columnist for The Times, writes, Mexican Americans “have always confounded the Anglo American racial system, [and] will ultimately destroy it, too.”*

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