WASHINGTON – It would be easy to say that my internship this fall with the Scripps Howard Foundation made my writing more interesting and attention grabbing. It would also be easy to show how much more productive I’ve become since taking residence in the Hampton house in D.C. I’d feel like I’m cheating if I mentioned that Jody Beck’s watchful eyes made deadline a tangible reality rather than an illusive fear.
It would be unfair.
Washington has changed me, and to simply mention the final products of the work I produced during 12 weeks would be a disservice to the bouquet of lessons picked up along the way. It would be describing a destination without mention of the journey.
I do not claim to be well traveled; but I do know enough of cities outside El Paso to say that each one has a personality of its own. A city reflects the culture of its people. D.C., I’ve found, is a little different – a lot different, actually. D.C.’s culture is not a culture of its own.
I know what an El Pasoan looks like. Sounds like. Smells like. There’s a little Chico’s Taco’s in all of us. I can point out a New Mexican. A Juarense. But after three months of residence in the district, I still have no idea what a Washingtonian look like. They are too diverse. Unless they wear their sports affiliated jerseys (Nats, Caps, Chiefs) I could never point one out in a lineup. The Washingtonian would get away with the crime.
Although D.C. is special in many ways, it specializes in harboring the culture of the nation as a whole. Its culture doesn’t stop inside its city limits. Its people and history are from all over the country and world.
My parents are people of the desert. They came from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. My father is from Delicias; my mother from Ciudad Juarez. Their surnames (Aguirre, Lechuga) have traveled from the fields of Spain, across the Pacific and throughout Mexico. My ancestors spoke Nahuatl and Spanish.
Sitting in my third grade class, my textbooks told me the stories of Jefferson, Madison and Adams. The American forefathers, the books said. They conflicted with the stories of my grandmother who said our people traveled north across a river. These men from the books came from a land of crowns and tea not huaraches and atole.
The names on the pages of these books were strange to me. These men and all their glorious accomplishments were mythical. They were the creators of the social order my parents and I prospered in. They were the builders of my schools and the bringers of a voice and a vote. They were godly. Had they been Mayan, they’d each have a pyramid built in their honor.
Over the years, I have memorized their names well. I have stood on their shoulders and looked over a Southwest desert land of unbounded sunsets and distant horizons.
I arrived in Washington with a picture in my head of a nation based on the schematics and pages of dry textbooks. On this map, my family and I dangled on the rim. I grew up in a small town outside a small city on the edge of the country – a city geographically closer to another country, Mexico, than to its closest U.S. neighbors, New Mexico and Arizona.
The diversity of the people in Washington has allowed me to witness the vastness of the United States’ reach across the globe. Riding to work on the bus has had me sit next to and relate with people from across Europe and Asia. Taxi rides have introduced me to African and Middle-Eastern music and names, as well as provided me the names of the best Ethiopian foods joints around.
The stories I’ve written have had me interact with hunger strikers, homeless newspaper vendors, metal-smiths, WWII veterans, US poet laureates, directors of the Russian Gosfilmofond and short-skirted PETA pilgrims.
I’ve witnessed the introduction of a female test dummy into the field of automobile safety. I’ve listened to scientists and officials discuss the cleanup of the gulf while the photos of dead birds kept flooding the web. I’ve been to parades and political rallies filled with worried faces, anger, passion and joy.
Each event, each voice and each person I’ve had the opportunity to learn from has given me the perspective of a life brewed millions of miles away from mine. Each encounter has filled the nation’s map in my head with more tangible faces, stories and voices.
D.C., the capital of the nation, a conglomeration of many voices, is the culmination of all of these stories. The American myths and men I learned about as a child have poured out of their textbook portraits onto the landscape of Capital Hill. I take each stair up the Library of Congress with vigor and confident knowledge; my place found within this country. I am of a family of immigrants in a land of immigrants. This is my land. This is my place.
Great piece! Washington, D.C. is a good location to meet people from all over the world. I’ve been there several times and I loved it!