vengan a ver mi chacra
They're playing a crumhorn concerto on the radio. "Crumhorn" is my second-favorite Renaissance-instrument name, after "sackbut."
Bajadero is a new word meaning someone who kidnaps and ransoms illegal immigrants trying to get into Arizona.
In Antigua I met a man who had fled Guatemala's civil war in his early adolescence, entered the U.S. illegally, and had been working in maintenance for a school district in greater Los Angeles for the past ten years or so. He comes back to Guatemala a couple times a year to visit his family, and had just managed to buy them a house in the capital. He had a Chicana wife and a beautiful bilingual 5-year-old son who stared shyly at me from behind his ice-cream cone the whole time. He said the worst part of his immigration was the bus trip through Mexico. As soon as you open your mouth, the Mexicans can tell you're from Central America, and then they more or less know your story. They'll beat the shit out of you, steal everything you have. What can you do?
