Lines of Tension, Rays of Light: An Autotheography

Abstract

My abuelito, Andres Rocha, was born in 1914 on a horse ranch in San Isidro, Texas, forty miles northeast of the Rio Grande River. His was the last generation of Texican vaqueros. His father, Crecencio Rocha, died from a head injury sustained while breaking horses, leaving a teenage Andres to look after his mother, eight brothers, and three sisters. He met my abuelita, Elida Vela, from a nearby ranch, at a weekend dance. They married soon thereafter. When the lease on the land where his family worked and lived for at least two generations was terminated, the young couple moved from San Isidro to Pharr, Texas, a town about fifty miles to the south, ten miles away from Reynosa, Mexico. They bought a plot of land — a solar — on what had been an orange orchard and began to build their home next to brothers and sisters who had already moved into town. More family followed thereafter. Both of my grandparents worked at the local bodega, packing vegetables, and traveled seasonally to pick crops around the United States. Unable to have children, they legally adopted my father, who was born in their home. They also unofficially adopted a number of homeless boys, like my Tio, Juan. The winter before my abuelito died, I phoned him from Columbus, Ohio, to wish him a merry Christmas. I tried to explain why I was absent. I wanted to describe what I was doing — writing my dissertation — so I told him I was writing a book and how time-consuming it was. I didn’t want to talk about money because he didn’t have any, and I didn’t want him to feel bad about it. I felt guilty, but he understood. As distant as our worlds had become, he made sense of it all somehow and gave me his blessing in the final words I would ever hear him speak in person: “No le aflojes mijo.”