Para La Diamond Queen/For the Diamond Queen

Copyright 2000 by Miguel Juarez

Los Angeles is 805 miles away, its presence felt by the daily caravan of overnight

buses—“Los Limos,” “La Pollera,” como mi tio les nombra. The Los Angeles/El Paso

Limousines leave the city every evening from El Segundo Barrio to make the 805 mile

trek to the City of Angels, pasando Las Cruces, Deming, Lordsburg, Texas Canyon,

Wilcox, Tucson, Phoenix, Blythe, Palm Springs, Yuciapa, San Bernardino, Pomona then

you get the Long Beach Freeway and make your way to Interstate State and you are

there.

Marvin’s old man used to own the “rollo” that shuffles Raza to and from the

Golden State and now to all points inbetween. Marvin owns it now. It used to be a

peseta ($25) each way, now, then it went up to $35 each way, $70 round-trip and today

with the high price of gasofa, it has gone up to $75 each way. I don’t like riding the limo

because it was made for chaparro Mexicanos, not tall Moors like me. She waits for the

call when he will say, “Hey, I’ve come to stay,” but the call never comes, only promises,

not yet realized. She writes, “words are now meaningless…”

Everyone is fine and well in El Chuco. The Pachucos, who used to hang out at

the Hollywood Café, are now long gone and so is the café. Their drapes hang in closets,

rebels living on social security and pensions, their passions cut short by the need to

boogie to the status quo.

El Paso may never be what it should. All the great Chicano minds leave for

opportunities elsewhere. It is hard to survive en un desierto without that priceless

education. But even when one gets that education and comes back, it is not the same. So

many have come back and tried and eventually they too leave. We rearrange our lives

elsewhere, set other trajectories, blend into other histories and maybe one day come back

to retire or to die.

We long to return to the familiar streets, to drive by the memories of our youth,

now changing drastically as the Segundo gets yet another facelift. We long for the shows

en el calcetin, el teatro Plaza, El Cine Colon, the State Theater, the Palace before it

became a sanctuary de los pelados, La Calle El Paso, La Calle Stanton, las escuelitas: la

Roosevelt, la Aoy, la Hart, la Henderson, San Ignacio, Lydia Patterson. Las high schools

del barrio, La Bowie, la Jeff. Los barrios Chicanos—Chihuahuita, El Segundo, El Barrio

del Diablo, Sherman, Salazar, Ascarate, Hacienda Heights, Ysleta, Middle Drain,

Pasodale—El Paso es un barrio entero and it belongs to the clickas and not the state

representatives as they would like us to think.

We long to taste the pan dulce de la Bowie Bakery, el menudo limpio del Good

Luck, las carnitas y los chicharones de por la Calle Stanton, el pan del Rainbow, el

ambiento de Juaritos, now changed and jaded con la promesa de Free Trade, NAFTA y

ahora con the destruction of the Zona Rosa.

In the fabled city of the Pachuco, los gabachos have fabricated and perpetuated

the Old West and robbed the essence of our culture. Western days transplanted historian’s

dogma is blared at the expense of La Indijena, the mestizo is portrayed as a folk hero

selling hotdogs at La Plazita but even now La Plazita itself is in limbo in the El Paso

facelift.
 Voices of change are belittled or silenced. El Paso is rediscovered every three

years by relocated feature writers at the Times. Each time our rich Chicano history is

pushed further and further into the hot El Paso sand. El Chuco is idiosyncratic—like a

teenager who’s parents went off to work at maquiladoras and never came home. To the

privileged, it is a scene of constant exploitation and a place to screw Mexican men and

women, to nuestra gente, it’s a chante para siempre.

I don’t remember his name but in my dream his wife threw him out of her life.

We decided to go out for a beer. We were in el valle de los suenos. I pulled my red pick

up truck into a cul-de-sa which became a strip shopping center. Various bars from the

various rages were lined up in a single row. We passed by a norteno-chero-disco bar to

get into a Ricky Ricardo Mambo-country and western dive. Made our way past the plush

carpeted lobby with heavily baroqued framed mirrors, and sat down on white wrought

iron chairs and ordered some Dos XX.

A woman came out from behind the shadows and took my friend out to dance. A

Vegas showgirl sat in front of me, whispering in a sweet tone. Era una mujer bella, con

labios grandes y sabrosos. She said something about the L.A. Festival, then she turned to

me, as her feathered serpent outfit disappeared. She wore tiny diamonds on her neck, on

her back, on her thighs. She took them off one by one and placed them on the table, then

she leaned forward and the room became a bed. I became emersed in her as she filled my

existence. During the orgasmic sequence, a Pre-Colombian god flashed before my eyes

and I went back into the womb of my life.

 The coldness of the night woke me from my dream-trip. She was beside me

wrapped in a warm blanket. I tugged and pulled. She did the same. I wanted more for

me. She wanted more for her. Finally, I went back to sleep but the diamong queen was

no where to be found. But she left me a poem:

Without More Explanations

We have overlapped into a space

Where the two fit
The search for the seams
Which appear missing
Seams invisible from this point
The look for distractions
From the ultimate
And the immediate
Windows of rays
Illuminated strings which interlock and glow into the unknown—
The endless channel of luminosity
Consummation, serenity
Disconnect, not dismember, nor dismiss,
A taking apart, a gentle pull,
Light chord unbound, its weight
Dangling into a glitch
To find completeness
Without more explanation