As I trekked through the dusty parking lot toward her fruit and vegetables stand, I could hear the familiar voice of “Rosie” switching effortlessly from Spanish, her native language, to English depending on the ethnicity of her customer. Like yours truly, her customers come from far and wide not just to buy her food, but to soak up the exuberance of being in Rosie’s presence, and to be part of a caring community that’s fading away these days.
“Where have you been Rosie? I haven’t seen you in a while,” I asked.
“Hola, amigo. So good to see you. Thanks for asking about me. I just got back from Mexico and my granddaughter’s graduation. I have a picture of her on my phone. Come, take a look.” While looking at Rosie’s beautiful young princess of a granddaughter, my response, “She’s beautiful,” was at best an understatement.
After loading my basket with Rosie’s tomatoes, grapes and cabbage (and a hug), I rounded the corner and headed for some fresh corn from “Enrique’s” stand.
“Hey Enrique, I want some corn,” I yelled as I approached. “Hola, amigo! Great to see you again. I’ll get you some off the back of my truck,” he said while, like Rosie, switched effortlessly from English to Spanish depending on the customer.
“C’mom Enrique, since I don’t speak Spanish, how do I know that you’re not cussing me out in Spanish?” With a laugh he retorted, “Look amigo, if I want to cuss you out, I’ll do that in English.” And the people laughed!
“Ahh, touché, you got me my friend,” I said before we exchanged high fives, I paid for my corn and moved on. That was a few weeks ago and the last time I saw Rosie and Enrique. We’ll circle back to them further down. But since then, some good and not so good things happened.
The first and most outrageous was that of California Senator Alex Padilla being brutally handled and handcuffed after his right to ask a legitimate question during a press conference by Homeland “Security” Secretary Kristi Noem who arrived in Los Angeles and immediately insulted and undermined the city’s mayor and state’s governor to make a devious political point.
As horrifying as that incident was, the unexpected upside was that it skyrocketed a little-known Padilla, who holds an engineering degree from MIT, into the national headlines and TV interviews while exposing the undeniable ugliness of his mistreatment during that press conference.
Said the good Senator after the humiliating fiasco: “If they do this to a United States Senator, just imagine what they’re doing to scores of farmers, cooks and day laborers.”
A week later while appearing before a Congressional committee, Mr. Padilla bookended that harrowing comment with a question that answers itself: what message does my treatment send to those documented and undocumented workers who’re toiling away on farms, constructions sites and in restaurant kitchens across America?”
To his question, I’ll ask one of my own: what message does what happened send to farmers whose crops are rotting in the fields because workers they’ve long depended on are too terrified to come to work?
Of the administration’s immigration enforcement, Padilla said, “If all the Trump administration was doing was truly focusing on dangerous, violent criminals, as they suggest, there would be no debate. But we have seen story after story of hardworking women and men, maybe undocumented but otherwise law-abiding, good people, being subject to the terror that this enforcement operation is subjecting people to.”
Now talk about adding fuel to the fire, before the ink was dry on the piece you’re now reading, Vice President Vance, who once claimed that Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, showed up in California and referred to Alex as “Jose” Padilla!
Lord, please spare us from this insanity!
And second, in contrast to the outrageous thing that happened to Mr. Padilla, was the heart-warming images of over 5 million Americans from all backgrounds across the nation participating in “No King” protests. I stood shoulder to shoulder and sung, maybe out of tune, next to Americans who were part of a gorgeous mosaic of humanity gathered to protest the approach of an authoritarian regime portended by what happened to Senator Padilla.
Back now to Rosie and Enrique.
After a morning and afternoon time spent with “No King” protesters, I made the short drive to the flea market fully expecting to see Rosie and Enrique. But when I pulled into what’s normally a full parking lot that day it was eerily half full of cars and pickups.
Oh, oh, something’s not right, I thought to myself.
When I arrived at Rosie’s stand, I was shocked to see that it was completely empty at a time of day when it’s typically bustling with customers. By contrast other vendor tables were open with a relatively few customers. Hoping that at a minimum that Rosie had taken the day off, I turned the corner and saw from a distance that Erique’s stand was similarly empty. I couldn’t comprehend and didn’t want to think what I was really thinking.
Deflated and empty handed (with that dreaded word “deported” top of mind), I waved off aggressive beckons from other vendors and returned to my car with a head filled with recent images of “Rosies” and “Enriques” by other names; among them immigrants picking vegetables in sprawling fields in Oxnard and Camarillo, California; picking cotton in Mississippi Valley and pecans and peaches in Fort Valley, Georgia, priming tobacco in North Carolina, clearing trees and brush for the construction of a new Chick-fil-A down the street from me, and tiling roofs on houses in neighborhoods in Virginia.
To documented and undocumented immigrants, the backbone of America, please accept my apology for how you’ve been scapegoated, caricatured and used as a pawn to stoke the irrational fears of Americans and curry favor with a political base to win elections. Because it is your hard work at low wages that sustains our economy and without you, we “cut off our noses to spite our faces.”
So, to Rosie and Enrique (if by chance that you’re reading this), I will soon return to our flea market with hopes and prayers that I’ll see your smiling faces again. I close with selected lyrics from Simon & Garfunkel’s “Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson”:
Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
So, here’s to you, Rosie and Enrique
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
I hope to see you both again.
Hey, hey, hey!
Terry Howard is an award-winning writer, a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, TheBlackmarket.com, Augusta County Historical Society Bulletin, recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the Georgia Press Award.
