Barrio Boy

Ernesto is very aware of his class position as a working-class immigrant. As an adult, Galarza was a prominent labor activist and historian whose research focused on the labor history of migrant workers. In this context, it is not surprising that class and labor issues are woven throughout the book. In Jalco, people live a subsistence life based on farming and gathering in the forest. When they leave Jalco, Ernesto’s uncles enter into the working class as wage laborers. His mother earns extra money sewing and mending, but when her sewing machine is left behind in Mexico, she cannot afford to replace it. Economic and bureaucratic systems regularly make life more difficult for his family, who struggle to survive despite a willingness to work. In Jalco, people who work on haciendas are poorly paid and work in horrible conditions, a situation that is paralleled in the poor conditions faced by farmworkers in Sacramento, where asking for water is a punishable offense and wages are often withheld. Even when his uncles find regular work, such as Gustavo’s job in the sugar mill, there is little time off, and the workers have few job protections. Gustavo is laid off shortly after being hired. In one harrowing story, José takes a short-term contract working on a mining claim in Mexico. When the job is finished, he is refused his wages and shot at by the contractor. This story highlights the precarious nature of short-term contracts and the limited rights that workers had.

As a young boy, Ernesto looks for work regularly, first doing odd jobs and then assisting his family during harvest season, where he gains experience as a farmworker. His first brush with labor activism comes in this context as he is asked by other workers to bring a complaint to management about polluted drinking water. Because the memoir ends as he is about to enter high school, we do not see his career in organizing and activism develop, but we do see the roots of his class-consciousness being planted, as he sees his family struggle to make ends meet. At various moments, Galarza draws specific attention to class differences. For example, in Tepic he details his fascination with the houses and carriages of rich people in Tepic and discovering his cousin Doña Florencia’s supply of silver as moments that highlight his own class difference.

Barrio Boy is a memoir about the experience of immigrating to America from Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants made the journey from villages like Jalcocotán to cities like Sacramento, and Galarza tells his own life story to narrate a larger historical experience. The structure of the book is built around a series of migrations, thus emphasizing the dislocations immigration causes in Ernesto’s life. The book begins with Ernesto in his birthplace, and Galarza spends the majority of the section recalling the sights, sounds, smells, and rhythms of Jalco in detail. Ernesto leaves Jalco as a very young boy, and Galarza’s use of descriptive language and the extended stories about life in the village are an attempt to rebuild a place that now only exists in his memory. At the end of Part 1, the violence and instability of the Mexican Revolution force the first in a series of migrations that Ernesto and his family will take. When they arrive in Tepic, Ernesto has to adjust to a new a pace of life. This theme repeats throughout the book as each move that he makes is a disorienting shift to unfamiliar surroundings. He has to make new friends, adjust to new living situations, and try to pick up work. When he arrives in America, he experiences culture shock and has to learn the language and culture.

Immigration often means the breakup of families. In Jalco, Ernesto is part of a large extended family unit that includes the Lopezes. Once they move, his family becomes much smaller: just his mother and his two uncles. While the family plans to reunite, the evolving situation with the revolution delays their reunification. When the Lopezes finally arrive in the United States, they are turned away at immigration. Ernesto alludes to ongoing plans for the Lopezes to make the journey to America once again so that they can be reunited, but by the end of the memoir, the reunification hasn’t happened.

There are a number of themes that repeat across each chapter. As Ernesto and his family move through Mexico, the revolution frequently upends economic stability. José and Gustavo are forced to keep moving to find work. Each time, Ernesto and his mother follow a short period later. The economic pressures that they face as migrants are immense. Once they arrive in America, José and Gustavo remain reliant on short-term contracts and odd jobs. As immigrants, they have fewer legal rights. Because of this, they are paid less, work longer hours, and have less stability. When they finally achieve some financial stability and move into a bungalow, they are still vulnerable to external pressures. When the Spanish flu hits, it is devastating to the family, and José and Ernesto return to the barrio. Ernesto and his family are resilient in the face of crisis. Besides a brief moment where José breaks down after the death of Gustavo and Doña Henriqueta, we never see the family complain or lash out in anger as they are forced to pick up and move once again.

Over the course of Galarza’s childhood, both American and Mexican culture underwent considerable changes. The story begins in a village that seems to exist outside of time. Life in the village is tied to the rhythms of the natural world. Galarza recalls the old men of Jalco saying “Jalcocotán and the forest had always been a part of each other” (28). There is no electric light, so work and play are both limited to daylight, and in the evening “the talk just faded away” (35), and all that was left on the street was “the dark and the rumble of the arroyo” (36). People live off what they gather or grow in the forest, Galarza describes natural features in detail. Life is directly impacted by things like hurricanes, the flow of the river, and the animals in the forest. Events like comets are interpreted as omens. There is a strong connection to nature and an attunement to how it shapes daily life.

However, over the course of his childhood, Ernesto becomes fascinated by industrialization and modernity. Trains, electric lights, and motion pictures are just a few examples of the significant changes that happen over his childhood. While Part 1 describes nature in detail, focusing on the mountain, the river, the sunset, and the animals, increasingly, Galarza describes the landscape around less often, and industrial features become more prominent. For example, Ernesto is fascinated by the railway station in Acaponeta, where they are among a “crowd of admiring spectators” watching the “marvelous monster” (159). At first, he is frightened by the machine, but he begins to feel an affinity to it because his uncles are working on the railway.

The railway is particularly symbolic of the future. When they travel from Jalco to Tepic, they travel by mule, which is representative of older ways of life. In contrast, the railway represents speed and industrial modernity. The railway also transports soldiers and weapons, so it becomes tied to the revolution as well. It directly shapes his family’s life as his uncles work building the railway. In the book, Ernesto highlights how the railway is associated with wage labor and the entry of his uncles into the working class. Industrialization is one of the ways that Ernesto becomes aware of class politics. Ultimately, they travel by rail to America, and the railway journey symbolizes his family’s journey into a new, more modern society. The changes that Ernesto’s family experiences are paralleled by rapid changes in society as a whole.