IN 1519 a group of Spanish soldiers who had been sent to explore Mexico heard an extraordinary rumour. A sailor, Gonzalo Guerrero, had drifted there on a wrecked ship eight years earlier and was living among the Indians. He had married an Indian woman, with whom he had raised three children, and was tattooed and pierced. Odder still, he intended to stay put. Hernán Cortés, the leader of the expedition, was furious. “It will never do to leave him here,” he scowled.
1519
年，一队受命到墨西哥探险的西班牙士兵，听说了一个非同寻常的传闻。八年前，一个名叫冈萨洛•格雷罗（
Gonzalo Guerrero
）的水手乘坐一艘破船漂流到墨西哥，并和印第安人住在一起。他娶了一个印第安女人，生育了三个孩子。他身上刺了图案，嘴唇上扎了孔。更为奇怪的是，他打算永远留下来。这个探险队的队长赫尔南•科蒂斯（
Hern
á
n Cort
é
s
）火冒三丈，怒吼道：“绝不能让他留在这里！”
What Cortés took to be a slight against Spanish civilisation, Gregory Rodriguez hails as a vision of America's future.Guerrero was the first Mexican settler and his children were the first mixed-race Mexicans. But only narrowly: Cortés himself soon took an Indian lover, as did many of his men. Gradually Spaniards and Indians (and later blacks) blended to create a mongrel nation. Mexico became a counterpoint to the caste society that developed in its northern neighbour. Then it began to permeate and change that society.
在科蒂斯看来，这是对西班牙文明的一种侮慢，但格里高利•罗德里格斯（
Gregory Rodriguez
）却盛赞这是对遥远的美国未来的一种洞见。格雷罗是墨西哥的第一个殖民者，他的子女则是墨西哥第一代混血人种。不过，这也只能勉强算是“第一”——科蒂斯和他的许多队员们不久也爱上了印第安女人，西班牙人和印第安人（以及后来的黑人）渐渐融合并构建了一个混血人种国家。墨西哥与其北面逐渐形成的那个多种族社会相映成趣，随后它便开始渗透并改变那个社会。
By 2001 Latinos, most of them Mexicans or descended from Mexicans, had become the second-biggest ethnic group in America.This worried African-Americans, who were thus relegated to third place. It also alarmed some whites, who felt that Latinos were failing to conform to American mores. In an influential book “Who Are We?” published in 2004, Samuel Huntington, a Harvard University professor, argued that Mexicans threatened Anglo-Protestant traditions. “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds” is a much shrewder, less paranoid work. Yet, in some ways, it reaches a similar conclusion.
到
2001
年，拉美裔美国人（其中大多是墨西哥人或墨西哥人后裔）已成为美国第二大种族。这令因此而降至第三位的非洲裔美国人感到担忧，也警醒了某些自以为拉美裔人与美国传统格格不入的白人。哈佛大学教授萨缪尔•亨廷顿（
Samuel Huntington
）在其
2004
年出版的颇具影响力的著作《我们是谁？》（
Who Are We
？）中指出，墨西哥人对盎格鲁
-
新教徒（
Anglo-Protestant
）的传统构成了威胁。《杂种、私生子、孤儿及流浪汉》（
Mongrels, Bastards,Orphans, and Vagabonds
，作者即格里高利•罗德里格斯）这部作品则要高明、理智得多。不过，从某种意义上看，两部作品得出的却是相似的结论。
Victory in the Mexican-American war in the late 1840s led to the first big influx of Mexicans to the United States.Perhaps 100,000 were absorbed as their territory was annexed. That outraged American nativists. William Wick, a congressman from Indiana, said he did “not want any mixed races in our Union, nor men of any colour except white, unless they be slaves”. In a clumsy way, Wick had identified the problem with Mexicans: how would they fit into a system that drew a sharp distinction between blacks and whites?
19
世纪
40
年代末，美国在对墨西哥战争中的胜利让美国迎来了第一波墨西哥移民大潮，大约有
10
万墨西哥人随着领土被吞并而归入美国。这激怒了美国的本土主义者，来自印第安纳州的国会议员威廉•维克（
William Wick
）表示，他“不希望任何混血人种加入我们的联邦，也不希望白人以外的有色人种加入，除非他们都是奴隶”。话是不太中听，但维克还是指出了墨西哥人存在的问题：他们怎样融入到一个“黑”“白”分明的体制中去呢？
This has remained a puzzle ever since. It complicated attempts to segregate the races in the early 20th century. One Texas drugstore clerk explained that Mexicans, unlike blacks, were allowed to drink at the soda fountain. But if they wanted a table they would be seated apart from whites. In the 1960s and 1970s Mexicans' uncertain status bedevilled attempts to create a civil-rights movement as potent as the black one was.
这个问题一直以来都没有答案，
20
世纪初期的种族隔离措施也因此举步维艰。德克萨斯州一位药店营业员认为原因在于墨西哥人与黑人不同，他们可以坐在冷饮柜边喝饮料，但是如果想要一张桌子，就得与白人分开坐。
20
世纪六、七十年代，墨西哥人社会地位的不确定性使得想要像黑人那样举行一场声势浩大的民权运动的人苦恼不已。
The other problem with Mexicans is that they retained ties to the mother country. Or, at least, some did. In 1897, a group of Mexican-Americans in El Paso refused to observe Mexico's independence day, explaining that it meant nothing to them. The local Spanish newspaper condemned them, calling them “Agringados” (Americanised). Dolores del Rio, a Hollywood star, said fiercely in 1928: “Never will I become an American citizen. Never!”
墨西哥人尚存在这样一个问题，那就是他们与其祖国依然存在千丝万缕的联系，或者至少某一些人是如此。
1897
年，埃尔帕索（
El Paso
，德克萨斯州与墨西哥交界的一座城市——译注）一些墨西哥裔美国人拒绝为墨西哥的独立日（
9
月
16
日——译注）举行庆祝活动，认为独立日对他们而言毫无意义。当地的西班牙文报对他们进行了谴责，并称其被“美国化”（“
Agingados
”，
Americanised
）了。
1928
年，好莱坞影星多洛雷斯•德尔•莱奥（
Doloresdel Rio
）态度强硬地表示：“我绝不会成为一名美国公民，绝不！
”
Yet most Mexicans did become American—a transition symbolised, for many, by the loss of the mother tongue. Even in the ghettos the march of English was relentless. New arrivals spoke mostly Spanish, their children were bilingual and their grandchildren spoke almost no Spanish at all. Along the route to monolingualism there were some delightful by ways. By the mid-20th century a man driving to a meeting with the mayor would parkear his carro before climbing the steps of sitijol.
可是，事实上大多数墨西哥人都加入了美国国籍——对于许多人来说，其转变标志就是不再会说母语。即便是在少数民族占多数的贫民区，说英语的人也日渐增多。新来的人大多数讲西班牙语，他们的子女则既会说西班牙语，也会说英语，而到了孙辈人们几乎都根本不说西班牙语了。这些人在从双语者变为单语者的过程中也创造了一些颇为有趣的生僻字。比如有人这么说：到
20
世纪中叶，一个人开车去见市长，他要先停好（
parkear
，即
parked
）自己的车（
carro
，即
car
），再登上市政厅（
sitijol
，即
city hall
）的台阶。
