BAE BOY

25

And it's that legacy we celebrate for a whole week. Or some of us do. It's gotten real white, but we know the real story, most of us.

So anyway, locals of all colors still stop and just sit, every day, to pay homage to the beauty. We don't post pictures of our meals on social media—most of the time. If somebody's "tia" or "abuela" makes some bomb molé or a ten layer trés leches cake, that'll go up there for the world to salivate over.

But mostly, we post pictures of sunrises. Sunsets. Cool cloud formations over the mountains.

People talk about the plants and things like they talk about their grand kids. Which cactus had fruit on it this week, how many hummingbirds or quail families they have in the yard this year, what the ground squirrels and geckos were doing this morning—we Facebook them, too.

It's nice. That there's still room for that in our lives.

And then you have all the barrios and reservations and things that have been here forever, too. That's another whole world that most people know nothing about. They try to make movies about it, but you can't. Unless you're from there. And only a few people from there have the power to do tell those stories right now. But that's going to change. I've decided I'm going to help with that with some of that money Rick gave me.

Cause they're stories like nothing else the world has ever heard. Even the simplest ones will blow minds. Best parties I ever went to were in the parks or backyards of people over there. Big old loud pachangas. My friends and their friends and relatives out dancing and drinking.

True, they can get a little out of control sometimes, as the police will readily tell you. I'm not going to sugar coat it. Folks start swinging and shooting and stuff now and then. There's gangs and all the stuff the bad movies always focus on most. It's all there.

But that's just the passion they bring. And the despair, seeping through. Death's part of life here. They're not scared of it, they understand it. Hell, they party by the graves of loved ones, these people.

You know about all that. They keep making cartoons about it now, Disney and them. It's suddenly very hip, Dia de los Muertos and all.

But they're not cartoon characters. They're tough as the cactuses in their yards. Fierce as the pit bulls in those yards, too. Soulful as the old love songs they still sing.

And old as time.

Yeah. They've got Mayan faces. Aztec faces. The whole history of the West is in those faces. What they witnessed and lived to tell, it's deep. Like the Black folks who got brought here against their will mostly—and they've got a Southwestern story, too--they know a different America. The shadow side that nobody wants to admit is there.

I think they like bright colors and stuff so much because of that. It's the antidote to the shadow world that keeps trying to swallow them up. So in some neighborhoods every house may be a different primary color. The rooms inside, too, may be all different colors. And the murals—wow. So alive.

For parties and holidays, they make crepe paper flowers and things and string them all over everywhere. Happy colors. It's crazy. They're probably the people with the least to be happy about, but that's how they do. They celebrate life like that.

I could do without the goofy oompah music, with the accordions and stuff—Chicken Scratch and all that. But that's happy, too. The dances you do to it, you're bopping and spinning around the dance floor all crazy and you can't help but smile.

After all the carnage, they dance like that. Conquistadors, cowboys, cavalries, cartels—you can't kill these people. You mow 'em down, they rise up like again like the brush and stuff out here. They're not goin' nowhere.