ICE, Los Angeles and Protesting - America is Imaginary; Human Beings are Real

Words: Verônika Shülman

The first thing I knew about El Salvador was that it was where Angela was from. She was between my age and my mom’s, leaving her in older sister/young aunt territory, aka the coolest. She didn’t blink an eye when I filled a giant salad bowl with warm sudsy water and let my Barbies have a “spa day.” She played along, voicing the roles of imaginary best friends and love interests. She had a daughter Blanca who was 18 or 19 and a grandson Augustín who was 3, like me. She was a grandmother, at age 30-something, and I was obsessed with her.

Everyday she picked me up from school by foot and insisted on carrying the backpacks of both me and Lily, my childhood best friend, as she walked us home. When we arrived she made us both the world’s most delicious grilled-cheese sandwiches, golden-pressed with butter on fresh challah. My mom often lamented that we didn’t feel the same way about her sandwiches as Angela’s. She was a single working parent who took on many demanding projects to keep a roof over our heads and challah on the table.

When Angela talked about El Salvador, it sounded so picturesque. The colors. The flavors. The nature. The animals. The land. I wondered why she ever left. She tried to tell me about the American dream. I tried to listen.

When I entered elementary school, I was to pick a language to study. Because both of my parents are Canadian, they thought I should learn French. Because I am from Los Angeles, I knew I needed (wanted) to learn Spanish. To me it was the most important language in the world because it was everywhere I went. In every café, on every corner, in every neighborhood. The lyricism of the language was so many leagues above English. It made English sound like nails on a chalkboard! My Spanish teacher in school was the daughter of the artist who made that famous poster: “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” The language didn’t come to me at first, and I was incensed. I studied and studied. Then, one day, it clicked. Suddenly I could think, read, dream in Spanish. It was magical.

From here I got my first job in a restaurant in Venice Beach where I spoke Spanish constantly and got more fluent. When I went away to Wellesley for college, I felt intense melancholia and culture-shock when Boston didn’t have as many Latinx people as I was used to. It felt so sterile and creepy to me. I thought every place was going to be as vibrant and lively as LA. 

I was wrong.

The moment I graduated, I flew home to California and settled in my neighborhood, the best neighborhood in the entire world. Highland Park. 

There’s a store called Mondo Mondo on Monte Vista that makes a scent called “The Center of the World.” That is how it feels when you live there, walk around there. Bougainvillea dot the streets, flowing from houses onto the sidewalk and blowing in the wind like sugarplum fairies. Cafes blast Mexican radio, and Mariachi bands play live in people’s backyards for birthday parties. Teenage boys sell fresh mango, jicama, watermelon, pineapple, and cucumber dressed with lime and tajin. And the light is golden-brown. And the trees sway. And we are free. 

 There is no such thing as Los Angeles without immigrants. 

The actual name of our city is, “Nuestra Seńora Reina de Los Ángeles.” 

“Our lady, queen of the angels,” in Spanish. 

This weekend, when ICE and the National Guard and Marines descended upon Los Angeles, Los Angeles rose to the challenge. 

In the words of my best friend, the poet Monique Mitchell, “You know how crazy you have to be to think we weren’t gonna ride for our family?”

In the words of playwright Tony Kushner of Angels in America, “You do not live in America. No such place exists.”

The scholar Benedict Andersson refers to countries and cities as “imagined communities.”

In other words, America is imaginary.

Human beings our real.

What comes next, then?

What is our most imaginative post-American dream? 

We will envision it, collectively. Hand in hand. Not the government. But the people.

We will not be force-fed a vision of our future.

We will feed each other.. 

We will feed ourselves.

When we put our words and our bodies where our mouths and hopes and dreams are, we become one big family (or realize that we always were).