Mendez

My father's name was Alfred Mendez. He was descended from the Mendezes on the southside of Chicago, all of whom had names like Mercedes, Pedro, Maria, Carlos, even Javiar and Concepcion. Indeed, Alfred had been christened Alfredo. But the Mendezes weren't Spanish or Cuban, which were identities they cultivated, nor were they Cape Verdean, an identity they shunned. They were just brown-tinged New World people with roots no closer to Mexico than Houston, no closer to Cuba than Charleston, or for that matter, no closer to Spain than Canada, who lived in the Negro community (housing restrictions apply to brown-skinned Spanish, too, they reminded) but made it abundantly clear that they weren't black. They had been so insistent about this for so many years, so many generations, that people just let it go, or, as one wag said, let it pass. The Mendez spectacle was just so elaborate, so astonishing, that few questioned it, for few wanted the spectacle to end

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