Blog Entry #2 Antonio & Delfinio Ch 4 & 5

It was quite interesting to read about how entire families earned a living through painting on black velvet in Mexico. Growing up in southeast Texas, I saw a lot of vendors selling these type paintings on street corners. As child, I thought they were truly beautiful and wondered at the ability of someone who could create the striking matadors or the perfect likeness of my favorite movie star as a child, John Wayne. Of course, I had no idea that more than one person had painted each painting. It was quite interesting to read about the process and the carefully guarded secrets of painting a stream, or a nose, or the perfect ear, etc. Without guarding those secrets, though, anyone could have "set up shop" and hurt the business of the master artists who taught their apprentices the trade. Seeing how many people were hurt economically by the wane in popularity of the paintings was quite startling. I remember that change. My mother and I had stared at the paintings longingly when I was a child. Then, one Christmas after the velvet painting craze had long been over, my mother received a velvet rendition of the Last Supper complete with little white lights above the heads of the apostles. I remember how my father would put that painting up in the hallway that led to my grandmother's bedroom each time we knew that particular relative who'd given the painting was on the way over to the house. Then, after the visit, the painting would go back into the closet which it usually occupied. At the time, I had no idea that the fact that my mother no longer admired paintings in black velvet and that countless mothers across the US had stopped admiring them was literally depriving thousands in Mexico of their "bread and butter."

For the artists who were most in demand for their velvet artwork, their craftmanship and success brought a sense of pride and accomplishment to the entire family. In most cases, according to the book, entire families worked in the business. This sort of family business is something that most Americans cannot comprehend in this day and age. I cannot imagine how hurt the artist or family of artists would have been to see my family hide our velvet painting as if it was somehow "trashy" or beneath us. I know that ELL students face this type of ridicule in every school across the nation, not in regard to velvet paintings perhaps, but in other ways where the food they eat or even their skin color is fodder for bullies. For instance, I've always hear the crass term "wetback" used growing up to describe the Mexican immigrants who swam across the Rio Grande to enter Texas. However, leaving Mexico requires bravado; it requires courage. For the twenty-nine-year old woman in the book, it meant facing her own death for the chance at a future for her children back home in Mexico. If I were the child of that woman, it would hurt so much to hear the horrible terms and the hatred in the voices of Americans when they speak of Mexican immigrants as lesser beings. How many of us as Americans would risk our lives for the sake of bettering the lives of our families? I like to think I would give my life for my children, but these immigrants actually do risk their lives for their families! I will have to respond to any ELL student who is ridiculed as a mother would defend her child . . . who knows how many relatives any ELL student may have lost in the struggle for life!