Mexicans

The first gunshot drew me racing to the window. The second sent me ducking to the floor. A crime scene was unfolding below my second-floor apartment, and it took a few moments to make sense of its moving parts: the two burly men sprinting toward a taxi; the red-and-white cab trying to maneuver out of traffic; a uniformed bank guard pointing his revolver; the second pop of gunfire. No one was hurt. But the taxi, trapped in lunch-hour traffic, was surrounded as the guard and two police officers approached slowly on foot, guns drawn.

Florentino Vidal began working on his family's ranch in Mexico at age 7, forgoing grammar and high school for a childhood spent growing lettuce, carrots, watermelon and tomatoes. Vidal, 47, said he knows the Spanish alphabet and can read some, but gets confused writing much more than his name. Now he will have the opportunity to resume his studies and earn his Mexican diploma here in the United States.

From a breezy country club veranda overlooking the rooftops in the seaside resort village of Avalon, Robert Gonzalez waited anxiously Saturday for his name to be called by Mexican officials renewing his passport. Gonzalez, a 21-year-old construction worker and restaurant waiter who grew up on Santa Catalina Island, estimated he was saving hundreds of dollars by using the service provided by Mexican Consul General Juan Marcos Gutierrez-Gonzalez and 26 staffers who set up shop here for a day.

The number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S. citizens swelled by nearly 50% last year amid a massive campaign by Spanish-language media and immigrant advocacy groups to help eligible residents apply for citizenship, according to a government report released Thursday. Despite Mexicans' historically low rates of naturalization, 122,000 attained citizenship in 2007, up from 84,000 the previous year, with California and Texas posting the largest gains.

The teenagers and young adults struggled as they rehearsed an ancient Korean song, a kind of lamentation to leaving home. "Uno, dos, tres," began Fermin Kim, 48, a chaperon for the group. Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo. . . . The words burbled out in a discordant drone, tentatively and unsteadily -- sounding very much like, well, Mexicans suddenly asked to sing in Korean.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's off-the-cuff comments in recently released audio recordings about illegal immigration and the unwillingness of Mexicans to assimilate into American society have drawn angry responses this week from Latino community and political leaders. "I made an effort," the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger told aides last April in conversations that touched on assimilation. "But the Mexicans don't make that effort."

There's a plaque in front of the house where Alfonso Marquez was born. "Obviously," said friend and colleague Larry Barrett, "he's a celebrity." But not for anything he did. Rather, the 1,800 people in Marquez's poor, dusty hometown of La Encarnacion, Zacatecas, in central Mexico, remember him for what he didn't do. He didn't forget them. It would have been easy to do just that, of course.

In the parking lot of a drive-thru daiquiri bar that sells frozen White Russians in plastic to-go cups, Fidel Sanchez is running an illegal enterprise that's too unwholesome to be tolerated, according to politicians here in suburban Jefferson Parish. Sanchez is selling tacos out of a truck -- and judging from the lunch-hour line outside Taqueria Sanchez el Sabrosito, many Louisianans have become fast fans of his flavorful carne al pastor and spicy pork chicharrones.

Five hundred years ago, when it was still illegal for them to sail to the New World, hundreds, maybe thousands, of Sephardic Jews from Spain secretly found ways across the Atlantic. Many were escaping the Inquisition, which eventually spread to the colony's capital, Mexico City. In the late 1500s, facing the threat of arrest and death, some Jews in Mexico journeyed to the colony's northern frontier, eventually settling in what is now New Mexico. They were Jews in secret, or crypto-Jews.

\o7Dear Mexican, Why do Mexicans call white people gringos? \f7It was the type of impolite question few people would dare ask in everyday Southern California, much less in print. "Dear Gabacho," began Gustavo Arellano's answer in the OC Weekly alternative newspaper. "Mexicans do not call gringos gringos. Only gringos call gringos gringos. Mexicans call gringos \o7gabachos.