The New Americans
	In the U.S., the Indians from Cherán are, by and large, inhabiting not some marginalized space on the other side of the tracks, not some new Mexican shantytown segregated from the larger society but living alongside the "natives": poor blacks, whites and Asians. They are being transformed by the experience and are likewise transforming towns across the heartland.
	A couple more "postcards" from the places we've been: Norwalk, Wisconsin: a town of five hundred, half of whom are employed at the local meat-packing plant, most of these Mexicans, many from Cherán. The migrant boys have taken a liking to the local white girls "the daughters of Mennonites, Amish, Plain Christians" and vice-versa. The lovers speak only broken English and broken Spanish. But the law of desire speaks its own language and we're always going to desire the Other: there are a few dozen babies in town now, sandy-haired, green-eyed, golden-skinned, a new Cosmic race. The Indians hold traditional dances on Main Street. The white girls blast norteña music from their car stereos, the Mexican boys walk around with heavy metal buzzing in their Walkman headphones. But not all is peaceful here; down at the bar "there are only two bars in Norwalk, and one restaurant" the brown boys and white boys (usually over jealousy and sometimes over issues of employment) shoot 'em up like the Old West. Norwalk hasn't had this much action since the Indian Wars.
	Dallas, Texas: just south of Dealey Plaza, the ghetto: at an intersection in the shadow of an I-35 overpass, a liquor store for poor whites, poor blacks, and poor Mexicans. The Mexicans work the store, serve the whites and blacks. A white dude straight out of the pen tells us he hates the niggers. The Mexicans say they're discriminated against by the whites. A couple of black hip-hop teens tell us that there's no problem between Mexicans and blacks, but that both do have a problem, however, with the whites. In cities across America, in liquor store parking lots, along the industrial boulevards, within walking distance of the gleaming redevelopment towers downtown, there is this new, mulltihued dynamic occurring, that is two parts class and one part race. It is the ground zero of urban conflict for the new century, and it is far more complex than the black-white paradigm that our media and politicos still profer as our racial truth.
	Benson, North Carolina: a Mexican grocery store that sells tortillas and chiles and rents Mexican B-movies to the tobacco pickers, who, on average of about once a week, come down from their work camps "whose conditions are reminiscent of FSA photographs" and stock up on goods. At a MacDonald's a few blocks away, they are giving away Los Tres Caballeros dolls to Mexican and gringo customers alike. Captain Roger Crouch of the Benson PD says, "Well, them Meskins ahhrr ah-write. Once in a why-al they'll be gettin' drunk as a skunk and weeel haul 'em in, ya know. Now, I don't speak no Meskin, and them boys sure as hell don't speak no American..." A bewildering thing, this Mexican presence in the South.
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